Sweet ‘n’ cold treat

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Please forget those single flavour ice cream served in a waffle cone or a cup at good old ice cream parlours. Restaurants in Delhi are offering ice cream with a twist. An ice cream dessert called teppanyaki ice cream has swiftly made its way into Delhi’s restaurants, and here, you can watch your ice creams flavours being folded with your choice of condiments on a cold slab/plate right in front of you.

To tell you more, teppanyaki is a Japanese style of cooking in which iron grills are used to cook food. But now the technique is used to mix ice creams with nuts, fruits, waffles and many more assortments.
Talking about the new variety, Mukul Agrawal, executive sous chef, DoubleTree by Hilton, says that teppanyaki ice cream is a new concept for people who like to eat mixed flavours. “It is an interactive style of cooking and offers visual delight to the diners. At Asia Alive, we have a teppanyaki dessert station, where guest can choose their favourite ice cream flavours, accompaniments such as pancake, waffles and many more things, get them mixed to get a new dessert,” says he.
Interestingly, the process is not too complicated. You choose anything from the variety of ice cream flavours, as many as you want, and then they are mixed on the frozen top (which maintains a temperature below -20 degrees Celsius) with various condiments and fruit purees like chocolate flakes, rum soaked raisins, black currents, chocolate and vanilla fudge and choco-chip cookie crumbles.
Chef Jatinder Pal at Westin Hotel and Resort agrees that such an ice cream has caught fancy of foodies with sweet tooth. “Teppanyaki ice cream is quite famous these days as people like to eat mixed flavours topped with fresh fruits and nuts. We make our own ice creams and sorbets and offer different flavours in sauces, chocolates, and variety of nuts, seasonal as well as exotic fruits and waffles to go with it. We have also introduced lechee, mango and guava flavours in our ice creams,” says he.
The latest addition in teppanyaki ice cream is yogurt. “People are becoming more conscious of what they eat and prefer adding yogurt in their dessert. Mostly, they go for fruit flavour yogurt and top it with exotic fruits,” says Jatinder.
Mukul adds, “At Asia Alive we also do wasabi, jaggery and coconut flavours. For the diet conscious people, we do soya and yogurt based ice creams."
Chef Jitender Chauhan, sous chef, Shangri-La’s Eros Hotel, does teppanyaki with a twist. He makes teppanyaki banana with vanilla ice cream and teppanyaki pineapple with strawberry on sizzler flambé with brandy. “The first thing which should always come in mind is the universal combination which suits all the palates,” says Jitender about his experiment.
But this mix that can’t be tried at home. Making teppanyaki ice cream needs special training at mixing. If not done properly, it does not work and also, your ice cream can melt in the process.