Sweet Tooth

Working on from my last post I have made some developments in the "Fruit Juice Department". I've playing around with my strawberry juice and tried something a little different.

I started with some very ripe strawberries and a few cherries for colour, a pinch of cardamom and some sugar. After cooking for half an hour I strain the juice through cheese cloth. The aroma of freshly cooked strawberries with a grounding of cardamom spice was fantastic on the nostrils.



From here I moved into three directions, firstly I tried the juice straight from the bag to see its effect in plated desserts with no avail. Then I tried a reduced version which was perfect as a sauce, the flavours intensifying further and a true syrup was born. Although I wasn't entirely happy as the flavour of cooked strawberries was lost some what with the intense cooking to reduce the syrup. So I had to find a way to thicken the syrup for plating without losing the flavours I began with.

With a little thought time I came back to Xanthan Gum, perfect for its thickening properties and the flavour would not be lost as no cooking was required. Although in my rush to see the results I may have gone a bit too far adding to much gum. After allowing the gum to hydrate I whisked the mixture to disperse the gum through the liquid, in the process adding a large amount of air to the mixture. As the gum hydrated further and began to increase the viscosity of the liquid the air became trapped almost emulsified with the strawberry juice.

The results were most surprising; I had achieved a mayonnaise style sauce with the texture of mousse. It will be interesting to see where I can go from here...