Eton Mess (Pashmak bonus)

I don’t think I’ve ever eaten anything that could really be called an ‘English dessert’ and now there are two I can choose from! Hmm, will I try knickerbocker glory or eton mess? Both sound pretty darn tasty… but the eton mess is a dollar cheaper and I am pretty much the tightest person I know…

It says strawberries, raspberries, ice cream, meringue, lychees and pashmak. Pashmak and lychees? Obviously a modern interpretation… what the heck is pashmak anyway?

Probably it will be everything all jumbled together. I love my foods mixed up, especially dessert. Hope it’s good and messy, ha ha.

Huh. It’s a frozen tower of ice cream and raspberries studded with four whole bits of purple meringue topped with some weird fairy-floss looking stuff sitting in a moat of strawberries, lychees and cream.

This is a lot more elaborate than I was expecting.

I try some of the fairy floss stuff. It’s stringy and doesn’t melt like I think it will. It sits in my mouth and I chew at it. It doesn’t chew either. It just sits there being stringy. Okay, you must be pashmak. Pretty much you suck. You can go to the side of the plate.

The tower is too frozen in the middle: the raspberries are solid icy bricks. The bits around the side taste like regular ice cream and berries. The blocks of meringue are dry and dusty when I bite them. I try and crush them to mix better but they are too hard on the outside.

So far a bit disappointing.

Go for the fresh strawberries and canned lychees sitting in the moat. Oh wow… now we’re talking! Together with the cream they sing with flavour and perfect softness.

Chip away at my tower for awhile, num up the moat. More and more of the tower joins the moat and is all the better for it. There seems to be hazelnuts in the tower too, which add the delightful crunchy surprises that the meringue really should have been doing.

Eating on auto-pilot after the moat is gone, more for the sake of it than desire. Try the pashmak a couple more times (nope, still like eating cotton).

Too much presentation and depature from tradition! I hope I can try a real mess someday, I’m sure it will be more like a moat than a tower.

Rating: for the eton mess

Rating: for pashmak

Specifics: eton mess from Grub & Tucker, Newtown