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Razor Clams, spring onion confit, cedro marmalade, charred spring onions, dill and burnt lime 

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Coming soon....

While Ive been a bit bobbed down with my summer reading for uni, I have still had time to create! recipes for all these dishes and more coming soon!

Peach and marscapone croissant 

Or just a normal croissant with marscapone

Mixed tomato tart

Yogurt, Lemon, Raspberry and Bambelina Pear

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A new kind of cheese plate

I know this blog post is long overdue, but better late than never right?

This dessert came about as I was breaking up some honeycomb (or hokey pokey as its known back home) at work. I noticed how the honeycomb formed its shape around the crinkles of the baking paper in the tray, giving it these super sharp edges, in contrast to the beautiful airy bubbles hidden inside. Immediately I had an urge to make a sphere of honeycomb. 

Once I had the visual idea in my head, I just needed to figure out what fruit to use. Initially I was thinking apricots, as apricots and honey is a classic combination. Walking through the market, I found these incredible figs, and the dish came together in my head. All I needed was a bit of goats cheese to balance out the sweetness of the honeycomb.  The cheese I chose was Chabichou Du Poitou, a small wrinkly round of goats cheese, goey underneath the skin and a beautiful slightly firm interior. The flavour was beautifully strong, just the right amount so that a small amount would perfume the whole dish. 

Now, back to the honeycomb. After looking at a few recipes, I decided to go with Lauren Eldridge’s recipe. Her recipe uses a large amount of liquid glucose, as well as honey, which means you can cook the mix to a higher temperature without burning the caramel. The reason you want the higher temperature is because it means the baking soda will have a stronger reaction, and you will get bigger bubbles, and therefore a lighter honeycomb. 

Recipes

Honeycomb Spheres

415g caster sugar 150g liquid glucose 65g honey 18g baking soda 70g water

Mix all the ingredients together in a large pot except for the baking soda. Bring to the boil and cook until it reaches 160 degrees celsius. While its cooking, prepare a silicon sphere mould on a tray, with an extra tray lined with baking paper for any excess. Once the mix reaches temperature, take it off the heat and add in the baking soda in one go. Whisk quickly until there are no visible clumps of baking soda, and pour into the moulds. You want the mix to reach the top or go over the edge of the spheres, as it will sink down later.

Leave to cool for at least 2 hours. You will notice the spheres sink in the middle, but this is where you will pipe in the goats cheese, so don't worry about it

Fig Compote

4 figs caster sugar

Cut the figs into about 8 pieces, taking off the skin before you cut them. Toss in about 1 tablespoon of caster sugar and put on a very very low heat. Cook while stirring constantly until the figs have broken down into a jam. Taste the mix, and adjust with lemon juice or more sugar if necessary. Reserve in the fridge

Honey Roast Figs

2 Figs 2 Tablespoons honey

Cut the figs into 6-8 wedges depending on the size. Place them in a shallow baking dish and drizzle the honey on top. Roast at 190 degrees celsius for 15 minutes until golden on the edges. Reserve on the side until cool.

To Plate: Lavender buds 1 round Chabichou Du Poitou 1 Fresh fig, cut into wedges

Take the rind of the cheese and mix with a whisk until smooth. Place in a piping bag and fill half the honeycomb sphere with the mix. Fill the remaining space with the fig jam, and place the sphere in the middle of the plate. Place some roast and fresh fig wedges around the sphere, and sprinkle with a few lavender buds. Serve, and crack open the sphere at the table. Enjoy! 

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Sumac Duck Breast, Carrot, Orange, Pomegranate

For this week, I have something savoury for you all. Pastry is my obsession, but I love cooking too, especially when I have someone to cook for, which was how this dish came about. I needed to make something savoury, and I wanted to make it a bit special.

The initial idea came about with the idea of carrot and orange. I wanted to do a pomegranate molasses glazed carrot, with a slightly acidic orange element. Obviously, the perfect pairing for this is a beautiful bit of duck! 

Once I had decided on the duck, I immediately had the image of the dish in my mind, and I headed out to borough market to find the most beautiful coloured carrots to use. 

The dish came out exactly as I wanted, apart from one thing. Im sure you may have noticed, but my duck breast is not nearly as pink in the middle as it should be, although it was still nice and moist, thank goodness! I believe my error was in having my pan on too high a heat when rendering down the fat, so even though it was just a few minutes in the oven, it still ended up more well done than desired.

  This dish is super easy to make, and surprisingly light-a great summer dish! 

