White foods only please

[Zacky]

Painful dentistry out of the way, I'm having some mates over for dinner and would love some ideas. I was thinking pan-fried scallops on pureed cauliflower for a starter and white chocolate in some form for dessert but I'd love to hear any ideas and recipes people may have. There's a 48-hour deadline, people!

[mkayahara]

How about blanquette de veau? Any number of custards (or panna cotta) make great white desserts, too.

You're not planning on eating this way for the rest of your life, are you? Painful dentistry or no, I could never give up red wine. Or coffee...

[Zacky]

No! I could never give up the wonderful staining foods! Blanquettte de veau is a great suggestion. Thanks for that - I have 48 hours of this. Thing is, once I started thinking about it, the more I had difficulty thinking of WHITE foods! Parsnip? Potato? Rice? Pasta? I'd be interested if anyone had a white risotto dish?

[annachan]

Egg whites, cream sauces, white asparagus, white beans, various cheeses.

White risotto: white asparagus and cheese?

[Beebs]

Various white "cream of" soups; New England clam chowder; cod, sole, tilapia and other white-fleshed fish; chicken breast; rice pudding; vanilla ice cream.

By "white", do you also mean white-white, or can food have, say, grill marks? Like grilled sole fillet or toasted white bread?

[IndyRob]

From my comfort food file - Chicken a la King. My mom's version was instant rice - cooked and put on a plate in a pile - into which you make a well and dump a can of chicken a la king into and microwave. It was actually a good bachelor meal.

But of course, you can take the time to do it properly and it's worth it. For maximum whiteness you could use oyster mushrooms and use small bits of roasted read pepper as a navigation aid on a white plate (but not so small that a piece might get stuck in the new pearly whites.)

Edited October 14, 2010 by IndyRob (log)

[Snadra]

The blanquette de veau is a brilliant suggestion!

Lemon risotto is white and lovely with something slightly bitter - maybe you could do something with pale Belgian endives?

Turnips are white, and depending on your location, you might be able to access white strawberries/raspberries and white carrots.

As far as dessert goes, you could also try an asian-style tapioca with sugar syrup and coconut milk.

This actually sounds like it could be a bit of fun!

[Tri2Cook]

I did this Jamaica-inspired dish not too long ago. It was tasty. Not completely white but you could refrain from browning the fish and use white onions instead of red if you're going for the full monochromatic thing.

escovitch fish - green banana porridge - coconut milk rundown - pickled red onion

[merstar]

Button mushrooms are another white food. Fettuccine Alfredo for a white dish.

Dessert ideas: Cheesecake, white cake with vanilla icing, white chocolate truffles, macaroons...

[Zacky]

Wow! Some excellent ideas here - escovitch could pip my scallop idea as a starter - and I'm liking the idea of a lemon risotto Snadra. It's interesting how when you impose limits on your gastronomy it can get you thinking outside the box a bit.

I'll post the final menu tomorrow to let you know what whiteness prevailed. Man, I wish I could have a coffee right now...

[Zacky]

Okay, so here's my final white-food menu:

• Gibsons and salted almonds
  
• Seared scallops on cauliflower puree with cumin veloute
  
• Whole sea bream baked in salt with two salads: shaved fennel and new potato
  
• New York cheesecake
  

Thanks for the feedback. Once my teeth can handle coloured foods again, I'll be thinking about other 'themes' as it really has given me a creative push. Now, does anybody know if I can use dishwasher salt to bake my bream?

[Lindacakes]

Isn't cheesecake kind of yellow?

What about a Pavlova?

[lesliec]

Wish I'd seen this yesterday ...

As part of the recent Wellington on a Plate festival, we attended a White White dinner with precisely the theme Zacky's looking for. Menu as follows, with explanatory notes as required (and if I can remember!):

• Two amuses as we mingled before dinner; first, cauliflower scented with truffle - a warm soup served in a shot glass. Fabulously truffley
  
• Then Prawn Pops - can you imagine prawn lollipops? No, neither can I, but these were very solid spheres of prawn on sticks, presumably deep-fried with a crispy coating
  
• Grana Padana and Chevre gellan with pickled white anchovy, lamels of scallop and rice wine vinegar - bit vague now, but I think the cheese mix was presented as a disk at the bottom with everything else piled thereon
  
• Chicken and spanner crap galantine on white turnip purée with horseradish - my dish of the evening. We didn't get the menu until we were leaving so there were many guesses during the meal about what the meat was, but it was falling apart and juicy but still managed to stay in the cylindrical shape it had been moulded into. I suspect sous vide but can't confirm
  
• Freeze dried fruits with tapioca and Malibu sorbet - the freeze-dried fruit was lychee, which had an almost popcorn texture. The tapioca was pretty gluey and the Malibu sorbet was more or less pineapple foam. It was rather better than that makes it sound ...
  
• Marshmallow - huge plates of pure white marshmallow, flavoured with lime. Great, but potentially lots of powdered sugar on my black suit
  
• Candy floss - piles of the stuff, pure white and again tinged with lime. I've always liked candy floss and loved this one
  

All this was served with a selection of (naturally) white wines. The food was very good but we and others felt there was too little of it.

Hope your white dinner goes well.