The mystery ingredients were asian pear, green tea and bacon. The first step in my approach was searching for asian pear and green tea recipes, as I knew one of these would be the main component for my dessert. The bacon would be secondary. The whole time I searched for recipes I was keeping in mind textures, temperatures, color and how all of this would work and come together on the same plate.
I made asian pear mousse, green tea pound cake, and a bacon and pear marmalade. I garnished with a slice of bacon, which was probably a bit much and too savory, in hindsight. Even after I chose my recipes, I still felt a little like I was going somewhere without a map. When I started making the pound cake I wasn't quite sure how I was going to present it. I had several different options lined up before I started plating, and I tried a few different things to see what looked best. There wasn't an exact asian pear mousse recipe, but you can adapt any mousse recipe to incorporate your flavor of choice. It worked out, and luckily my mousse set up in time for the class presentation (but I was prepared with a filled pastry bag of the mousse just in case!)
The pear mousse had very subtle flavors of pear, but when coupled with the green tea pound cake and the marmalade...it was a nice marriage of flavors. Despite the fact that the marmalade didn't look very pretty, it tasted great! It was probably my favorite flavor on the plate. The green tea pound cake added some nice color. I wanted to do something different with the cake so I cut bite-size circles and positioned them on their side.
This was my first mystery basket project, and I was a bit nervous about it. It turned out to be an intense, but fun, exercise. It was definitely out of my comfort zone...but often times those are the best and most educational experiences.
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