Recipe: Duck breast: 2 Duck breasts  Sea salt Sumac Score the duck breast on the skin side to assist in rendering down the fat. Generously salt them, and rub the skin with sumac. Don't be shy with the sumac, you need a decent amount to get the full flavour through the dish. Put the duck skin side down in a cold pan and turn the heat on low. Leave it in the pan until the fat is completely rendered and the skin is crispy.  Reserve the rendered fat to use for the roast carrots. Turn the duck over and put in a 190 degree oven. The time you need here depends heavily on the size of your duck breasts. Mine were quite small, and I should have left them in for only three or so minutes, but a large duck breast will need about six. If you're unsure, just take your duck out and feel it, just like you would a steak, the firmer it is, the more well done it is.  Rest for a few minutes before cutting and serving. Orange gremolata: 3 Oranges 1/2 Grapefruit 1/4 clove garlic Segment the oranges and the grapefruit, and finely dice the garlic. Mix the segments with the garlic, but keep the juice separate. Sprinkle with a small amount of salt, and put into a 180 degree oven, for about 15 minutes. You want the segments to just start to caramelise on the edges.  Once the mix is cool, use a mortar and pestle to break it up slightly, but still keeping a lot of texture to it. Traditionally a gremolata is lemon, parsley and garlic, but I'm not really the biggest parsley fan, and I thought it was a great way to incorporate orange in the dish Pomegranate molasses glazed carrots

5 Baby Carrots Pomegranate molasses Vegetable oil Orange juice, reserved from the gremolata

Peel the baby carrots, cleaning the tops carefully to remove all the dirt, but keeping the top 1/2cm of green stalk attached.  Coat the carrots lightly in oil and season with sea salt. Roast in a 190 degree oven for 10-15 minutes, until just tender.  When about to serve, heat a pan with a small amount of oil or butter, add the carrots and about 1 1/2 tablespoons of pomegranate molasses. Toss the carrots to glaze, and cook until warmed through and slightly sticky looking on the outside. Remove the carrots from the pan, and add in the orange juice, taste and reduce down to a slightly thick consistency, making sure that you do not over reduce the sauce. Season to taste.  Duck fat roasted carrots

Duck fat, reserved from the breasts 1 yellow carrot, peeled 1 purple carrot, peeled vegetable oil Cut the carrots into 3cm tall rounds. Place standing up in a small roasting dish. Sprinkle with salt, and pour in the duck fat. Use the oil to top up the fat, so its about 1cm high. Put in a 200 degree oven (I did this while the duck was just finishing rendering, so you will not have all the fat for the duck, but it means everything will be cooked at the same time) Roast for about 5 minutes until tender and slightly crisp To Plate Pomegranate seeds

Put 3 of the roasted carrot rounds on the plate-two yellow and one purple.  Put a teaspoons worth of gremolata next to each yellow carrot. Cut the duck into 3 or 4 pieces, depending on the size of the breast. Place 3 of them around the carrots, one skin side up and two of them with the flesh side up.  Cut the baby carrots into 3 pieces, and put the top end standing up in the dish, so that you can see the green. Place the other pieces around decoratively, using around 2 1/2 carrots for each dish. Finish with some pomegranate seeds sprinkled over, and about 1 1/2 teaspoons of sauce poured over the centre of the plate. Serve and Enjoy! 

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Strawberry and Juniper Doughnuts

This week, while trying to think of something to post, my mind wandered to doughnuts. Possibly one of my favourite things to make, and almost definitely my favourite thing to eat. I was then stuck with the idea of what to do with the donut-sure, I could just show you how to make a normal doughnut...but what would the point be! theres a million blogs out there, and I'm sure most of them have some form of a donut recipe. 

The idea came to me at work when chef asked me to bring him the clotted cream from the fridge-and I knew exactly what to make. Strawberries and clotted cream, an English afternoon tea inside a doughnut! 

Having decided on what I was going to make, I headed to check out Brockley Market, thinking that they would have some amazing strawberries for me to use-and I was right! 

Being this is an art blog as well as a pastry blog, I decided to try my hand at oil paints and see what I could do with this beautiful fruit. Still a work in progress, but Im really happy with how the wooden palette turned out, although it is a tad dark. 

Now, back to the doughnuts! While I was wandering around the market, I noticed a small ice cream truck, and offer they had strawberry juniper ice cream, that I had to try. Upon first taste, the juniper was fresh and clean, but I found that very quickly the flavour of the juniper disappeared. Still, I was inspired, and thought it was the perfect twist for my afternoon tea doughnut. 

