18 Jan 2016

Star Wars Inspired Food: The Forks Awaken!

From Nine To Noon, 11:34 am on 18 January 2016

From a galaxy far far away and onto the dessert plate, the seventh film in the Star Wars science fiction series has inspired British chef Andy Kelly to put his Jedi-like art and culinary skills to good use. 

The galactic gourmet has created puddings such as a Millennium Falcon zabaglione parfait in a tribute to the Ewoks planet Endor and a gin and tonic lightsaber.

A former art student as well as a "massive" Star Wars fan, Mr Kelly said he used food as a medium to express art. 

His first Star Wars creation was a millenium falcon, based on a Snickers bar with toffee flavours, and containing peanut butter mixed with tapioca maltodextrin.

"It's dry powder that then turns back into liquid as it goes into your mouth, so it's quite an interesting flavour combination, different textures."

He said the whole feel of the dish was based on the falcon's escape from the desert planet Mos Eisley.

"The peanut butter soil really looks like sand... and that filled the base with the falcon escaping, and we put some UV light in behind it so it glowed up the back of the falcon and made it look like one of the scenes from the film."

Mr Kelly said the death star was made of vanilla ice cream covered with a dark chocolate shell picking up the detail, and finished with an edible silver spray adding a final gloss to the outside.

No Star Wars cuisine would be complete without a lightsaber. Mr Kelly's creation, conjured out of gin and tonic, was made as an intermediate course, a palate cleanser. He said the quinine in tonic gave it an ultraviolet (UV) glow.

"By freezing the gin and tonic we managed to be able to get a hilt on it that projected a UV light through the frozen gin and tonic lightsaber and made it glow up and give it a lightsaber effect."

He said the latest fashion for plating food was a lot more artistic, with more leeway for creativity such as using general household objects to create dishes. The style was more random, and less precise, uniform and symmetrical.

"Now it's more acceptable to play around a little bit and put a little bit of yourself on the plate as well - creativity, even using decorating tools from DIY stores. 

"The thing you put the tiling glue on the wall with, people are using those to spread purees out and it gives a really nice effect, using general household objects that are not necessarily for food."

Recipe for Chocolate Marquise (for Millennium Falcon)

Ingredients

300g good quality dark chocolate
2tbsp Chambord (raspberry liqueur)
3 large eggs
3tbsp honey
300ml double cream
cocoa for dusting
50g caster sugar

Method

Melt chocolate over a pan of simmering water
Add Chambord as cooling
Whisk eggs until light and fluffy
Add honey and sugar, continue to whisk egg mixture over simmering water until you reach the ribbon stage.
Whisk double cream to soft peak stage then fold into egg mixture.
Once incorporated pour in the chocolate and fold together.
Pour final mixture into moulds and dust with cocoa.
Put in the fridge to set for at least 3 hours.        
Once set it can be moulded into any shape.

Listen to Andy Kelly talking to Lynn Freeman on Nine to Noon: