International Home + Housewares Show 2010

cookiesandcream

Which would you rather have? A cookie? Or a cookie with cream? I hope the latter: a slightly crisp on the outside, chewy on the inside chocolate chip cookie, embellished with a cool swirl of freshly whipped cream. It’s classic comfort food – cookies and milk – simply dressed up.

My name is Louisa Chu – I’m a chef and journalist – and I’ll be this year’s guest chef at the iSi booth at the International Home + Housewares Show in Chicago. The show starts this Sunday but I’ve been working on recipes for months using the new Creative Whip.

At industry-only trade shows like the Housewares Show, buyers and journalists from around the world will walk miles upon miles through the cavernous McCormick Place convention center to see the newest products offered by thousands of exhibitors, some of which you’ll eventually buy for your own home.

Celebrity chefs – including Mario Batali, Ming Tsai, and Rick Bayless – will do cooking demonstrations and sign their books.

I’ve cooked at some of the best restaurants in the world, including El Bulli in Spain, where we used iSi whippers to make extremely inventive dishes, like airy “gnocchi” from potato foam – garnished with seaweed gelatin wrapped butter ravioli, finished with a roasted potato skin consomme. The dish was beautiful, surprising, and yes, delicious but not quite what friends and family want me to whip up at home.

During the show I’ll offer tastings using the Creative Whip of not only the cookies, but many of the recipes found right here on our blog, like the Cheese Wizard on mini grass-fed burgers with tiny challah buns. I’ll also introduce new recipes including Sparkling Arnold Palmers (sweet tea and lemonade) and Buffalo Style Fried Chicken. We’ll post the menu and recipes for everything we’ll serve at the show, because you can and will want to try these at home.

If you’re visiting the show, please stop by and say hi – and you can now follow us on Twitter at iSiCreativeWhip!

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Chocolate Stout Cake with Baileys Whipped Cream

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Celebrate St. Patrick’s Day on March 17th with the help of your iSi Creative Whip and make desserts and treats that are an ode to Irish beer and spirits. Mix a wee bit of Baileys Irish Cream into your basic whipped cream for a simple way to add a dash of cheer.

Baileys is a liqueur, 17% alcohol by volume, made from Irish whiskey, milk from Irish farms, cocoa nibs, vanilla, and sugar. Using the Creative Whip, top hot coffee with Baileys Whipped Cream for a festive version of an Irish coffee or cap a Guinness float (stout beer and vanilla ice cream) for a quick St. Patrick’s Day dessert that is far too much fun. But for a truly rich treat, try a chocolate stout cupcake frosted with this decadent whipped cream.

There are many delicious variations of chocolate stout cake but all involve adding a dark beer, such as Guinness, to the cake batter. The result is a dense rich cake just begging to be topped with a frothy light cream. With a touch of cocoa powder, powdered sugar, and Baileys, you have a frosting for a very grown up cupcake with a whole lot of Irish spirit.

Sláinte!

Recipe for Chocolate Stout Cake

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iSi (say “easy”) Entertaining with Desserts on the Go!

Screen shot 2010-03-13 at 1.50.02 PMThe Creative Whip has always been a perfect tool for entertaining at home. Whip up delicious dips to start off a party or have a festive carbonated cocktail ready to go as your guests arrive. And of course there is dessert! Nothing tops a homemade pie like fresh whipped cream or wows your guests like a classic Tiramisu. The ingredients are simple, the prep a snap, and clean-up is next to nothing. Let the Creative Whip do the work for you and just enjoy the party!

But the fun shouldn’t be limited to your own kitchen. While the pint-sized Creative Whip is easily portable (smaller than a wine bottle!), the half-pint size was made to go. With its compact dimensions, only 3-inches in diameter and 8-inches tall, it can easily be tucked into just about any purse or bag. So for that next dinner party or quick get-together, share your creativity and take the Creative Whip along with you.

Try the classic Chocolate Mousse Express and top with candied hazelnuts or fresh fruit, or mix up the Mango-Coconut Mousse and have shredded toasted coconut or crushed macadamia nuts on hand to finish the dessert. Each recipe is less than five ingredients so they come together in a nothing flat. Best of all, you can mix and pour into your Creative Whip ahead of time. Just keep it chilled until you’re ready to go and dessert will be ready to go when you are.