So here we have it (in two different styles, because I'm indecisive) Strawberry, Juniper and Clotted Cream Doughnuts. A soft and airy doughnut, with a sweet juniper glaze, a slightly acidic strawberry and juniper jam, fresh strawberries, whipped, salted clotted cream, softened juniper, and fresh basil.  The base doughnut recipe I went for is from Thomas Keller. Ive found that he has two doughnut recipes, one using fresh yeast and one using dried. The one with fresh yeast also uses egg yolks instead of whole eggs, and after testing both, I can say I much prefer the fresh yeast version (which you can find below). It provides a much more tender crumb and a softer outside crust, which I prefer for my doughnuts.  Unfortunately, the recipe for the dough is in ounces and cups. Most scales have a function to change from grams to ounces, so thats not too big a deal, but there is not much that irritates me more than recipes in cups. They are SO INACCURATE. But there is no chef who's recipes I trust more than Thomas Keller, so I sucked it up and improvised my litre measuring jug as a cup measure, and it came out perfectly. One day I shall have the patience to convert the recipe into grams, but today is not that day. 

Fresh yeast is a lot easier to locate than it sounds, simply go to a nearby bakery, or even your supermarket bakery counter (I got mine from the local Sainsbury's) and ask if they'll sell you some-most of the time they will!

Recipes

Doughnut dough

1/4 ounce fresh yeast 1/4 cup plus one tablespoon room temperature water (I did 77g) 1/2 cup strong flour

These ingredients are to make the sponge, which is a simple step that adds extra flavour to the dough, and is definitely worth doing. Mix the yeast with the water, then add the flour and mix until smooth. Cover the bowl with clingfilm and leave at room temperature for 1 hour or until doubled in size.

1/4 ounce fresh yeast  2 tablespoons milk 1 cup plus two tablespoons strong flour 3 tablespoons sugar 1 teaspoon kosher salt (sea salt works fine and is what I use) 3 egg yolks 2 tablespoons butter (30g) Take your sponge thats doubled in size, and with a whisk, add the yeast, milk, sugar, and egg yolks. Whisk until smooth, then change the whisk for a wooden spoon or your hand. Add in the flour and mix to combine. Once all the flour is incorporated, dust the bench with some more flour and turn the dough out, ad the butter (cut into small pieces). Begin to knead the dough, using a metal scraper to loosen the dough when it starts to stick to the bench. Keep doing this until all the butter is incorporated and there are no visible pieces left. Now, test the dough for the window stage, if you can stretch it thin enough that you can see a window through it, then its ready, if it breaks, more kneading! Remember though, you need to be gentle when testing it, if you just tug the dough it will break regardless of how strong the gluten is.  The original recipe calls for melted butter, but I prefer to use soft butter. When you make a brioche (which this dough is a light variation of), you are making an emulsion with the butter and the dough. If you've ever made brioche on a hot day, and noticed it get a bit oily or split looking-this is why. The butter starts to melt if it goes over 30-something degrees (around 35 I imagine), and breaks the emulsion. So, although this is such a small amount of butter in the dough, I prefer to add it in a solid state, so as to encourage a good emulsion with the rest of the dough.  The dough will be very soft-this is good, as you are going to form it into a bowl and rest it in the fridge overnight, or at least 3 hours. During this time the gluten in the dough will continue to hydrate, meaning your dough will get a little bit firmer.  After your dough has rested, take it out of the fridge and press it down to expel all the air. The main purpose of doing this, is to create a more consistent crumb with smaller air bubbles. The first time a dough rises, it has large, uneven pockets of air-like you would see in a natural sourdough, or ciabatta. Every time you work a dough and punch it down, the air bubbles will always be smaller and finer the next time it rises.  Roll your dough to about 1cm thick, and cut with ring cutters in any size you desire. The final doughnut will be about twice the size of the original piece, so keep that in mind while cutting. If you wish to make a ring doughnut, then use a smaller cutter (or a bottle lid if you don't have a cutter small enough) to create a hole in the centre.  Move your doughnuts to a very lightly floured baking sheet, and cover very lightly with a layer of cling film. You want to check the time at this point, because you only want to leave them here for 15 minutes, maximum 25 if its a very cold day. Normally, we would leave a yeasted dough to rise until double in size, but you don't want to do that with a fried dough. Normally when baking a dough we have a small amount of oven spring-this is the fast rise of the yeast caused by the heat that causes the dough to grow rapidly in the first five minutes of being in the oven. Because a doughnut is having such a direct contact with the heat of the oil, the oven spring is much larger than a normal bread, and if you were to prove the dough more than 15 minutes it would grow huge air pockets and collapse as soon as you took it out of the fryer.  5 Minutes in to the end of the 15, begin to heat up your oil in a wide pot. You want the oil to be at least 2-3 cm deep, and you want to use a flavourless vegetable oil. Deep frying at home seems to scare a lot of people but its actually very easy. The most important thing is to keep an eye on temperature. I cooked my doughnuts with the oil between 170-180 degrees. I found 175 was best for doughnuts without holes, and 180 is best for doughnuts with holes. This is because the hole allows the doughnut to cook quicker, so can be done at a higher temperature to achieve the desired colour, if you cook a doughnut without a hole at 180, it will brown too quickly and will be darker than you want before it is cooked through.  Once your oil is at temperature, gently lower your doughnuts into the oil, don't drop them in as the oil will splash and burn you. It is very important not to overcrowd the pot, I didn't cook more than 3 doughnuts at once, as they should have plenty of room to move and float around. One of the tell tale signs of a good doughnut is the pale ring around the middle, as this means it was light enough to float.  As soon as the one side starts to brown, flip the doughnut over and keep a close eye on them. You want a light golden brown and you need to remember that it will keep browning ever so slightly after being removed from the oil due to residual heat. It should take no more than 30 seconds on each side, even less sometimes, to cook your doughnuts. I always cut open the first one I cook to check if its done or not, and adjust my cooking method if necessary-the last thing you want to end up with is a whole batch of raw doughnuts! As soon as the doughnuts come out of the oil, put them on some paper towel to drain and cool. Once finished frying, allow your oil to cool completely before handling. Once mine was cold I poured it back into the empty bottle (I used a small 500ml bottle) and then threw it away. Be careful, because if you pour it down the drain it will solidify and block your pipes. 

