- Watermelon ice
- 180 g watermelon juice
- 15 g lime juice
- Rosella chantilly
- 250 g cream
- 30 g sugar
- 1 vanilla bean (pod), seeds scraoed
- 25 g rosella or hibiscus reduction (reduce 10 g rosella with 250 g water to sauce consistency)
- Rosella gel
- 100 g water
- 20 g sugar
- some dried rosella or hibiscus flowers
- 0.5 g agar agar powder
- Red wine reduction
- 250 ml red wine, preferably something barely drinkable
- 1 tablepoon sugar
- Beet (beetroot) juice
- 250 g beet juice
- 12 g sugar (beet of course!)
- Salt-baked beets (beetroot)
- 6 small beets, of your color and type
- a few drops of olive oil
- coarse salt, preferably Big Tree Farms' “Big Pyramid” Salt
- Roasted tamarillo
- 6 little tamarillos, tender and juicy
- Beet (beetroot) sponge
- 55 g beets (reserving the scrap from the salt-baked beets)
- 15 g rice tape (please refer to cassava tape recipe below, changing cassava to glutinous rice)
- 62 g sugar
- Tapioca starch [50 g tapioca root, peeled and cut into chunks, 250 g water]
- 20 g rice flour
- 35 g egg yolks
- 100 g egg whites
- Cassava tape
- 250 g cassava or tapioca root
- 2 g (a pinch) of sugar
- 0.5 g “ragi” or other desirable yeast
- Dragon fruit meringue
- 100 g dragon fruit juice
- 25 g egg white
- 15 g confectioners' (icing) sugar
- 0.7 g xanthan gum
- Rosella powder, fairy dust
- Some rosella flowers or hibiscus flowers,
- dried, preferably from Muntigunung Cooperative in Eastern Bali
- To serve
- slices of dragonfruit
- Yoghurt [100 g milk, 5 g cultured yogurt]
- ice lettuce
- some leaves of Ruby Crystal Lettuce from Farmer Lee Jones
- Japanese fruit tomato, sliced
Red
Will Goldfarb
13th April 2018
Red
“With the white sassoons and the looks that kill…”
Did you know that sea otters sleep with their hands intertwined when so one of them doesn’t drift away? We resolve to avoid this emblematic issue during the discussion of one of my favorite and most mercurial of desserts. Inspired by a visit Chez Gagnaire, where he devoted an entire tray to dishes and plates for a most mysterious duck dish that required the combined efforts of the entire (tiny) brigade to execute. Holy shit.
The origins of Red are quite simple, even inconsequential, really— summers in Milan, Ohio, pestering the earnest employees of The Chef’s Garden to deliver every red item they grew to New York, stat. It was the love child of two desserts from our Art Culinaire spread on color, where I expounded my woefully inadequately substantiated theories on the subject, and on relativity, which can be summed up as follows: Things that are the same color taste good together. In fact, we had two
red desserts, one obnoxiously titled Diffusion: Rouge, to showcase the effect of liquid weaving its way through gelatin. The second, no less obnoxious, but certainly catchier: Scarlet Johansen; included oblique references to undergarments, Tokyo Hotel life, and a transatlantic mashup with the Natural Rivera of another all nighter. Spike Lee x Sofia
Coppola, we are all winners here today.
This was subsequently refined as Color as an Ingredient, and the rest is politely ignored history.
Ingredients
Method
For the tapioca starch
Simply blend the tapioca in water and press through a cheese cloth to remove the fibrous fibers.
Next allow the starch to settle, decant the water, and dry in a dehydrator.
For the yoghurt
Warm the milk and yogurt together to 40˚C/100˚F. Keep in a warm, damp place overnight.
The following day, hang over cheesecloth to drain out excess water (whey).
For the watermelon ice
Muddle the watermelon juice with lime. Freeze and scrape with tines of a fork.
For the rosella chantilly
Bring the cream and sugar to a boil with the vanilla. Remove from heat and infuse for at least one hour, or until desired flavor.
Hand blend, strain, and reserve cold.
Later on that day or the next, whip up the cream with rosella reduction until tender peaks emerge, and reserve in a container that suits you, or even better, a pastry bag with a fat tip.
For the rosella gel
Bring water and sugar to a boil and remove from heat. Add rosella flowers and infuse, covered for at least one hour, up to overnight.
The following day, strain, and bring to a boil with agar agar, making sure it remains 100 ml. Strain and set in shallow containers. Chill.
For the red wine reduction
Reduce the liquid to syrupy consistency by gently bringing it to a boil and monitoring the heat so that it doesn’t pass a simmer.
For the beet (beetroot) juice
Reduce the liquid to syrupy consistency, but do not let it pass a simmer.
For the salt baked beets
Toss the beets (beetroot) in oil and dress on tray of salt.
Bake gently in a low oven until the tip of a paring knife pierces to the heart of the matter easily.
Allow to cool on a rack, peel, and slice to desired shapes. Reserve some salt for future roasting.
For the roasted tamarillo
Grill over coffee wood until they begin to lose their shape. Cool and the remove seeds.
For the beet (beetroot) sponge
Make a mix of the ingredients, preferably in the following order: beet (beetroot), rice tape, and sugar; tapioca starch, rice flour; egg yolk; and lastly the egg whites.
Mix well and quickly and strain through a fine mesh sieve before introducing into a whipped cream canister and introducing further two charges of gas. Allow to rest at room temperature.
For the dragon fruit meringue
Hydrate the xanthan gum in the dragonfruit juice by blending it for a few minutes on very very low speed, checking to make sure no grains remain. At this time, you can incorporate the confectioners’ (icing) sugar, followed by the egg whites.
Strain through a fine mesh sieve, allow to rest cold for a bit, and then whip up using a stand mixer at very very high speed until moussy. At this point you can spread the mixture thinly and then dehydrate.
For the rosella powder
Blend and sieve.
Assembly
Begin to assemble in casual way with some cream, sauces, and gelee.
Hit it with a bit of cake and fruits, and then a lovin’ spoonful of ice and a dragonfruit veil.
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