Sweet surprises

TRUFFLE ice cream, chocolate sauce with your beef, tomatoes in your dessert. The line between savoury and sweet, appetiser and dessert is getting increasingly thin as chefs start to question why ingredients have to be limited in their culinary scope.

While it's less apparent in savoury dishes, desserts seem to be the playground for such "cross-over" experimentation.

Take Japanese rice, which has gone from sweet mochi to full-fledged dessert in the hands of chef Takuma Seki of Ikyu. The native of Niigata has not only added prized Koshihikari rice to his menu, he's also turned it into ice cream.