Juniper Syrup

150 ml water 100g sugar 10g dried juniper berries

Put everything in a pot and bring to a rolling boil. Boil for two minutes, then take off the heat and cover with clingfilm. Leave to cool at room temperature. 

Strawberry Juniper Jam 100g strawberries, chopped in 4 with the green removed 50g strained juniper syrup 5g lime juice

Mix the strawberries with the syrup, and bring to a boil,stirring constantly to prevent it from catching. Cook for about five minutes until thick. You want it to be slightly thicker than normal jam as you don't want the jam to leak out of the donuts. Add the lime juice at the end and leave to cool. 

Whipped Clotted Cream

150g clotted cream 15g icing sugar a big pinch of sea salt

Mix everything together with a whisk, and whisk until thick, be careful because this will over whip very very easily. Reserve in a piping bag if making the filled doughnut, or in a bowl if making the ring doughnut. 

Juniper Glaze

Juniper syrup Icing sugar Mix whatever juniper syrup you have left with icing sugar, using a whisk to remove all lumps. You want the glaze to be mostly white, and slightly thick, about the consistency of thick pouring cream. 

To Serve

Fresh Strawberries Basil Leaves Juniper Berries reserved from juniper syrup Flower Petals Sea Salt

If you are making the ring doughnut:

Dip the doughnut in the glaze, and hold upside down for about 30 seconds to allow excess glaze to drip off. Put in the middle of a plate, and fill the hole with the strawberry jam. Make a small quenelle of the clotted cream and place on the edge of the doughnut. Top with strawberries cut into eights, sprinkle with some fresh flower petals, and some chiffonade basil. Sprinkle on a tiny bit of sea salt. Cut some of the juniper berries into quarters, and place 3 around the doughnut. Serve!

If you are making the filled doughnut:

Put the strawberry jam inside a piping bag with a small round tip. Fill the doughnut through the side, squeezing in about 1tablespoon of jam, you should feel the doughnut get heavy. Once filled, dip in the glaze and hold upside down for about 30 seconds to allow excess glaze to drip off. Pipe a ball of clotted cream on the top, and cover with strawberries that have been cut into eights. Like the other doughnut, decorate with the juniper berries and flower petals, and sprinkle on a tiny bit of sea salt. Finish with basil chiffonade and serve. Enjoy!

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Mango, Creme Fraiche and Sumac tart

The other day, while walking past the fruit stall near my street, I noticed these beautiful orange mangos. At first, I thought there were Alphonso mangos from India, but I was later told that they were Thai. Regardless of the variety, I couldn't wait to make something with them.

It took me some time to decide on what to make. I normally sketch out some of my ideas before deciding on a final concept. My main focus was the idea of pairing mango with the Middle Eastern spice, sumac, as I felt the two would compliment each other really well. I then decided that it needed something creamy to compliment the aromatics of the sumac, and something acidic to cut through the sweetness of the mango. Once I had decided on these flavour profiles, I then tried to decide on what form to put them in. I was initially drawn towards a frozen plated dessert, with mango sorbet and yogurt parfait, but this changed when I was lining tart shells at work, and I came up with the idea of this tart.

