Deconstructed peanut butter sandwiches

This is my feeble attempt at being original.

I got the idea while commuting; I started thinking how I could combine the flavours of a peanut butter sandwich in a different way. I also knew that I wanted to learn how to use agar-agar (a seaweed extract that works like gelatin, quite common in Japan), which has become quite common in avant-garde kitchens.

The idea was the following: take grape juice (in lieu of grape jelly) and set it with agar agar. Then, mash peanut butter and bananas together into a paste, and sandwich it between two layers of set juice. The result? Peanut butter sandwiches in which the jelly turns into the casing.

The problem was that I didn’t know how to work with agar agar. I was under the impression that simply warming it up would make it set the juice. Instead, the juice never set and became a gooey mess. The goo tasted alright, but it was a mess to eat and see.

Two weeks later I took another stab at it, and this time I boiled the agar agar. What a difference that makes! The cubes worked well, and I was quite pleased with the results. I wouldn’t say this tastes awesome, but you can definitely recognize the flavours of a peanut butter sandwich.