You’ll be able to try his latest weird pursuit using the newly-Australian spread from this weekend onwards.
We always cringe when we see those videos of an overseas visitor being “introduced” to our country’s signature spread by way of a huge spoonful unfit for consumption by anyone, let alone a complete amateur.
It’s nice, then, to see that renowned food pioneer and acclaimed chef Heston Blumenthal is heading over to show us how it’s done, turning the decidedly un-dessert-like yeast paste into one of his odd creations at a special Australia Day lunch, Concrete Playground reports.
The dish is apparently being called, very plainly, ‘Vegemite Ice Cream’. But, as always with Heston, there are a few twists to make it something a little bit less ordinary than that.
Created together with the Dinner By Heston group’s executive chef Ashley Palmer-Watts, it apparently sports a sourdough crumble, barley chocolate ganache, and a curd made with the highly-acidic verjuice – so, plenty of flavours to smooth over a little dollop of Vegemite ice cream in the middle, then. Apparently the iconic jar will even appear at the table and play a part in the serving of the dish.
“I had never really eaten Vegemite until I came to Australia,” says Palmer-Watts, an Englishman, who apparently took some convincing. “Heston was intrigued by the flavour immediately and pretty insistent for some time that we explore a dessert dish based on the spread.”
Apparently the duo worked on the dish for six months, and the timing couldn’t have been better, considering that Vegemite is once again Australian-owned following its partial acquisition by Bega cheese. Now, cheese and Vegemite – that’s a combination that makes sense.
If you can’t make it to Melbourne’s Crown Towers for Australia Day, don’t worry – the distinctive dish will be sticking around at Dinner By Heston for the forseeable future.