Once deciding on a tart, the rest came very quickly, I decided to use lime for the acidity, in the form of both a jelly insert, and some sugar cured lime segments. The creaminess comes from a creme fraiche and vanilla mousse, and then the mango comes in two forms, a slightly acidic jam, and some fresh mango cubes, a mix of both the Thai mango, as well as a normal mango purchased from the supermarket. Finished off with a sprinkling of sumac, bringing out the colour of the mango and adding a layer of depth to the tart.

Recipe:

Sweet Pastry

50g icing sugar 50g butter 125g flour 1 egg yolk 15g water

Rub the butter into the icing sugar and flour, until you get a texture that resembles sand, with no large pieces of butter left. Mix in the egg yolk, and if needed, add in the water. You want the pastry to be soft, and able to easily form into one mass, with no crumbly bits, but not so wet that its sticking to the bowl or bench. Wrap the pastry into a flat disc and chill for at least an hour in the fridge. Cut the round in half and line two ten cm diameter straight edged tart rings. You can use fluted tart rings, or a bigger size, but I think this is a very nice sized portion, and looks much more modern with the straight edge. The rings must be greased with a small amount of soft (not melted butter) to help the pastry stick while baking, then release once cooled. Chill the lined rings in the fridge for at least two hours. The amazing thing about this pastry is that when it is blind baked, you do not need to fill the tarts with rice or beans or any of that, just put them straight in a 180 degree celsius oven for 10-12 minutes until golden brown.

Once the tart shells are cool, remove them from the rings, and using a fine sieve or a microplane, gently grate the top edges of the tart to remove the rough finish, and leave the edges looking clean and smooth.

If you are going to be serving the tart a long time after assembling it, I would recommend brushing it lightly with either melted cocoa butter, or white chocolate, to stop the pastry going soggy as quickly.

Mango Jam

2 Thai or Indian mangos 1 normal mango sugar lime juice

Take the Thai mangoes and peel them, using a small knife, remove as much flesh as possible from one, and cut into large cubes. With the other Thai mango and the normal mango, skin them and cut them into small 1x1cm cubes. Reserve for later. Taste the first mango you cut into large cubes, and depending on the flavour, add a bit of sugar and lime juice. Cook over a low heat until it completely breaks down and you are left with a reasonably thick jam. Taste it once again and adjust the lime or sugar to suit. You will notice, if you have used orange mangos similar to the one I did, that there is a lot of fibres in your jam. To combat this, I pushed it through a sieve and threw away the fibres that remained in the sieve. Take equal quantities of your diced mango, and mix them through the jam-the amount of each will depend on how much jam you got from your first mango. You want it to be mostly jam, with a few pieces of the mango, rather than having more mango cubes than jam.

Creme Fraiche Mousse

175g whipped cream seeds of 1 vanilla bean 125g creme fraiche 20g sugar 1 1/2 gelatine leaves

Bloom the gelatine leaves in cold water. Once bloomed, melt 50g of the creme fraiche with the gelatine in a small pot over a low heat. Whisk in the sugar and the remaining creme fraiche, and then fold in the whipped cream and vanilla seeds. Put mix into. a piping bag and pipe into either half or full sphere moulds. I only had full sphere moulds, which seemed to have a diameter of about 5cm, so I only piped half way up. If you don't have either of these moulds, simply choose a sizeable ring mould, or even a cookie cutter, that fits in your tart, and set it in that. Once poured into the mould, freeze at least overnight

For the mousse glaze

200g water 75g sugar 3 gelatine leaves

Bloom the gelatine leaves. Boil the water and sugar and add the gelatine leaves. Set in the fridge until solid, and then warm very gently in the microwave, until liquid, but no higher than 32 degrees celsius. I find this much easier to achieve by setting and remelting, rather than trying to cool it down and catch the glaze at the right time, but it will work if you do it that way. Once melted, take a mousse semi-sphere, and stick your knife, or a skewer into the flat/bottom side of it. Dip the mousse very quickly into the glaze, then remove from the skewer/knife, and place on a plate in the freezer.

You may notice the glaze goes from shiny to matte as soon as it freezes on the cold mousse, but don't worry, once it defrosts it will create a very light shine to the dome.

Lime Jelly

90g lime juice 110g water 60g sugar 2 leaves gelatine

Boil the water, lime juice and sugar, and add the bloomed gelatine. Pour into 5cm diameter ring moulds lined with cling film, and freeze. You want the jelly to be no higher than 1cm tall.

