Behind closed eyelids, that place of the Sandman’s kingdom, a whole new world awaits.  You are not physically doing something, but what occurs during that nighttime trance just might be the most adventure that you have ever had.

Keep it minimal, what can you take out instead of what can you add?

This is a new mantra for me, a concept in which I do not have many practice hours logged.  If anything, my default is the opposite, to add as many things as possible.  What else does this need?  Not just in cooking, but in my fashion, in my decorating, in my personal goals.  More more more is better and more impressive.  But I need to consider the simpler task, the monk’s perspective, the basic blocks. Tone is down, keep it sharp, focus on the specifics.

What else is there in the world besides eating and the act of getting the food into your belly?  If you ask me, nothing.  There is nothing except worrying about bananas, and the possibility of running out of bananas in the dead of winter.  Almost spring, dead of winter, the ground has been frozen for so long that it seems impossible that anything can come alive again.  Nothing is growing here in this time, so we must rely on imported products such as those pesky bananas that keep disappearing right after breakfast time for an exciting source of consumable calories.

Cooking is not only my ends to the meat, cooking is my joy, cooking is my love.  I hope that this love is felt through perhaps a meal, perhaps through a manipulated banana dish, perhaps through a humble creation made by these two tiny and usually cold hands.

I want to continue to think about highlighting the elements as factors in desserts.  This goes beyond flavor, it creates a consumer connection to food in the most primal way.

I have been playing around with fire with the new year’s eve dessert and the Fuego de Guimauve, but what about the more subtle counterpart to the rambunctious flames, that of capturing the elusive air?

To represent the intangible element of air, I thought about solidifying foamed bubbles, stabilized with gelatin and dehydrated to form a rigid structure, to represent air as an element.  It would be a thin disk, light as cotton candy, crisp enough to then dissolve on the tongue just as quickly as does the spun fun-fair confection.

What percentage of fat stabilizes the foam the best?  Think how whole milk foams the better than skim or cream.  Is this true?  Add lecithin to enhance the bubbles, to make a plethora of encased air pockets, to skim off and quickly to dry, maintaining the outside structure.  This would be flavored with a highly aromatic scent, like orange zest.

Coconut oil foam/ Cocoa butter foam

Carbonation as representing air, but this is a purely wet sensation, not dry like the foam.