Cool Plates features dishes from across the country to help inspire chefs' creativity.
Pastry chef Michelle Duran made this dessert for a tasting she did while trying out for her job.
“I thought, how more SushiSamba can you get?” she said.
The six-unit chain, based in New York, features the cuisines of Japan, Peru and Brazil, and the combination of flavors in this dessert delighted her bosses, Duran said.
She makes the semifreddo out of melted white chocolate that she folds together with meringue, pâte à bombe (egg yolks whipped with sugar), whipped cream and whipped crème anglaise with gelatin added. She pipes that into flan rings and freezes it.
For the sorbet, she adds wasabi powder to apple purée and lets it sit for at least an hour to let the flavors mingle. Then she adds that to a sorbet base of water, sugar and glucose powder. She strains it to remove the wasabi powder, which tends to form clumps, and then spins it into a sorbet.
She uses a quarter cup of wasabi powder for every two gallons of sorbet.
Duran also makes a pistachio powder by mixing pistachio paste with tapioca maltodextrin and a little Maldon sea salt. She sprinkles a line of that powder on a serving dish.
She removes the semifreddo from its mold using a torch, and plates it and the sorbet on top of the pistachio powder. She garnishes the sorbet with a dehydrated apple slice, and the semifreddo with diced apples and microgreens, including mint and lemon thyme.
The dish is $10.
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