Sugar Cured Lime Segments

1 lime sugar

Segment the lime, making sure to remove all pith and seeds. Cut each segment into three, and put into a bowl. Coat with a large amount of sugar, at least 2 tablespoons, and leave to sit for at least half an hour. This technique draws out the acidic juice from the limes, and replace it with sugar, leaving you with a slightly sweet lime segment. Don't leave it for too long, as the segment will eventually break down completely, and you still want to retain some acidity.

To Finish

Fresh lime 1 Indian or Thai mango 1 normal mango Fresh flower petals Sumac

Place about two tablespoons worth of mango jam in the bottom of the tart shell.  Take the lime jelly insert (still frozen) and push it into the jam, so that the jam comes up the sides a bit. Top the jelly with the mousse sphere, which should be centred in the middle of the tart. Peel both mangos and cut into 1cm cubes. This is especially important for the orange mango, as they tend to be more fibrous than normal mangos, and any bigger pieces will make this very obvious when eating. Mix the two together, about 75% of orange mango cubes to 25% normal. The main reason for including the yellow mango is textural, and appearance, as they bring a clean break to the bright orange, and a smooth mouth feel, but the flavour is never as strong or as fragrant as the orange mangos. If you only have access to normal mangos then the recipes will still work, but you will need to use less lime in all the recipes, and possibly a thinner layer of jelly. Carefully spoon the mango mix around the tart edge, and place about 7 pieces of the cured lime around the tart. Finely zest the lime on top, and decorate with the fresh flowers. Finally, sprinkle with a generous amount of sumac-you need a fair bit for it to be tasted with the mango.

Enjoy!

[sugar-flour]

English Summer

This dessert is summer on a plate, strawberries, watermelon, cucumber...everything cool and refreshing you could wish for on a hot day.  Watermelon is one of my favourite fruits, but the flavour of it is so clean and fresh, that I feel its hard to use in a dessert, as I find that any creamy or flour based items muddy the freshness of the watermelon, and take away from its crisp texture. 

A solution to my watermelon problem, is this plate. Essentially, its a fruit salad, but with a bit more complexity. I pickled the cucumber to add some acidity and zing to the dish, and mixed in some fresh basil and some very thin slices of chilli to add a bit of heat, that is refreshing paired with the watermelon granita. 

The key element of this dessert is the granita, but be aware it melts very, very quickly- have everything else ready and plate the granita at the very last second, even tableside if possible. 

Recipes:

Pickled Cucumber

100g white wine vinegar 100g sugar 5g sea salt pinch coriander seeds 5cm lemongrass crushed 15 mustard seeds 2 basil stalks, with leaves 1 cucumber Crush the spices and the lemongrass lightly in a mortar and pestle. Mix with the basil stalks, vinegar and sugar.  Using a vegetable peeler, peel thin slices of cucumber, making sure to avoid the seeds, and mix with the pickling liquid. Leave at room temperature for an hour to macerate, or then put inside the fridge.  Strawberry Foam 250g frozen strawberries 25g sugar 1.5g gelatine

Mix the strawberries and the sugar, wrap very tightly with clingfilm and place over a pot of simmering water for at least an hour, until you can drain off 100g of liquid without pressing down on the strawberries. Mix in the bloomed gelatine leaves to the warm juice and begin to whip in an electric mixer until lights and foamy and just starting to hold very soft peaks. Transfer to a lined ring mould or a container and put in the freezer to set.  Watermelon Granita

500g fresh watermelon

Push the watermelon through a sieve to extract the juice, taste and adjust the flavour if necessary-add some lemon juice for acidity, some sugar if its not sweet enough. Freeze in a shallow container, stirring every half hour or so to break up the crystals, so you don't end up with a solid block of watermelon ice. Elderflower Jelly 100ml elderflower cordial 100ml water 2g gelatine 

Bring the cordial and water to a boil. Mix in the bloomed gelatine, and let set in a container lined with clingfilm. Cut into 1X1cm cubes once set.  To Plate: Watermelon cut into 2.5x2.5cm cubes Fresh strawberries cut into eighths  Fresh red chillies sliced very thinly Baby basil leaves Demould the strawberry foam into the middle of the plate, surround with 5 pieces of watermelon, followed by the pickled cucumber strips that have been trimmed to the same width-making sure to cut off the dark green edges of the skin.  Use the strawberries to fill in the gaps and add volume where necessary. Use the elderflower jelly in small gaps around the plate. Finish with just two or three small pieces of chilli, and 5 or so baby basil leaves (you can find these hidden in the middle of a fresh basil pot). Finish with the granita and serve immediately. Enjoy!

[sugar-flour]

Cherry Tart

The other day as I was walking home, something caught my eye. I looked up and I saw a beautiful big cherry tree, brimming with small, round, sweet fruit. I was instantly inspired to make something with them. 

