Knock Your Father’s Socks Off With This ‘Dessert Of Mankind’

Photography by Martin Westlake Image by Courtesy of Phaidon

By Will Goldfarb June 14, 2018

Dessert of Mankind

Below is an excerpt from Will Goldfarb’s new cookbook, “Room For Dessert,” followed by one of his iconic recipes, just in time for Father’s Day.

“I’ve thrown away my horoscopes. I must have spent a dollar on every goddamn star in the goddamn planetarium.” Holly Golightly, Breakfast at Tiffany’s

Sounds like This Earth of Mankind. So we had to double down on eleven. Like Trent. You always double down on eleven and on new methods of chantilly. Can’t stop, won’t stop, tweaking the chantilly. At the same time as the Balinese meringue, or in fact before, I was playing around with a lot of chantilly. Not really sure why. It just seemed fundamental and worth playing around with. Now to be sure to be sure, there isn’t anything wrong with the original chantilly and there ain’t no thing with the new chantilly, but the use of carrageenan is a boon.

If you don’t want to use any gelling agent, no worries, the recipes will still work fine, they will just break a bit faster under the light of the moon. Working with a sense of honeycomb, perhaps the honeycomb mousseline could have been replaced with a traditional honeycomb style cake like a bika ambon, and perhaps then the jam stick would be sub’bed with a bit of old school honeycomb: caramel plus baking soda. I wanted to remove the baking soda taste and go full leavened.

The white chocolate margarita is sort of catch all for all that is good in dessert. Sweet sour salty bitter and fat, it ticks all the boxes…crispy, creamy, crunchy, crumbly, dense, moist, dry etc.

INGREDIENTS

Coconut nectar “honeycomb”

• 50 g coconut nectar

• 12 g sugar

• 12 g honey

• 100 g water

• 1/2 piece kluwak or chestnut

• 12 g egg whites

• 1.25 g versawhip

• 0.5 g xanthan gum

• Edible gold dust

White chocolate chantilly

• 100 g milk

• 100 g cream

• 0.75 g iota carrageenan

• 0.2 g kappa carrageenan

• 100 g dark chocolate

Bring the milk and cream to a boil. Whisk in the carrageenans, then whizz for 3 minutes with a hand blender. Strain over the chocolate, blend well, strain, allow to set. Gently whip and fill a piping bag.

Evoo jam

• 24 g raw cocoa butter

• 0.8 g glycerin

• 60 g olive oil

• 24 g coconut nectar

• 0.5 g sucrose ester

• 24 g yogurt

Yogurt water and tarragon emulsion

• 50 g whey, reserved from yogurt

• 20 g tarragon oil

Sourdough

• 140 g whole wheat flour

• 56 g “00” flour

• 362 g bread flour

• 418 g water

• 111 g levain

• 14 g salt

Lime gel sticks

• 40 g water

• 40 g honey

• 0.7 g agar

• 40 g lime juice

Bitters “jamu kunyit”

• 80 g turmeric

• 80 g galangal

• 80 g ginger

• 50 g tamarind

• 750 ml dark rum

• 400 g lime peel

• 4 lime leaves

• 4 cinnamon sticks

• 4 cloves

• 4 star anise

• 2 vanilla beans (pods)

• 500 g water

• 250 g sugar

COOKING

For the coconut nectar “honeycomb”

Bring the coconut nectar, isomalt, honey, and water to a boil with kluwak. Simmer for 1 hour or until flavorful. Strain and blend with egg white, versawhip, and xanthan gum. Allow to cool and process in kitchen aid until fluffy. Set into shallow trays and freeze. When frozen, lightly dust with gold powder.

For the evoo jam

Warm the cocoa butter to 60˚C/140˚F with the glycerin. Add the olive oil to cool it. Warm the coconut nectar to dissolve the sucrose ester, and then cool with the yogurt. Whisk the fat into the yogurt base over ice until like a mayonnaise, and reserve cold.

For the yogurt water and tarragon emulsion

Reduce the whey to half in weight, and mix with tarragon oil, and use it to sauce the plate.

For the sourdough

Mix the flours and water. Sit for 1 hour. Add the levain and salt, then knead until salt dissolved. Fold 3 times every 30 minutes. Bulk ferment for another 1 hour. Shape into a round, then let dough sit for 30 minutes (or until the dough loosen up), and shape into boule shape. Chill for 24 hours. Before you bake, preheat oven 260˚C/500˚F. Score the dough, then bake with steam on the deck oven for approximately 40 minutes. Keep the toasted flour for plating.

For the lime gel sticks

Proceed as making fluid gel: Boil water and honey, add agar and whisk while boiling for another minute. Check, add lime juice when cool, and blend. Strain and spread to acetate 5 x 8 cm, dehydrate at 63˚C/145˚F for 2 hours. To serve, heat over a heat lamp and stretch.

For the bitters “jamu kunyit”

Crush all the roots, then put the roots and the rest of the ingredients into glass jar. Let the mixture macerate for 6 months. During the maceration time, give a shake twice a week to extract the solids faster. Filter then use. This will make more than you need.

ASSEMBLY

First, brush the plate lightly with a little turmeric bitters. Then prepare a type of sandwich: First slice or break the sourdough, and warm it in a very hot oven. Soak a small piece in the whey and tarragon water. Next pipe the white chocolate chantilly around the exposed dough. Pipe or spread a little olive oil emulsion alongside the two. Use this space to anchor your coconut nectar honeycomb. Decorate with dry lime gel, and toasted flour salt.

“You’re so money and you don’t even know it.” Trent, Swingers

Yoghurt

• 100 g milk

• 5 g cultured yogurt

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).

Tarragon Oil

Makes 100 g

• 100 g tarragon

• 100 g sunflower oil

Blanch and shock the tarragon, then squeeze the excess water out. Freeze in a Pacojet canister with oil. Process one time. Refreeze and process again. Let melt and strain. If making at home, whizz the oil and tarragon with a hand-held immersion blender until smooth, then strain through a sieve.

Levain

• 500 g rye flour

• 500 g flour

• 600 g water

Mix the flours in a small container—this will be the flour mixture for feeding your starter. Add 60 g flour mixture to a jar with 60 g water. Using small rubber spatula, mix vigorously until all flour is incorporated, and let sit overnight in a shaded, slightly warm area in your kitchen.

Same time the next day, reserve 60 g old starter, and mix with another 60 g flour mixture and 60 g water. You should noticea tangy and vinegary smell on second day.

Repeat steps 3 and 4 until day 5. The starter should have more bubbles each day, and stronger vinegar and acid smell.

For day 6, feed starter twice a day, with a 9-hour window.

For day 7, feed starter three times a day, 6 hours window. The last feed should get your starter ready for baking the next day.

Before you mix your sourdough the next day (approximately 9-10 hours after the last feed), do a ‘float test’. Grab a pinch of your starter and put it in a glass filled with water. If it floats, means your starter is ready to use for mixing sourdough.

Adapted from ROOM FOR DESSERT by Will Goldfarb (Phaidon, $59.95 US/$77.95 CAN, April 2018)

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