Note: Many of the recipes mentioned are scaled for the pint iSi Creative Whip. Halve the ingredients to use with the ½-pint iSi Creative Whip.

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Golden Belgium Waffles

WAFFLE CREAM SYRUP
The best waffle recipes tend to involve separating eggs, whipping the egg whites into soft peaks, then folding them carefully into the batter – but your iSi Creative Whip does all that for you.
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Fluffy Buttermilk Pancakes

PANCAKE PUFF
Flat as a pancake? Thanks to your iSi Creative Whip, more like fluffy as a pancake. Read More »

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Carbonated Beverages 101

Make your own refreshing, natural, and always bubbly carbonated beverages at home with your iSi Creative Whip – and far more than just sparkling water. It’s all about freshness and taste. Carbonation adds zing and zip, lightening flavors on the palate. Read More »

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Some Fancy Fried Chicken

In New York City they make a fried chicken so crunchy it even stands up to gravy!

Chef Jean-Georges Vongerichten, famous for some of the finest restaurants around the world and whom you might have seen as a guest judge on Top Chef, serves an iSi-carbonated, batter-fried chicken at his restaurant Perry St.

A few months ago Jean-Georges’s 27-year old son Cedric took over the restaurant as executive chef but promises, "I won’t get rid of the fried chicken! You don't need to worry about that.”

The deboned and seared chicken is dipped in whipper-made batter charged with CO2 and infused with Thai chili, Schechuan peppercorns, and ginger before getting fried to super crunchy perfection. Topped off with smoked chicken gravy and fresh lemon zest, this is aint no ordinary fried chicken but it sure is delicious.

We’ll try to get Cedric to share Perry St’s extremely popular fried chicken recipe with us. In the meantime, see and hear the making and crunching of their famous fried chicken on Vimeo for The Feedbag:

VIDEO: The Feedbag makes Fried Chicken at Perry St. Restaurant

For more love and photos of Perry St.'s fried chicken, visit Serious Eats.

Perry St., 176 Perry Street, New York, NY, 10014, (212) 352-1900

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The Skinny on Fat

Our recipes specify heavy cream to make your life a little easier. Whipped cream needs to start with liquid cream that’s at least 30% fat. That’s so the whipped in air stays in stable little bubbles suspended among fat droplets.

But if you go to the dairy section of your grocery store, you’ll find a lot of cartons and bottles labeled with the word “cream.” There are so many that you might just pick up the wrong kind or worse yet, walk out without any.

In the U.S. the fat content in cream varies:
Heavy Cream (often labeled Heavy Whipping Cream): 36% fat or more
Whipping Cream (often labeled Light Whipping Cream): 30 to 36% fat
Light Cream: 18 to 30% fat
Half-and-Half: 10.5 to 18% fat

And just in case you were wondering about milk:
Whole Milk: 3.25% fat
2% Milk (often labeled Reduced Fat): 2% fat
1% Milk (often labeled Low Fat): 1% fat
Skim Milk (often labeled Fat Free): 0 to 0.5% fat

Can you remember all that at the store? Us neither. We make it easy and just say use heavy cream because it always whips up light and fluffy. If you use yogurt or cream cheese, just get whole milk kinds too.

You can whip up any brand but we especially like the fresh and delicious products from Country Dairy, Farmers’ Creamery, and Traderspoint Creamery.

You’ll see egg whites and gelatin in our recipes for mousses and foams which also stabilize air bubbles like heavy cream.

And remember, your iSi Creative Whip makes five times more whipped cream than you can whip by hand. So a spoonful of our whipped cream is less than spoonful of hand whipped cream and a whole lot less than liquid cream – and that’s the real skinny on fat!

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No Ordinary Mayo

Homemade mayonnaise serves up international flavors with the squeeze of the trigger on your iSi Creative Whip. Mayonnaise is said to have been invented in either France or England but is now loved around the world.

In Provence and Catalonia, it’s aïoli, made with olive oil and garlic, served with seafood platters and grilled vegetables. Read More »

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Whipped Cream Variations: Not Just Vanilla Anymore

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With whipped cream so fluffy and fresh, there’s no such thing as plain whipped cream. But there are a world of possibilities beyond simply sweetened or even vanilla whipped cream.

Europeans often don’t sweeten their whipped cream, preferring theirs au naturel. But for us with sweet-tooths (and salt-tooths too), the iSi Creative Whip provides endless flavor possibilities.

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