I love to use acidic flavours in my desserts, and I really love to pickle fruits, so I wanted that to be the main focus of the tart. Just a couple of weeks ago, I made an amazing elderflower vinegar that I thought would pair perfectly with the cherries.

I added a layer of sour cream pannacotta to balance out the acidity of the vinegar, and layered the dessert with puff pastry arlettes, to give the desserts a crispy texture.

Recipe: Puff Pastry

200g strong flour 25g butter a pinch of salt 100g cold water 125g butter Rub the 25g of butter into the flour. Add the water and salt and mix to form a rough dough. It will be slightly dry. Knead slightly just for a minute or so and then rest in the fridge for half an hour. This is called your detrempe. Using a rolling pin, bash the butter into a square, about 1cm thick, and leave in the fridge. You want the butter and the detrempe to be the same firmness, so the two roll together easily. If your butter is too soft, it will not form even layers in your lamination, and if it is too hard, it will crack and break, also resulting in uneven lamination. 

The lamination of puff pastry can be a little bit daunting and confusing, so Ive tried to illustrate it as best I can. To start with score a X shape into the top of the detrempe. Push down each section of the X to create four ears, and place the butter in the middle. Fold the four ears over the butter and you will end up with an envelope of butter. 

Now you have what is called a Paton. Take your rolling pin and firmly tap it along the Paton to create some length. Begin to roll the Paton until it is 1.5 cm thick-but only roll along one length, you want a long rectangle, not a square. 

Now, imagine your rectangle is split into three parts. Fold the left third over the middle third, and then right third over that. Leaving you with three layers. This is called a single turn.  Now you're going to do the same thing again, but its very important that your rotate the Paton 90 degrees, so you are rolling towards the open ends. 

After you've completed the two single turns, youre going to rest your dough in the fridge for half an hour. You will then begin a double turn-this starts with the same method of rolling out the dough to 1.5cm thick, however, this time, you will fold it to create 4 layers, like so: 

Once this is complete, rest the dough in the fridge for another half hour, before cutting off a third of it, reserving the rest for later use-it can be frozen if desired. Using icing sugar to dust rather than flour,  roll the pastry out as thin as possible. Put the pastry between two baking trays, with baking paper on either side, and weigh down the top tray with three or four more trays. Bake for 10 minutes in a 220 degree celsius oven-keep a very close eye on the pastry, as it will burn very quickly.  As soon as the pastry comes out of the oven, cut it with a ring cutter to your desired size. You need at least 3 for each portion.  Cherry Compote

150g pitted cherries 50g sugar 15g elderflower vinegar 1g  gelatine

100g water 100g elderflower cordial 2.5g gelatine

Cook the cherries, sugar and vinegar until the liquid has mostly reduced and the cherries are soft. Add the bloomed gelatine and pour into ring moulds lined with clingfilm on the bottom. Put in the freezer to set. 

While this is setting, boil the water and cordial, and stir in the bloomed gelatine. Allow this to cool, and once room temperature, pour a thin layer on top of the compote so that the total height is between 1.5 and 1 cm, then return to the freezer. 

Sour Cream Pannacotta

250g sour cream seeds of 1 vanilla pod 25g sugar 1 teaspoon of powder gelatine, mixed with 25g cold water

Heat half of the sour cream with the sugar and vanilla seeds. Once hot, melt in the gelatine water mix, then mix in the remaining sour cream. Pour the mix into ring moulds the same size as the ones used for the compote, to the same height. Put in the freezer to set. 

Pickled Cherries

15 cherries, halved elderflower vinegar elderflower cordial

Mix the vinegar and cordial to taste, so that it is still acidic, but the elderflower cordial comes through, and mix them with the cherry halves. Leave to sit and pickle for at least 1 hour

To Plate

Fresh baby cherries Fresh flowers 

Demould the compote and pannacotta while frozen, and defrost slightly outside-they dont take long to become soft.  Place an arlette on the bottom of the plate, followed by the compote, another arlette, the pannacotta, and top with the final arlette.  Drain the pickled cherries and create a ring around the top of the tart. Fill the middle with pitted baby cherries, and finish with a few whole baby cherries and some flower petals. 

[sugar-flour]

Creme Brulee Ice Cream

This dessert is inspired by Francisco Migoya’s bruleed ice cream concept. The science behind it is actually very simple when you think about it. While a traditional vanilla ice cream is made with an anglaise (egg yolk, sugar, milk and or cream, vanilla), this is made with a creme patisserie, or pastry cream. The difference between the two? Cornflour. Cornflour, or flour, whichever you prefer (I find cornflour cooks out with a less starchy taste than flour) is a starch that thickens with heat. The key here is that the starch is thermo-irreversable, meaning that temperature, will not undo the thickening of the starch, so when you brûlée it, the ice cream will not melt, as there is no way to make it runnier than its original form of a thick pastry cream.

