Assiette of Chocolate

Dish as in the book

"This is disgusting; it's a horrible dish. It's vulgarity pure and simple. It's a dish invented for suburbia; it should be called 'Chocolate Suburbia'. Why do we serve it? Because we're commercial. Because, at the end of the day, you have to please the customer. And this does."

Well I'll look forward to making that then!

Marco Pierre White must have a dislike for chocolate. Barely any recipe in his books or indeed in anything I've ever seen him in has contained any mention of chocolate. Maybe, like the rest of us keen amateurs, he's had terrible luck when it comes to it as it's one of the most temperamental ingredients around.

Sorbet prep

The quotation taken from the page of White Heat containing this recipe pretty much confirmed that Marco isn't a fan of chocolate however someone in the pastry department must have got their way for Pierre-White to bung no fewer than six chocolate elements including a white chocolate sorbet, chocolate rings, white and dark chocolate sheeting, two mousses and a soufflé.

The elements of this dish can easily be made on the day so with that in mind I began work on the white chocolate sorbet. Combine white chocolate with vermouth and vodka (slightly strange....) and heat gently until melted, add in a ridiculous amount of water (over half a litre!) to create some weird white chocolate/alcohol tasting soup.....

Chocolate sheeting

Take off the heat and cool, add stock syrup plus orange zest and leave to cool. At this point things just didn't appear right, the taste was alright but the sheer amount of liquid was frightening leaving serious doubts of just how it was all going to fit in an ice cream maker. My faith waned further when taking it from the fridge overnight the mixture appeared like coconut milk, almost split in its texture.

Thankfully after churning in the ice cream machine it all came back together and produced a decent tasting sorbet.



Raspberry puree



To tackle the mousses, beginning with raspberry, simply take a punnet of raspberries and combine with sugar and water in a pan to boil down by a third. It's a good idea to soak your gelatine while you do this as once the raspberries are sieved its vital to stir it in while the puree is warm so that it dissolves.

I found I only needed half the amount of double cream and egg whites specified for both mousses but then again if you're serving a large amount of people its best to stick with the quantities specified. Make sure also your melted chocolate mixture and raspberry puree is cooled as hot liquid + cold cream = soup.

Raspberry puree

 

Whisking action

 

 

Once mixed simply set the mousses into a cling film-lined container of your choosing. Melting the remaining white chocolate and dark across an acetate sheet completes the chocolate sheeting.

The final stages of the dish will have you pulling your hair out, in fact its a wonder that Marco didn't end up bald after sticking this on the menu......perhaps a punishment for the pastry section...

Snipping the set chocolate sheeting into triangles for the white and stencilling out the dark chocolate into circles was a bit of a faff, breakages, melting and a hot kitchen from the lobster ravioli starter began to cause problems. Still two triangles and eight circles later it was all over and onto the chocolate sauce and soufflé.



Souffle moulds

 



The sauce was a simple operation of melting chocolate in a pan. I added butter to give it a bit of fluidity so it became less like ganache. The soufflé is made using cocoa powder, egg yolks and water mixed together to form a paste to which egg whites at soft peaks with sugar are folded in to create the base. I was struggling for bowls at this point so a balti dish was used to mix the soufflé....needs must.

Buttering two moulds and dusting the insides with caster sugar left me five minutes to plate up while the soufflé's cooked, things were getting tense. My sorbet wouldn't soften up sufficiently to allow me to rocher and every time I tried to tease an egg shape out of it the damn thing turned to dust.



Chocolate soufflé base



Still all was not lost, plating this up may be a bit stressful but when the beauty of all your hard work comes together its a great experience, the dish was becoming striking to the eye and everything now rested on those soufflé's.

The rise on them was perfect save for a little spillage from the sides. Placing them in the middle of all things chocolaty it was time to dig in.

The final plate

Was it the horrible dish that Marco describes at the start of this post? Well......no actually. Unless of course he means the assembly of the whole thing, a breeze if you have an army of chefs taking control on the different elements but a nightmare for the lone cook. Appearance wise it was striking, an effort that I'm definitely proud of. The white chocolate sorbet, for all the worries that I had over it, was delicious. The aniseed flavour from the vermouth tempered all the sweet and rich elements of the chocolate, its brilliant. The raspberry mousse and fresh raspberries along with the orange zest add bursts of freshness not to mention the textures of all the different elements.

All in all its my favourite dessert so far, a pain to produce perhaps but well worth the effort when you present it to that someone special. An absolute knockout dessert.