In one of my trips, I was having dinner with my boss where they served us cotton candy before our dessert was served. Small fist sized pillows served on a stick. While eating it I accidentally dropped it into my glass of water. I was astounded at how it instantly dissolved. That was the start of this idea. What if you could make a dish that melted right in front of you?
Few months later I had some extra meringue and decided to freeze dry it. It came out so light and brittle you could barely hold it. And I thought about the original idea. The meringue is light enough, and has enough surface area to be in contact with a little bit of water. I spoke to Cesar Vega about it and he advised me to add some maltodextrin to the meringue mixture to make it more stable during the freeze drying process. It worked. The meringue came out even lighter than my previous trials since it didn’t collapse inside the vacuum chamber. Though, the crazy expansion of the meringue caused quite a mess.
I just wanted to see if the technique would even work. Thankfully, it did! Obviously by no means is this a finished experiment or a complete dish. But I think it’s interesting nonetheless.
Some context for the idea. The goal was for a finished dish to simulate the transition from winter to spring. Ideally, I’ll have an edible soil and some cooked vegetables at the bottom, covered by the “snow”. The water will have aromas to it. So essentially, winter, then it rains, snow melts, and vegetation appears.
Video is shot in real time.
TorontoFoodLab 
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