Vegetables for Dessert

For several years now, it has been my mission to make the desserts at Park Kitchen a natural extension of a vegetable focused menu. At first, this meant that instead of using tropical fruits in my desserts, as many restaurants do, I would utilize the natural sugars of the vegetable kingdom instead. You won't find pineapple and banana on my menu, but you might find beets, fennel, carrots, parsnips, or even sweet peas. As this repertoire developed, and I established a relationship with this new flavor spectrum, I gradually began decreasing the amount of sugar in my dessert recipes, and began adding salt!

I've never had much of a sweet tooth. I don't regard sugar as a flavor of it's own, and I think too much sugar tends to hide the natural flavor of other ingredients. I found that adding salt enhances not only the natural flavors, but also the perception of sweetness, without actually adding more sugar. Most people have experienced an extreme of this in salted caramels, something that has an awful lot of sugar in it, but the salt brings out the richness of caramelization. A salted caramel seems more satisfying because it's not just sweetness we taste anymore.
Now, I can focus on bringing these elements together in pleasing varieties of texture and temperature. This chocolate cake is served with a frozen parsnip custard, which is covered with a warm roasted white chocolate ganache, and sliced parsnips that have been poached in milk and honey. Roasted white chocolate tastes like dulce de leche, with all the caramelization and only half the sugar. It makes a nice bridge for the creamy parsnips and the rich dark chocolate. The alternating layers of warm and cold are refreshing and surprising.