Making a dessert remains to be cooking, as a lot as, say, cooking a chunk of fish. It took me a very long time to actually be taught this. Cooking requires you to interact your senses, it doesn’t matter what you’re making. Instinct and really feel have as robust a spot within the candy kitchen as they do within the savoury, sitting alongside ability and method in the identical method. The extra you cook dinner, the extra you be taught to belief your instincts.
Be taught to grasp sugar, which gives construction, however, simply as importantly, seasoning. Consider sugar in the identical method you do of salt in savoury meals. It ought to amplify flavours, and may solely be tasted once you need it to be a flavour. Use sugar to make fruit style extra intense, to steadiness the bitterness of espresso, as the bottom of caramel.
Using salt and acid as seasonings can also be extremely vital however usually ignored within the pastry kitchen. I really like utilizing flavoured vinegars in fruit dishes, and a few flakes of Maldon sea salt in your ice cream is revolutionary the primary time you strive it.
I encourage you when creating desserts to consider what components you must hand or what’s glorious proper now. Make that dish, tasting the whole lot consistently as you go, and it’ll almost definitely be delectable.
Ricotta ice cream with magnolia syrup recipe
The magnolia wants to stay the star right here; the oil ought to simply bolster it. I’m by no means an enormous fan of tableside theatrics, however this dish actually does look finest when the magnolia syrup and oil are poured into the bowl because it’s served.
Serves 1
Elements
- 1 giant scoop ricotta ice cream small pinch of Maldon salt
- magnolia petals, to serve
- 2 tbsp chilled magnolia syrup
- 1 tsp additional virgin olive oil
Technique
Place a small bowl within the freezer to relax half-hour earlier than serving. Scoop a big quenelle of ricotta ice cream into the chilled bowl and place simply off-centre. Sprinkle on some Maldon salt and lay one or two magnolia petals beside the ice cream. Mix the magnolia syrup and olive oil (they are going to stay cut up). Pour the syrup and oil into the bowl subsequent to the ice cream.
Ricotta ice cream
Ricotta’s flavour is light nevertheless it’s in its creamy, barely grainy texture that it actually shines. I really like that texture remodeled into ice cream. For me, the perfect ricotta comes from Westcombe Dairy in Somerset, the place they make it with the whey left over from Cheddar manufacturing. This recipe additionally works fantastically with recent buffalo or sheep’s milk ricotta.
Makes 800ml
Elements
- 150g caster sugar
- 500g recent ricotta
- 25ml lemon juice
- pinch of salt
Technique
Mix the sugar with 150ml of water in a saucepan, whisk nicely and place over a medium warmth. Stir sometimes till the sugar is totally dissolved, depart to chill then chill completely. As soon as the syrup is totally chilled, add the lemon juice, then mix within the ricotta till it’s clean and season with a little bit salt. Churn in an ice cream machine then switch to a container and depart to set within the freezer earlier than serving.
Magnolia syrup
It felt like a real revelation the primary time I bit right into a petal. Though the flavour will differ barely relying on the pigmentation of the flower, as a basic rule, magnolia has the flavour of younger ginger: barely spicy with a phenomenal floral high quality. The whiter flowers are likely to have extra citrussy, cardamom notes whereas the deeper fuchsia flowers get spicier and extra gingery. Attempt to choose buds which might be youthful and have solely simply opened and keep away from any which have began to brown on the sides.
Makes 1 litre
Elements
- 150g caster sugar
- 100g (2-3) magnolia flowers
- 7g (1 tsp) citric acid
Technique
Mix the sugar with 750ml of water in a saucepan. Carry to a rolling boil over a medium warmth till the sugar has dissolved. When the syrup is boiling, add the entire magnolia flowers. Return to a rolling boil and add the citric acid. Instantly switch to a shallow container then chill over ice or within the fridge. I like to go away the flowers within the syrup as they’ve a pleasingly ethereal high quality. Retailer chilled. That is excellent poured over ice cream, used to decorate or poach fruit, or added to a drink.
The Final Chew: A complete new method to creating desserts by way of the 12 months by Anna Higham was revealed in Might 2022 (£22, DK)
Award-winning pastry chef Anna Higham was most just lately government pastry chef at The River Café in west London. Beginning out in 2012 on the Gordon Ramsay group, she additionally labored on the Gramercy Tavern in New York, and Flor and Lyle’s in London.
The wines to drink with ricotta ice cream with magnolia syrup
By Fiona Beckett
Effectively, being requested to provide you with a wine match for magnolia is definitely a primary, and I can’t declare I’ve had huge expertise of pairing the 2. However Anna Higham’s description of the flavour as gingery gives an excellent start line. The ice cream, too, is gentle and delicate, so I believe you’d be an equally fresh-tasting dessert wine and even, given the olive oil, an off-dry white. I’m intrigued by the considered Torrontés or perhaps a younger Gewürztraminer or Gewürz mix.
Lighter dessert whites akin to Coteaux du Layon or a younger Spanish Moscatel must also work, as ought to off-dry and candy glowing wines akin to pink Prosecco, Moscato d’Asti or the seductive, gently glowing Bugey Cerdon ‘méthode ancestrale’ from Savoie, which is an actual show-stopper.
One tip you may discover helpful. From a wine perspective it actually helps to serve a crisp, home-made biscuit or shortbread which is able to offset the coldness of the ice cream and permit the wine to shine. (There are some scrumptious biscuit recipes behind Higham’s e book.)
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