Serves 6
Chef Alan Ooi came up with this crazy idea during a slow period at the restaurant. He said, “Hey, dude, let’s make some spaghetti with ice cream.”
“How are we going to do that? We don’t have an extruder.”
“We’ve got to make one.”
“… OK.”
So we make the ice cream, flavoring it with white truffle oil so it has this luxurious feel to it. During service, we use liquid nitrogen to freeze the ice cream solid and then squeeze it out of garlic presses to order. That’s a real challenge—for every one we get right, we get twenty wrong. Then, we grate white chocolate over the top to look like Parmesan cheese, and add a few micro basil leaves for a final touch. The result is ice cream spaghetti in the best possible sense, delicious and totally unexpected.
It’s the slow times when you really focus on creating something new. That downtime is key time to spend innovating.
400 grams whole milk
100 grams heavy cream
70 grams sugar
15 grams nonfat dry milk powder
2.5 grams salt
36 grams (2 large) egg yolks
2 grams white truffle oil
Pacojet (see Sources, here) or ice cream maker
Liquid nitrogen (see Sources, here; optional)
Insulated container or dewar (optional)
Put the milk, cream, sugar, nonfat dry milk powder, and salt in a medium saucepan and whisk until the sugar has dissolved. Set over medium heat and bring to 160°F. Meanwhile, put the eggs yolks in a medium heatproof bowl. Once the milk mixture has come to temperature, whisk the egg yolks to blend them and then, still whisking, slowly pour in half of the hot milk. Pour the warm egg mixture back into the pot with the rest of the milk, set over medium heat, and bring to 170°F, stirring constantly with a silicone spatula. Remove from the heat and strain through a fine-mesh sieve into a Pacojet canister. Chill in an ice bath and then stir in the truffle oil. Cover and freeze overnight, at least 8 hours.
Put the canister in the Pacojet and run a full cycle to churn the ice cream. Cover and reserve in the freezer until ready to plate. Alternatively, you can chill the ice cream base in the refrigerator for 2 hours and then freeze in an ice cream machine following the manufacturer’s directions. If you don’t use liquid nitrogen to harden the ice cream, put the soft ice cream into ice cube trays and let it harden in the freezer for at least 6 hours.
Chill 6 dessert spoons in the freezer for serving the ice cream.
Put a garlic press in the freezer to bring it to the same temperature as the ice cream. Once the garlic press is cold, add a small amount of liquid nitrogen to a quart-sized plastic container or dewar. Scoop a tablespoon of truffle ice cream and dip it in the nitrogen for 5 seconds. Remove the ice cream from the nitrogen and transfer it to the cold garlic press. Squeeze hard to force the ice cream through the garlic press and onto a cold spoon.
Alternatively, take one of your ice cream cubes from the freezer and squeeze it through the garlic press onto a spoon. Repeat until you have 6 servings of White Truffle Pasta.
Use a Microplane to grate some white chocolate over the top of each spoonful of “pasta” to resemble cheese. Garnish each spoon with micro basil leaves and serve immediately.