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Depends on how airy you want your foam to be

You may have seen a very dry foam—like this one—listed on a menu as “air.” You may even have smirked a little because really, how pretentious. But truth be told, these foams are mostly air, bubbly wonders that offer the lightest, most delicate expression of a flavor without overpowering the other components in a dish. Armed with the technique, you can take an intense (and intensely trendy) ingredient like powdered green tea, also known as matcha, and create an ethereal topping that captures its sweet and grassy essence but lets fellow ingredients shine alongside it.More good news: the method here requires no special equipment other than an immersion (or stick) blender. If you don’t have one of those, you can use an eggbeater instead, although it’ll take some effort to get your foam going. We use <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Grade-Lecithin-Powder-Molecular-Gastronomy/dp/B00BTI8446">soy lecithin</a> to stabilize the foam, mixing it up with sugar, matcha powder, and salt before adding water and blending it all together. Then we simply foam it up and serve atop an alluring dessert like this <a href="course-12-matcha-rice-pudding">rice pudding</a>. You can complete the first steps of the recipe a couple of hours in advance, but hold off on foaming—once it has stabilized, the foam will stay that way for only 15 minutes or so. So serve as soon as possible, and when your guests ask what the remarkable green tea stuff is, see if you can’t tell them with a straight face.