Chocolate, coffee, blackcurrant, seaweed

Jesse wells

Jesse wells

17th January 2024
Jesse wells

Chocolate, coffee, blackcurrant, seaweed

90 min

A dish inspired by making iced coffee for staff before one lunch service.

We had a chocolate dish in the works, based around this iced coffee. Just the coffee element I couldn’t get to where I wanted. Coffee granita was just like bad cold coffee, nothing was quite right.

I had a chef who used to go and dive for kelp seaweed in the Purbecks, on the Jurassic coast in Dorset. We would dry this above the fire. One day the fire got a little too hot, it toasted the seaweed. We pulled it down and put it out the back to cool down, I went out there and the smell of it hit me. It was like coffee/cognac/whiskey it was incredible. I burst through to the kitchen and said we need to make seaweed ice cream!!!

The dish is one that shows how we get complexity into a dish but create balance too, using oils and things for mouthfeel and fattiness without making the dish heavy.

We use original beans chocolate, world leaders in sustainability, they consult for governments around the world, look after areas of bio diversity around the world. The founder Philip Kaufmann is the 7th generation of a family of explorers who actually coined the term sustainability in the 1960’s.

Ingredients

Chocolate ganache

  • 800g Dark chocolate (we use a 72% called ‘Virunga’)
  • 700ml water
  • 50g liquid glucose
  • 4g sea salt

Pickled blackcurrants

  • Blackcurrants
  • Neutral vinegar
  • caster or granulated sugar

Coffee oil

  • 150g freshly ground coffee
  • 400ml neutral oil

Seaweed ice cream

  • 345ml water
  • 345g sugar 345g sugar 345g sugar
  • 90g milk powder
  • 1.333 litre milk
  • 150g liquid glucose
  • Smoked and dried kelp – or Kombu

Honeycomb

  • 180g caster sugar
  • 60g liquid glucose
  • 40ml water
  • 10g bi carb

Method

Chocolate ganache

Place chocolate, glucose and salt into a thermomix or blender bowl.
Bring water to boil.
Pour over chocolate. Blitz until smooth and completely melted.
If you have a paco jet.
Transfer to paco jet beakers.
Freeze solid and paco twice on repeat when needed.
If you don’t have a paco jet, pour into a container and allow to cool and set.

Pickled blackcurrants

We make these on mass when they come in off the farm. We dry them above the fire, but you could use a dehydrator or low oven.
Pickle liquor – Equal quantities of neutral vinegar and caster or granulated sugar.
You will need enough liquor to cover your blackcurrants.
Clean and de stalk your blackcurrants.
Bring pickle liquor up to the boil. Allow to cool to just warm.
Cover the blackcurrants with the liquor, leave to cool over night.
Once cool, strain the liquor into a pan, and spread the blackcurrants onto a tray.
Reduce the pickle liquor by half and put aside.
The blackcurrants need to be dried until they look like a sultana. Once you hit this stage.
Place back in the pickling liquor to rehydrate.
You can do this in a vac pac bag and store until needed.
They turn into the most intense haribo like flavour bomb.

Coffee oil

In a dry pan, toast the ground coffee, until it starts to smoke slightly, don’t let it start to smoke/catch too much.
Then add the oil.
Sit at 80 degrees for 2 hours, strain through coffee filter.
It should have an aroma of strong coffee, hazelnut etc..

Seaweed ice cream

Bring water, sugar, glucose to boil, add milk powder and whisk in, add cold milk, bring back uo to heat gently, do not boil.
Once milk is warm, add in seaweed, remove from heat and allow to infuse, this part is up to you, the longer the infusion and the more seaweed the stronger it will be.

Honeycomb

Combine water, sugar, glucose until look like wet sand, ensure sides of your pan are completely clean.
Have your bi carb ready by your pan, along with a lined tray.
Bring the sugar mix up to 167 degrees Celsius.
You may be able to go slightly lower and this will continue to climb quickly off the heat, be wary of this.
Add your bi carb, whisk in thoroughly, and tip the mix into your lined tray.
Allow to cool.

Plating

We plate in a way that makes the dish balance, and also a way in which we are forcing the customer to eat the dish in the way we designed it.
So ganache at the bottom, followed by coffee oil around it, in the middle of the ganache, place a few blackcurrants and the liquor. Not too many, these can over power.
Rocher the ice cream on top of this. 
Honeycombe, enough on the plate, to provide texture with each mouthful.

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