Ongoing culinary one-upmanship

[kaberett]

A messaged me in great excitement, the other weekend, to tell me that he'd had afternoon tea somewhere that had given him basil-flavoured meringue that didn't have green bits in, and he wasn't sure how they'd done it, but it was Tasty and A Friend.

They'll have infused either the sugar or the egg white with basil, I said, and it was probably the egg white.

I am pleased to report that infusing the egg whites with basil -- separating your whites from your yolks, then leaving them in the fridge overnight with some lightly crushed basil leaves dropped in with them -- does in fact give you basil-flavoured meringue. But, er, you really don't need much basil -- two leaves would probably have been plenty sufficient for my five egg whites, and as it is they're a little assertive -- but hey, basil-meringue strawberry Eton mess. \o/

(You can of course also just chop some basil up very finely and add it to your meringue mix right before shaping the meringues and putting them in to bake, but that wasn't the spec so it isn't what I did. ;) )

Comments

[ex_we935]

That sounds fantastic. You'd think it'd be a bit counterintuitive to put basil in sweet things, but it's actually very good! ♥

~K.

[kaberett]

Peach and basil crumble is a stalwart round these parts! Plus or minus raspberries, depending on how easy they are to get hold of that week...

[redsixwing]

Oh, yum.

I did not know you could infuse egg white. Learned a thing today!

[alexseanchai]

*high-fives* Lucky ten thousand!

[kaberett]

\o/

[kaberett]

Hee, I am delighted to have been of use :D

I actually didn't know either until I'd tried it, but I was pretty sure that infusing egg white with basil would work better than infusing sugar with basil (unlike infusing sugar with vanilla/lavender/chamomile etc, and I was therefore pretty sure that infusing the egg white would be how the restaurant in question had done it), and having demonstrated that the principle is sound I'm pretty cheerful about the prospect of similar approaches to other flavours...

[redsixwing]

\o/

Your thoughts about basil-lemon meringue pie sound pretty amazing. I make a pretty mean lemon meringue, so I may have to try that.

Okay. Egg white is mostly water, with some protein and not much fat in it, right? So any herb that can infuse in cold water should also infuse egg white, and those that do better in oil would do less well.

...which actually makes me think, what about infused egg yolk?

For different dishes, but that sounds delicious.

[kaberett]

Ah now that as I understand it takes you into the land of flavoured mayonnaises, which are truly an abomination unto nuggan :-p

[redsixwing]

Oh dear. No, paths ending in mayonnaise are not my preferred sort of path. D:

I'm a lousy Nugganite, but even I can agree on mayonnaises.

[fyreharper]

Of course it is an abomination, it's made of mayo :nosewrinkle:

[mathemagicalschema]

...infused meringues. Huh. That opens up a world of possibilities.

[kaberett]

I THOUGHT YOU'D LIKE IT I wanted to flail at you about it in IRC the other day but we kept missing each other

(so me_and is into the lemon-basil combination, and into lemon meringue pie, and I THINK YOU CAN WORK OUT WHERE I AM GOING WITH THIS)

(I'm actually not sure... what else to infuse the egg white with tbh -- because you want to do it only with things that would risk making the sugar clump, but also only with things that won't adulterate the egg white enough to stop it forming a stable foam, right? and quite a LOT of things you can reasonably do with infusing sugar, like lavender/chamomile/vanilla; even rosemary or lemongrass I think would probably in general be easier to infuse the sugar with. I mean, I suppose you could in fact do lemon balm OR WAIT WHAT AM I TALKING ABOUT MINT. MINT IS AN OPTION. Okay! So! All the actually leafy herbs! -- but yes, the possibilities of combining appropriately-infused egg and sugar to get contrasting-flavour meringues... :D)

(ahhhh lime-leaf-infused sugar for lime pies?? bay sugar???? SUCH POSSIBILITIES)

[mathemagicalschema]

My first thought was that flavors for which infusing the whites work less well, you could do an Italian meringue and infuse the syrup.

[kaberett]

oh I still haven't got around to learning to make Italian meringue >_>; but yes, you make an excellent point!

[jelazakazone]

<3 \o/

[syntaxofthings]

um, yes please.

[alatefeline]

That sounds delicious. I love basil and strawberry together. Another really weird one is raspberry and black pepper - but only a tiny bit and only if they are both high quality.

[fyreharper]

Infused eggwhites! I would not have thunk! :eyes eggs speculatively:

[azurelunatic]

Oooooo. Hmmm!

[redbird]

Now I need people who are willing to try this if I make some; I think Cattitude might if he got them while they were fresh, but Adrian won't.

Also, I have a very nice jar of "spiced pluot" jam, where the "spice" is mostly basil. (Pluots, for those who don't know, are an apricot-plum hybrid.)

[pipisafoat]

I have known of pluots for a few years but today is the first time I have connected that the name is from plum apricot.





wow.

[pipisafoat]

mmm I love basil. last night I tried a strawberry basil soda that was basically a basil soda that had a pink color but no discernible strawberry taste due to extreme basility.