Biscuit Glace

Dish as in the restaurant

Bet you thought that I'd forgotten about this blog hadn't you? Well I'm pleased to be back, after updating my main blog here after god knows how long which will showcase my efforts from other books in my collection.

So dessert is on the menu and it's a good one, so good in fact it got Marco one of his many wives! First wife Alex reportedly fell for Pierre White after tasting this pudding so it must be pretty damn good. Reading about it, the biscuit glace appears a pyramid of nougat encased in sheets of almond praline with a garnish of grapefruit, orange and passion fruit sauce, delicious indeed.


First step is to make the nougat, which is demonstrated in the 'Marco cooks for Nico Ladenis' video by Marco accompanying pastry chef Patrick while the two claim to be a double act similar to the Roux brothers (its a shame it never worked out) with Patrick whipping egg whites while Marco declares he's 'smashing his nuts' breaking up hazelnut praline, which is the first job.



Roasted Hazelnuts and Caramel stages

After roasting hazelnuts in a hot oven (I did mine around 180C whereas Marco suggests 230C but keep an eye on them!) for five minutes after which you have to peel the hazelnuts of their skin and prepare a caramel, combine the two and leave to set on an oiled tray or silicone mat for 10 minutes until cool and rock hard.

Once the praline is cooled its then smashed up into small pieces, not a powder, in order to keep the texture. Then its simply a case of whipping egg whites with sugar and double cream until peaks form and then combining the praline into a lined loaf tin to set in the freezer.

Hazelnut Praline

Smashed Praline

Finished Nougat

On day two I set about the tricky part of the recipe, craquelin tuiles, effectively powdered almond praline dusted over a baking sheet and cut into neat triangles, easy enough? Dear god these things were a nightmare. The praline itself was pretty straightforward, toast almonds in oven, make a caramel using liquid glucose to prevent crystallisation and combine the two. Spread on a silpat and leave to form into a caramelised almond slab.

Almond Praline

Powdered Praline 'dust'

Once that's done, you smash up the praline and then place it in a food processor (which made sounds as though pain was being caused!) where the slab pieces will turn to dust. Placing the dust through a sieve and then baking in the oven for around 2-5 minutes while the sugar melted again.

I had made a triangle template from greaseproof paper but as soon as the caramel comes out its a race against time before sugar becomes your enemy and hardens making cutting impossible. Returning it to the oven softens it again giving you chance to achieve a full triangle. The template just wasn't working for me and my triangles came out looking like a map of the UK rather than sharp edged professional pieces that Patrick used to knock up for Harveys.



Powdered Praline and template

Thickness of tuile

The solution I decided was to go with the dimensions in the book but cut a square, freehand, with a pallet knife dipped in some water and mark out the triangles within the square, it worked far better and left me with cleaner edges on my triangles, not perfect but much improved.

The passion fruit sauce was up next and instead of cleaning my local supermarket out of passion fruits (you need 12!) I settled for scaling down the quantities given that there were just two of us. Passion fruit juice went through a sieve into stock syrup and orange juice which then gets reduced down to a syrup, a rather tasty syrup.

 

With an orange and a pink grapefruit segmented and chopped along with sprigs of mint and the passion fruit syrup all that was left was to serve. Good job I made a couple of extra tuile's as they really are fragile, few breakages were suffered.

I was pleased with the overall look of the dish but my 'nougat into a pyramid' sculpting skills left a fair bit to be desired, tricky when it's melting the more you fiddle with it. Still I got the dish together and it didn't look too bad, the colour of the syrup was striking, as were the garnishes.



The final plate

It really is sugar overload, there's a fair bit in the nougat, its surrounded by caramel tuiles and a sweet syrup of passion fruit. That said though its delicious, fresh and almost semi-freddo like in texture. Harveys pastry department had some real talent back in the day, this proves it.