Raspberry Semi-Freddo/Parfait, Ginger Glass Cookies & Raspberry Sauce

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For the current WTSIM's theme of "Terrines" I have no historical recipes to offer you, as Terrines and Pàtes per se are absent from the repertoire of the medieval cook. There are dishes which might - with a rather large leap of the imagination - be considered forebears (in the same way primordial slime might be considered our forebear) but the earliest definitive reference I could find in my bookcase was in my rather battered 1911 copy of the redoubtable Escoffier, which leaves a rather gaping hole of several centuries. So I shall leave it to experts such as Carolyn of C.18th Cuisine to illuminate the mysteries of terrine genesis, and concentrate on the modern era.

I make chicken liver pàte with some regularity during summer. It's an excellent lunch dish, in addition to keeping well, and it's easy to vary the recipe to stave off taste monotony and tailor to my food obsession of the moment (capers, peppadew, jellybeans, etc). However chicken liver pàte recipes are a dime a dozen, so I decided to stretch my wings a bit and attempt as my terrine something I wouldn't normally. Which with me, usually equates to a dessert that requires more than just basic assembly.

My final choice was a recipe from Gordon Ramsay's "Just Desserts" cookbook. Originally a guilty pleasure I bought just so I could read the recipes, look at the pretty food-porn pictures, and drool, I didn't actually expect to ever use this book. But I was wrong! I'm happy to say these are the fourth and fifth recipes I've now tried from Just Desserts (an astronomically higher number than from any other dessert recipe book I own!) and my first parfait recipe ever; the Strawberry and Vanilla Semi-Freddo.

The Parfait and the Pàte â bombe
This is a two-part recipe. First you make a pàte â bombe base (a mixture of 'hard boil' sugar syrup and egg yolks) and then you make the fruit and vanilla cream parfait, and put the two together. The recipe is for strawberries, however there was a box of raspberries in the freezer that were heading towards freezer-burn, so I thought I'd use those instead. I drained off the excess liquid and got about 300g solid weight fruit to use in the parfait. This was my only deviation. The pàte â bombe and parfait recipes were fairly straight forward and the end result was a gorgeously rich raspberry creaminess, quite heavy on the tongue.

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Strawberry [Raspberry] and Vanilla Semi-Freddo
1 quantity Pàte â bombe [see below]
250g hulled Strawberries & 125g Redcurrents or 500g box frozen Raspberries
200ml double cream
1 vanilla pod

1. Make the pàte â bombe. Purée the [fruit] in a food processor or blender until smooth, then sieve to remove the seeds if preferred. Fold the purée into the pàte â bombe. Cover and chill the mixture for 1 hour.
2. Pour the cream into a bowl. Slit open the vanilla pod and scrape out the seeds with the tip of a knife, adding these to the cream. Three-quarters whip the cream until softly peaking.
3. Fold the vanilla cream into the [fruit] mixture, then freeze in a 1.2 litre loaf tin or individual moulds.
4. To unmould a large parfait, dip the mould into warm water for a few seconds, then invert on to a board and soften at room temperature for 5 - 10 minutes before slicing. Turn out individual parfaits straight on to serving plates.

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Pàte â bombe
100ml Water
150g Caster Sugar
5 large free-range Egg Yolks

1. Heat the sugar and water until clear.
2. Beat egg yolks until creamy.
3. Bring sugar to 'hard ball stage' or 120°C.
4. Drizzle sugar into yolks, whisking all the while.
5. For ice creams and parfaits, whisk until mixture is a thick foam.
6. Use at room temperature or chill for up to 2 days, whisking again before use.
   
   Paraphrased from Gordon Ramsay's "Just Desserts" - buy the book! It's worth it.

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The Ginger Glass Cookies
I thought these pretty cookies would make excellent side pieces for dessert - they have a nice spicy kick to them. They're simple to make and the substitution of Golden Syrup for the Liquid Glucose/Clear Corn Syrup didn't go too badly. I'll try the other syrup another time. The recipe comes from "The Cookie Book" by Catherine Atkinson, and I've paraphrased it:

Ginger Glass Cookies
50g unsalted Butter
40 g Liquid Glucose/Clear Corn Syrup (I used Golden Syrup)
90 g Caster Sugar
40 g plain Flour
1 tsp ground Ginger

1. Put the butter and liquid glucose in a bowl over a pan of simmering water and stir until melted together.
2. Sift flour and ginger into the sugar.
3. Stir into the butter mixture.
4. Cover with cling film and chill in the fridge for at least 25 minutes.
5. Preheat the oven to 180°C/350°F/GM4.
6. Line a baking sheet with baking parchment, or like I did, use a flexible silicon baking sheet.
7. Roll teaspoons of the mixture into balls and place them on the baking sheet.
8. Flatten them to as thin as possible. The book suggest laying another layer of parchment/silicon on top and using a rolling pin, but I found flattening the second lot with my fingers worked just as well, didn't show in the end result, and was a lot less fiddly!
9. If you want, stamp the cookies into rounds with a cutter or glass.
10. Bake for 5-6 minutes, until golden brown and lightly bubbling.
11. Leave on baking sheet a few minutes to firm up slightly, then either fold over or leave flat.
12. Leave to cool completely, then store in airtight container.

Note that I found the oven temperature too low to properly bake the cookies and had to turn my oven up to 190°C/375°F/GM5 to achieve success. This is probably because my oven is old, decrepit and anything but airtight, so your mileage might vary. I suggest doing this in two lots, as I did, and adjusting the heat accordingly if necessary.

The Raspberry Sauce
The sauce was made using the leftover raspberry juice (waste not, want not!), a cup of sugar syrup base, a tablespoon of cornflour and a shot of Bramley & Gage's delicious Blackcurrant Liqueur. Tasty, and the colour, as you can see, was glorious!

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And last, but definitely not least, Happy Birthday Johanna!

Comments

[johanna]

mmmh! I am loving it! a semifreddo can never go wrong, not even at the height of winter. since i adore raspberries, this is just the ticket. you seem to have gotten hooked on three-somes for desserts since our last CBCC? i don't own this book of ramsay's, but love all my others... can you bring this next time, i am sure we'll find something we all want to cook! (which reminds me, i need to set a date!) xx

[Christina]

Thanks! It is a very yummy recipe (and good with all kinds of fruit I imagine).

Often I find desserts too sweet for me so it's a good way for me to balance it out whilst still giving my sweet-tooth friends something they like too. Plus I quite enjoy the challenge of matching and balancing flavours.

Shall do! Looking forward to it.

[aforkfulofspaghetti]

All looks particularly good to me! Am keen to try those biscuits - they sound intriguingly different...

[Christina]

Thank you! The biscuits are great for desserts.

[Jeanne]

Wow - that looks singularly impressive, despite your assertions that it wasn't that complicated!! It doesn't sound overly sweet whcih is quite appealing, and the ginger glass cookies look like a fantastic idea - definitely going on the "to be tried" list.