Armed with this new found knowledge, I decided to try my hand at it and see if I could base a dessert around this concept. Strawberries were my go to option, as they pair perfectly with vanilla and ice cream. I then decided to add the lemon verbena, to lift the dessert and bring another layer to the freshness of the strawberry.

The ice cream recipe itself needs a few tweaks, as I found it set very hard, but in the mean time, Ive given you my go to pastry cream recipe, as the dessert itself is still incredible as is! Recipes: 

Brûlée Ice Cream:

500g milk 50g eggs 30g egg yolks 125g sugar 25g flour 25g cornflour 50g butter Seeds of 1 vanilla pod

Boil the milk and vanilla seeds. Whisk the egg yolks, egg and sugar together until combined. Whisk in the flour and cornflour. Once boiling pour the milk over the egg mix, and whisk well to combine. Pour back into the pot and cook while whisking over a low-medium heat, until it thickens and just starts to boil. Take off the heat and add in the butter. Pour into a shallow tray and put clingfilm on the surface to prevent a skin from forming. Once cool, churn the mix in an ice cream machine, pipe into cylinder moulds lined with acetate and freeze. Alternatively set in ring moulds or in a tray and portion once set.

Strawberry Juice

1kg frozen strawberries

Put the frozen strawberries in a large metal bowl, and clingfilm tightly. Place this over a pot of simmering water, and leave for at least 2 hours, until the strawberries are pale in colour, and surrounded by a vibrant red juice. Strain the strawberries, reserving the juice, making sure not to press down too hard on the strawberries, as you want the juice to remain clear.

You can keep the strawberries leftover from the juice, but they don’t contain a huge amount of flavour, so I tend to get rid of them. This is a great way to use up strawberries that are a bit squished or bruised, as they have amazing flavour-just make sure you freeze them first, in order to get the maximum amount of juice possible.

Strawberry Fluid Gel

250g strawberry juice 3g gellan F 5g lemon juice 50g sugar

Bring the puree, sugar, lemon juice and gellan F to a boil, while whisking constantly. Once boiling boil for 2 minutes, while still whisking, then pour into a shallow tray to set. ` Once set, cut into pieces and blend until smooth, and pass through a sieve. Reserve in a piping bag.

Strawberry Jelly and Set Strawberry Foam

200g strawberry juice 2.5g gelatine leaves sugar to taste

Bloom the gelatine in cold water, and heat the strawberry juice. Taste it and add sugar if desired-this will depend on the flavour of your juice coming from the strawberries. Melt the gelatine in the juice. Pour half the mix into a small container lined with clingfilm, and allow to set in the fridge. Pour the remaining mix into a bowl and allow to cool to room temperature. Whisk, preferably with an electric mixer (you can do it by hand, but its going to take a lot of elbow grease!) until light and thick, it won’t get to a stage where it holds soft peaks, but it will begin to reach ribbon stage. Pour into a container lined with clingfilm and leave to set in the fridge.

Cut the jelly into one by one cm cubes, and the foam into two by two cm cubes, and reserve for plating.

Lemon Cake

250g butter 250g sugar 1 lemon zest 250g eggs 250g self raising flour

Soften the butter, and mix with the sugar and lemon zest until light and fluffy. Slowly add the eggs, before folding in the flour. Pour into a loaf tin and bake at 180 degrees celsius, until it bounces back when touched lightly, or a knife inserted in the middle comes out clean.

Once cool, break into pieces, using just the inside crumb.

Strawberry Meringue

50 g egg white 100g sugar 30g strawberry powder

Whip the egg whites until they form medium-soft peaks. Add the sugar slowly, until very firm peaks are formed, then add the strawberry powder.

Pipe the meringue in small dots on a tray lined with either baking paper or a silicone mat. Dehydrate in a low oven at 100 degrees celsius for about 1 hour, or until the meringue is dry and crisp.

To Plate

Lemon verbena Fresh strawberries Sugar for bruleeing

Place the cylinder of ice cream on the plate, and sprinkle a thin layer of sugar on top. Caramelise lightly with a blowtorch. Dot the strawberry gel around the plate in differing sizes, and arrange the other elements around the cylinder. Finish with some fresh strawberries cut into eights, and three or so small pieces of fresh lemon verbena.

Serve and enjoy!