If you’re wondering what’s the first thing I’m going to do after Star Awards tomorrow, it will be to indulge in local delights!
That’s because I will be filming a regional food programme early next morning, where I take Alvin Leung, aka Demon Chef to taste some of Singapore’s local delights.
Demon Chef Alvin Leung
He doesn’t look like your typical chef, but that’s because he really isn’t your typical chef. He’s a chef who is also a food deconstructionist. From what I’ve Googled, that means he breaks the dish down into its core ingredients, and then using those key ingredients, whip up the same dish in a different form. This is a purely theoretical explanation I derived from what I’ve read so far. I will probably get a better idea when I meet him next week.
Now take a look at one his most famous dishes:
Sex on the Beach
Alvin unveiled this dish at a prestigious culinary congress, Identita Golose in Milan.
This unique dish features a sweet edible condom, made by dipping a cigar tube into a kappa and konjac mixture. Using a pipette, Alvin then squeezed a few drops of a honey and Yunnan ham mixture. The ‘condom’ was then placed onto powdered shiitake mushrooms, made to look like sand.
At one time, Alvin also recreated this dish into a dessert at his restaurant Bo Innovation, in support of AIDS charities.
Dessert: Sex on the Beach (HK$68)
The strawberry flavoured condom constructed out of gelatin contains condensed milk, served with berry coulis, vanilla creme and biscuit beach ‘sand’.
Now Sex on the Beach seems more like an invention than a deconstruction. Which brings me to the question: When does deconstructed food become a new dish altogether?
Before I meet him, here’s my idea of deconstructed food. If you’ve been to The Cookie Musuem, you will find cookies in local flavours, such as Hainanese Chicken Rice and Hae Bee Hiam (Spicy Dried Shrimps).
Photo: The Pleasure Monger
In other words, instead of having Chicken Rice and Hae Bee Hiam consumed the usual way, all the ingredients are put into a cookie.
Am I right or am I confused? I’ll find out from Alvin soon.
A Jolly Affair 
Hi ， Joanne happy birthday! Forgive me for not supporting you in public bcos I prefer to stay in low profile. All the best to you!
Hi Joanne, thanks for the linky love on the cookie picture! Did you manage to try the dish? I read about it once a long time ago when I was back in SIngapore, very curious on how the dish fares on the palette!
Eeeeks, I find the Sex on the Beach dish rather disturbing. 😐 I mean, it’s way too blatant to be visually tasteful (pardon the pun) but perhaps that’s the whole point of it.
Dun get me wrong, I’m hardly a prude but this condom creation/invention sorta misses the mark for me, particularly in the context of food deconstructionism.
Cheers,
-MB.
The Moonberry Blog
Hi Joanne, nice post. 🙂 By Melody
First time saw an edible condom o.o..hahha
its really opened my eyes xDD
First time saw an edible condom ..hahah
its was just nice 😀