Written by Helga Thursday, 05 March 2009 22:28

Yes. I have been to Wagamama. It was my most frustrating lunch ever. I had a presentation in the morning and I didn’t had time for breakfast so I just had an orange juice... Bad idea. It made me even more hungry. So when around 1 o’clock we went out to have lunch with the client and my colleagues, I was practically shaking I was so hungry. We went to Wagamama. Basically it’s a fancy Japanese fast restaurant. It’s fancy because you understand exactly nothing from the menu, everything has Japanese names, with half English-half Japanese descriptions. My eyes were desperately searching for something what I actually understand, so I ended up with a mandarin – chicken salad. They have the concept of serving the dish when it’s ready, no waiting for the steak of the guy and the end of your table... Cool! My salad is coming, I felt like I could eat a horse and they put it front of me with 2 chopsticks. I just wanted to cry…

I think I was the fastest customer ever in eating salad with chopsticks. Salad leaves with cashew nuts… Although the salad was great, I needed something to make up for it… White chocolate and ginger cheesecake!!! There are some things in life which I love unconditionally. Ginger and chocolate are such things. And something sweet, ending with ‘cake’ which has both of them must be the idea of the year… and it was!!!!! It was amazing!!! So I spent the way home thinking how could I do this myself… Here is the result.

Ingredients

For the biscuit base:

• 200-300 gr pack of plain vanilla biscuits and
• about 200 gr melted butter

For the cream:

• 300 gr crème cheese
• 1 portion vanilla mousse (either home-made or powder variation)
• 200 gr melted white chocolate
• 1 big piece fresh ginger
• 2 tbsp sugar
• 2 packs of gelatin
• Vanilla

For the fruit sauce:

• 2 plums
• 2 passion fruit
• Some sugar (around 2tbsp)

I break the cookies in a mortar, mix it with the melted butter and put it in the bottom of my cake form, leaving a little edge. Let it rest in the fridge.

First I chopped the ginger but the best is to put it in the chopper. Normally I take a bigger amount of ginger, I put it in the chopper and deep freeze this “gingercrème” in small balls to be used in different dishes. I melt the chocolate, prepare the vanilla mousse and prepare the gelatin in a small amount of water. When everything is ready, I put the crème cheese, the ginger, the sugar, the melted chocolate and the gelatin in the mixer. Mix it fast and then put it into a big bowl where I mix it with the vanilla mousse with a big spoon, fast but carefully. I put the whole cream on the biscuit base and let it rest till the cream looks firm enough to cut. The longer the better.

For the sauce I needed something fresh, juicy and intensive so I took 2 plums and 2 passion fruits and cooked them together with the sugar until they had reduced to a thick sauce.