2012 White House Easter Egg Roll: Play with Your Food with Richard Blais

Richard Blais: Some of the food I'm going to be doing today,
obviously I've worked with Michelle Obama for the,
you know, Healthy School Lunch and, you know,
Get Moving and all that good stuff,
so the recipe I'm going to be doing is actually one where
Mrs. Michelle Obama -- a few months ago I gave to her,
she said she didn't like avocados.
I fed this to her and she said now I like avocados, all right?
And for your kids, can you close your ears one second?
Awesome.
This is a way to trick your kids to eat avocados.
Okay, we're good.
We're good.
We're back.
Awesome.
So the first thing we're going to do is we're going to start
with avocados, and this is a great recipe for me.
Do any of you know who I am, actually?
Well, two people.
Two people.
Where's the family that I just took a picture with and they
said I love the Disney show you're on?
(laughter)
That was awesome.
I don't know what show that is, Winnie the Pooh,
I don't know what that is, is that -- okay.
All right, where are we?
So we're going to start with avocados.
Three ingredients.
So my food is a little complicated sometimes,
it's like, you know, you've got to put on an astronaut helmet,
a nitrogen tank, you need 19 ingredients and nine hours
to do it.
This is three ingredients, and it should take a few minutes.
So we start with a bowl and then we have some avocados --
thank you so much for doing some of the work.
Like any true good executive -- I've got to be careful what I
say here -- like any true good executive,
someone else does all the work for me pretty much, right?
It's usually my wife.
Jasmine Blais, everyone, Jasmine Blais.
(applause)
We weren't really worried too much about the recipe today as
to what shoes we should wear.
Did anyone else have that issue today?
Okay, good.
All right, so we have our avocados.
So it's going to start with a couple of avocados.
Someone just asked me what's the precise recipe?
If you guys do Twitter or Facebook,
you can reach out to me today and I'll give you the precise
recipe, but to be honest, I'm not -- everyone good?
It's windy, it's windy.
I say we might get like that original Woodstock thing going
on here at any moment.
If I start playing -- I've dated myself, everyone's young in
the audience.
Kids don't know what I'm talking about.
Okay, I won't do that.
Audience Member: My dad was there, my dad.
Richard Blais: Your dad?
Perfect.
He was there, so he knows.
All right.
I'm talking about the second one with like Stone Temple --
no, I'm just kidding.
All right.
So we have our avocados.
We're going to dump our avocados into our bowl.
We have three ingredients: Avocados --
it's a healthy fat, right?
Does anyone not like avocados?
Way in the back.
I am going to call you out.
Stick around, okay?
Sous Chef: We have a second one off to the left here.
Richard Blais: Can you remember where they're at?
Sous Chef: I remember right where he's at.
Richard Blais: Awesome.
All right.
Dry ice coming?
Sous Chef: Dry ice.
Richard Blais: All right, so we have our avocados.
Ingredient two -- sorry, I have a little bit of a salt and
vinegar potato chip.
Water.
Am I crying?
Okay.
I just love you so much.
Sous Chef: Shouldn't that be said to your wife?
Richard Blais: Yes.
No, to everyone.
I love everyone.
All right, avocados, and now cocoa powder.
So cocoa powder.
And the amount of cocoa powder?
Lots.
Lots of it.
So I'm not very precise.
You can tell by my hair, it just kind of goes wherever it
wants to go.
So avocados, a little bit of avocado, a lot of cocoa powder.
And then we're going to get a blender.
Let's hope this reaches over here.
First row, you have signed the liability waiver, right?
Things can enter the first row at any time.
Rain gear, right?
Helmets, those things were all --
we addressed all those things.
Okay?
All right.
Avocados, cocoa powder.
And agave nectar, right?
You can use honey if you want, but honey actually changes the
flavor of it.
My wife's looking at me, she's like don't use honey.
But agave nectar's good for you, a great natural sugar.
All right.
Are there any questions, comments or concerns so far?
No?
Not yet?
We're good?
All right.
What's that question?
Yes, Riley Blais.
You don't like avocado?
You eat this every night and you don't even know it's avocado.
Great example.
Riley Blais.
All right.
All right.
So we're just going to mix this up.
I think you can kind of see, we have a mirror.
Can you guys see it?
It's kind of, it looks like frosting already, right?
I'm just going to drip a little bit of water in here just to
smooth it out a little bit.
You don't have to put the water in.
All right.
But you get the idea, right?
It looks like cake batter.
How are we doing here?
All right, something's just arrived behind me.
I'm going to try and sneak out two dishes.
I only have to do one, but in true Top Chef fashion I'm going
to try and really impress you guys.
(cheering)
All right.
So we're going to do two dishes.
So as I'm mixing this chocolate mousse here, avocado mousse,
sorry, chocolate pudding.
We good?
It needs to be crushed.
Smash it.
Smash it.
Let me show them first real quick what we have.
Let me get a tong show them a piece while you smash it.
So the second dish we're going to do involves a key ingredient,
dry ice.
