Big Mac Dessert
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I need your help for a dessert I want to serve tomorrow evening. The idea was to serve a dessert looking like a hamburger. For the bun, we'll use Lebkuchen (this type), a disc of cinnamon ice cream for the patty, cranberry sauce as a tomato ketchup substitute, and candied orange peel as french fries. But I would still like to find something for the lettuce leaves. Any ideas? And any other suggestions?
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Could you find some kind of green mint-flavored "lettuce"? Although I'm not too sure about mint and cinnamon as a flavor combo.
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Or massage some green food coloring into "spijs" and then flatten into leaves? That's almond and cinnamon, and not too sure about that either.
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Or some green tagliatelle (or linguine) cooked, cut into shorter bits (lettuce shreds), and coated in a sugar syrup, maybe with some green food color to make it greener?
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Hmm. I'm not quite sure I would use tagliatelle in a dessert, but your mention of spijs reminded me of marzipan - that might work!
I also thought about just using a few mint leaves - just for presentation, no need to eat the mint. Like you, I don't think the combination of cinnamon and mint would work... -
I made chocolate pasta once for dessert. Don't know I'd do it again, but it was interesting. Green chocolate would be difficult.
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I'm thinking the tagliatelle might work, green or white, cut into shortish bits like shredded lettuce. Then make a simple syrup/caramel sort of thing, with some green food color. It would be a bit crunchy like lettuce.
Or maybe handmade pasta, where you can roll it as thin as possible?
Could you dip sheets of phyllo in green sugar water or paint on some kind of green icing?
Will you serving the big macs open-faced or closed? -
The Lebkuchen look interesting. Can you get them in NL? (We'll be making a visit soon and it might be something for the list. French cookies are pretty boring, not much variety.)
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No, I bought them in Germany, and you can only get them before Christmas. Actually, we were in Germany for a day in December, so I bought a whole bunch of them - and then forgot them and only found them again this week (thankfully it's still January)... :)
Just out of curiosity: What are the things you get in NL when you're visiting? -
Shopping list includes:
- many jars of AH stock (gevogeltefond, paddestoelefond, wildfond, visfond, vleesfond) At least according to the label (when last seen) these don't have much in the way of artifical flavoring. I make chicken stock, but sometimes the jar is easier. The others I don't make
- jar of Italian herbs if I need them. the French "italian" mix is more provençal and I don't like it.
- Prosecco (there are French equivalents, but this is still a favorite) and Averna (an amaro)
- boterhamzakjes -- seems to be no equivalent here
- canned salmon, which I haven't found here,
- unscented AH handzeep (the pump bottle) -- there is *nothing* unscented here afaics :-(
- I'll hit up an Indian/Pakistani store and an Indonesian toko for some things (e.g. basmati rice in quantity) and for whatever strikes my fancy (impulse buying going wild)
- Assorted De Cecco pastas
Some of this is because we live out in the country. I'm sure in a big city we could find Prosecco and a wider selection of "foreign" foods. We take up boxes of wine and pineau and coffee to friends (although AH has apparently started carrying the coffee-of-choice) and come back with the same boxes full of our groceries.
We used to get quite a few drugstore items also, but I've started mail ordering those. Slightly more expensive, but they're never out. -
I'm still into the lettuce/pasta idea. How about leaves of lasagna? You could cook the noodles about 3/4 of the way done, then drain and trim to lettuce-leaf shapes, maybe two per noodle, and maybe even carve some veins. Then finish cooking in a simple syrup with green food color. Pasta has a neutral taste. Caramel would give it a crunch, but I'm wondering about putting color in it, if that would work.
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I do hope you'll post some picture for this dessert! :-)
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Oh my, that's a list! And there I am worrying that the bag of stuff I'm taking from Germany is too much :)
In case you were wondering:
- ground almonds and hazelnuts, Natron (bicarbonate of soda), and lard - I know you can get these around here as well, but I can't be bothered to go to speciality shops for it, _and_ pay extra
- Kuvertüre (very dark chocolate for baking)
- Zitronensäure (citric acid)
- Bittermandelöl (bitter almond oil)
- Laugenbrötchen
- chocolate-coated candied ginger from my favourite store
- some medicines
- glue
- Christmas cookies and sweets
I always go by train, so it's never really that much (and most of these things I'll only need occasionallya anyway). There was a time when I regularly brought back my favourite muesli.
I didn't know the AH fonds are that good. I'll have to check them out. I always get Verveine tea for my mom. -
Re: the coloured pasta: easy, you add spinach (or beetroot juice, or turmeric, or whatever else) to the dough. Have you seen this:
http://www.kuriositaetenladen.com/2009/01/pastakolleg-teil-2-gestreifte-nudeln.html
But I'm afraid we won't have time for something that fancy :( -
Wow! Don't think I'll ever do anything like that, but wow! I made spinach pasta recently. It was quite pretty, but there wasn't any spinach flavor that we noticed. I have made a mushroom pasta with dried 'shrooms powdered up that was mushroom-tasty, but more or less regular color. I can actually buy a mushroom-flavored pasta here, chanterelle-shaped, that's quite good.
All the fonds/stocks I've found here have been full of chemical stuff, notably MSG, and I prefer to avoid those. The AH ones seem to be all "real".
You bring back glue? Isn't NL full of glue? Bison.
Carrying sacks on the train is more work than boxes in the back of the car. Car travel spoils you. :-) -
I went to get some AH fond yesterday. The only brand the small AH around the corner had was 'Struik' - is that the one you mean, or is there an AH brand one as well? I liked it, indeed no chemicals (according to the label), but it was quite salty. For normal everyday cooking I usually can't be bothered and just use a stock cube, though always just half of what is required.
Hehe. I had tried a few brands of glue, though I don't remember which ones, but they didn't really work well, so last year I brought a few tubes of Uhu glue.
The dessert last night was really nice, and looked pretty much like a hamburger. I posted a photo here and here (same photo for both reviews). -
Nearly forgot to post this: This lady made a full English breakfast for dessert a few years back: http://stasty.com/?p=2100 and http://stasty.com/?p=2158 - amazing!
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The English breakfast dessert is great! :-)
Yours is pretty impressive too!
My stock is Albert Heijn brand (AH). It's been 2 years since I've been there, so maybe it's gone? ... No, found these on the AH webwinkel site:
http://webwinkel.ah.nl/product/AH/30225/AH+Vleesfond
http://webwinkel.ah.nl/product/AH/30226/AH+Gevogeltefond
I haven't noticed they're salty. They are strong. Sometimes I dilute them with another full or half jar of water depending on what I'm making.
Hmm...I'm wondering if it might be an idea to make a webwinkel order and have it delivered somewhere while we're there. Saves a trip to the store perhaps. -
(back to the original topic):
Look, someone had a similar idea!
http://sploid.gizmodo.com/this-mcdonalds-burger-and-fries-combo-is-actually-made-1546842902
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