Hello,
I had already asked my question on stackexchange before a friend pointed me to this community. While there are already some answers here, I don't really have a solution yet. Please excuse me for the cross-posting!
I am preparing a buffet, and one of the ideas I came up with was thick slices of deep-fried potatoes with some kind of mushroom piped on top of it (hopefully in a stylish fashion). However, I'm struggling to achieve a mousse-like texture for the mushroom part (to allow for the piping, and to contrast with the thick potato) that would not "melt" when put in contact with the hot slice of potato.
So far, I tried a thick mushroom béchamel (thickened with a good quantity of roux), which turns out heavy and still melts, and a kind of whipped cream version: cooking the mushrooms in cream, cooling it all down, blending until smooth and whipping; this works up to a point but the texture is not entirely satisfying and it melts a lot.
I also thought (but could not test yet) of starch to thicken it, or some amount of agar-agar (it should remain vegetarian, hence no gelatin) — I'm not really confident in the amount of agar-agar to use, neither am I in the result.
Someone advised using a whipping siphon, but I don't have one and never used one (so I don't have any intuition on its results), and I fear it would still melt upon warm contact…
Do you have any advice on the options I have for this? Or, if you see no way of doing this, advice on what type of mushroom-based preparation I could top the potato with?
Thanks for your help!