We're going to make, wait for it -- dry ice cream.
No one -- someone laughed, that's good, okay.
It's a bad joke.
Get it?
Dry ice cream.
Okay, all right.
So these guys are basically behind me smashing up dry ice to
make it look like snow or you can throw it in the food
processor to grind it so that it looks like snow.
All right?
Very, very, very cold, obviously,
you can see all the carbonation sort of actually coming out
of it, right?
All right.
Here we go.
We just need a little bit.
All right, so we have dry ice.
And because we're at the White House,
I understand there's a Rose Garden somewhere, right?
There is?
Okay.
So we have rose-flavored milk, basically.
Or an ice cream base.
This is rose-flavored milk.
By the way, careful when you pack this if you're flying from
like Atlanta to Washington and this spills in your suitcase,
you will smell like grandma's purse for the rest of the day.
That worked.
Good.
My comic ability is a little -- so we have,
it looks like bubble gum, but it's really rose-flavored
ice cream base.
So we have that in our mixer here.
Do you have a couple of really small pieces for me?
And so we're going to spin this, and this is where things could
enter the crowd.
It shouldn't, it shouldn't.
All right?
So we're going to whisk this up, start spinning that,
you can do this by hand if you want.
And that's good for now, no one's going to taste
this just yet.
Give me lots of this stuff.
There we go.
And we're just going to kind of add the dry ice.
You've seen "The Brady Bunch."
You've never seen that episode of "The Brady Bunch"?
Tiny little pieces.
That's all right.
I told you things would enter the crowd.
I was not kidding.
Smaller pieces, if we could.
Remember, this is supposed to be snow.
All right, this is like hail at this point.
It's an interactive show, guys, you never know what's going
to happen.
All right.
Well, keep doing it.
Yes, Riley.
What's that?
She loves -- oh.
Nice; awesome; all right.
So just keep feeding that in there,
it's going to shoot all over the place.
Paul Qui is on after me, so don't tell him I made the mess.
Okay, all right?
Let's give it up for Paul Qui, the newest Top Chef, right?
(cheering)
All right.
So you're going to finish making the ice cream so that it's his
fault if it's messy, all right?
All right.
There's our chocolate mousse, and then we're going to do one
more element for our mousse.
Carbonated blackberries.
Does that like freak someone -- that sounds a
little weird, right?
This thing's about to go crazy, by the way.
Yeah, we can just let it go there, we can let it go there,
let it kind of just spin around a little bit.
Got a life of its own.
This is great for another holiday,
this is great for Halloween, obviously.
All right.
So carbonated blackberries.
So very simply, we have one of these gadgets that carbonate
water, right?
Instead of putting water in the cup there,
we put fruit in there.
So in this case blackberries.
Raspberries work well, strawberries work well.
This is ridiculous, we're having fun.
Is everyone having a good time?
(cheering)
Remember, this is a bonus, I can't go home for this dish.
This is the one I'm supposed to be making.
All right.
All right, what we're going to do is just carbonate
these blackberries.
This always, I knew this was gonna happen.
All right.
All right.
Can you hear that?
It's kind of hard to see.
All right?
It's perfect.
It's perfect, it's perfect.
All right, there you go.
So actually the CO2 is going into the berries,
because the fruit is porous, the fruit is actually going to
be carbonated.
So your kids like carbonated beverages,
maybe they don't like blackberries,
this is a way to can get them to eat blackberries.
Can you help me open this up?
We can get a couple of berries out there.
How are we doing on time?
Everyone's good on time?
There's lots of things to do, face painting,
there's Easter bunnies, Curious George is here,
let's give it up for Super Why.
Super Why.
(cheering)
All right.
Princess Pea, that's Riley's favorite character,
Princess Pea.
So we have some carbonated blackberry,
we have our avocado chocolate mousse that doesn't have really
any chocolate in it.
Have you got a spoon for me?
All right.
A spatula would be good.
All right.
Let's see.
All right, and how about a little bowl?
You know what, yeah, we'll do it very avant-garde.
We'll do an avant-garde presentation.
Avant-garde is just my way of saying I don't really know
what's about to happen.
I think we'll do something like this.
This tastes better than it looks.
Okay?
Good.
Someone got that.
All right.
There we go.
There we are.
So we have our avocado chocolate mousse.
We have our carbonated blackberries.
I feel like we need something else.
All right?
Sorry, when I plate then I stop talking.
Everyone's doing good, right?
Okay.
I think that's good.
You actually see the fizz coming up from the blackberries.
And I think that's going to be ice cream any second.
We need a spoon, a spoon, a normal spoon.
But until it is ice cream, right now, come on,
what is that right now?
Foam.
Foam.
Where's Marcel when you need him, right?
All right.
A little bit of rose foam.
All right.
I know where that person is that doesn't like avocados.
So there's our sort of White House inspired chocolate avocado
mousse, carbonated blackberries, and a rose foam ice cream dish.
Thank you so much.
All right.
(applause)