Gary does Gordon

It’s summer people and that means one thing… Wimbledon. Well it also means strawberries and raspberries which the British also love with a passion. I don’t think I have ever come across anyone who doesn’t like berries, but it has to be said that the British love their berries almost to the point of being obsessive. Then again, it’s a good obsession really… I love berries too, especially raspberries, and I have been impatiently waiting to do this dessert for a good few months now.

Why the wait? Well, in part it was due the seasonality of the fruit itself. Wimbledon I am told is a good marker to determine when raspberries are in season and as soon as Andy Murray struck his first ball I was in the fields picking the necessary berries needed for the dish (‘Pick your own’ fruit is such a good idea!). But the other reason for delaying this dish is the fact that it is actually quite technically demanding, or so it seemed when reading the recipe. After my ‘tempered chocolate’ disaster I was not that keen to jump straight back into the dessert arena. My confidence had been lowered somewhat.

I soon got over that however and gathered all the ingredients together to make the dessert.

The ingredients

In truth there is quite a lot of different things which go into this dish, but for the most part the average household will have most of the ingredients already. I started off by making the tuiles. This was the challenging bit as it required making crisp tuile into a wave shape, and this meant taking it out of the oven with your bare hands and shaping it into the correct shape, with your bare hands, whilst still frigging hot I may add, and holding it in place until it set into a crisp.

I was not looking forward to it. My experience with such tuiles has not been pretty… the burns on my fingers tell a long and sad story of many failed attempts at making tuiles of all shapes and sizes. Still I have had some successes in the past, so all was not lost. I would give it a go!

I started by making the batter. It was a relatively simple process which involved melting muscavado sugar in milk in a pan and then adding this to a mound of sifted flour, icing sugar and cocoa powder. This was then mixed together and was supposed to form a batter of some sort but there was no way that was going to happen. There was simply too little liquid. After scratching my head for a while (Coz that always helps) I realised that I had forgotten to add the egg whites. I added these and hey presto it turned into a really thick batter.

Sugar and milk

Sieved flour, icing sugar and cocoa

The batter

In order to make the tuiles, you need to spread this batter onto a baking tray lined with a silicone sheet, as the book says, however after my first attempt (You don’t want to see these) it became apparent that I needed a much more rigid surface to spread this stuff onto in order to keep it flat. After more head scratching, I figured my prized non-stick baking tray would be the answer. So I spread the batter as thinly as I could onto this tray, measured out the tuiles (12×3cm) and shoved it in the oven for a few min.

Whilst these were cooking I found two wooden spoons and taped them side by side onto the table top to form the mould on which I will form the tuile waves. It looked like it would work, and before I could think any further the timer bleeped and it was time to take the tuiles out the oven.

The spoons

Once out the oven, I had to work quick. Like I have said before, I have done similar tuile thingies before, and you need to work with your bare hands whilst the tuiles are still hot from the oven so that they are pliable and can be moulded into the desired shape before setting. I managed to loosen a couple of tuiles and draped them over the spoons before setting. This wasn’t so hard at all. I managed a few more and before I knew it I had the entire first batch draped and looking shapely! Something was wrong. It should never be this easy.

It was going too well!

Ahh, they were too thick. I should have realised. The reason they were so easy to mould was because they hadn’t really cooked all the way through. Bugger. Try again. I cleaned the baking tray and started again, this time spreading it as thinly as possible. My aim was for it to be as thick as paper. Once done, I marked out the sizes again and shoved it into the oven. I found that after being in the oven for 50 seconds, I could take them out, recut the shapes and put it back in the oven for the remainder of the cooking time… this was needed to ensure that you got clean sharp edges once cooked otherwise they came out all ragged.

Once cooked, I did the usual of taking them out the oven and one by one I stripped them off the baking sheet and shaped them around the wooden spoon handles. They crisped up almost immediately, and in fact they were so fast that I had to put the tray back in the oven every time to soften them slightly, before shaping the next tuile. It was soooo time consuming, but they turned out great. Wanna see?

Proper tuiles

Very chuffed with these. They look almost, gasp dare I say it, professionally done! Anyway, I packed these carefully into an air tight container and moved onto the next bit. The mousses.

Actually before the mousses, I must just point out that the recipe asks for milk icecream. Now the thing is that I have done this before  so I shan’t show it to you here again. It is a lovely icecream which is now a firm favourite, and it contains condensed milk as well which is a serious bonus coz I love the stuff. I had some icecream already made in the freezer anyway, so we’ll skip this part and go through the mousse bit.

There are two mousses needed for this dish. A raspberry one, and a lemon and basil one. After the issues experienced with the tuiles I was more than happy to tackle the mousses as to be honest they are seriously simple in the context of the tuiles. I started with making the italian meringue which involved beating up some egg whites in a bowl, whilst melting sugar and water with some glucose syrup in a pan until it hit 120 degrees. Once the temperature had been reached I dribbled the syrup into the egg whites whilst whisking furiously. The meringue was done.

Italian meringue

Next was the lemon and basil mousse. I squeezed the juice out of 4 lemons, added this to a pot together with caster sugar and heated slowly until disolved. I then brought this to the boil and then added it to a pan together with some gelatine leaves. I have to say that there are a few foods in this world which enter my top 5 all time favourite smells. Cooking bacon is one of them, and freshly squeezed lemon is another. It’s simply a gorgeous smell.

At the same time I added some raspberries to another pot and cooked these until they started to breakdown. This was then sieved and more gelatine leaves added to the mixture. Both base liquids were then left to cool.

Lemon syrup

Raspberries

Whilst this was happening I whipped up the cream and once everything was ready, I folded the meringue into each of the liquids, followed by the whipped cream. For the lemon mousse it was at this stage that I added the chopped basil leaves and then these were left to set in the fridge.

That’s it folks. It really wasn’t that hard to do all in all. The tuiles were definitely the tricky part, but in reality once you realise which timings suit your oven even they were relatively painless… I lie, my burnt fingers suggest there was an element of pain involved, but you get my drift.

Once the mousses had set, it was time to plate up. I melted a bit of chocolate, put this in a squeezy bottle and then drew a nice elaborate series of figure of eights on the plate as decoration. I then added a tuile and piped some lemon mousse ontop of it. This was then followed by another tuile and then the raspberry mousse. Finally a tuile was laid on top to finish the millefeuille. I added a scoop of icecream and some further raspberries to the plate for decoration and the dish was done.

The final dish

Another angle

Folks, this was eye candy of the highest order. I don’t think I have ever made a dessert so beautiful in my life. It was so dainty and after the horrors of the previous dessert, I was so chuffed that this one turned out so well. The taste hit your mouth like a mallet. There was the sharpness of the raspberries and lemon, followed quickly by the sweetness of the meringue ending with a subtle hint of basil. It was a delight to eat and really celebrated the humble raspberry. The tuiles were delightfully crisp and fragile, and they cracked the instant you laid your spoon on them, and it all went perfectly with the icecream too.

This was a massive success and something which is a lot more doable than the recipe suggests. It shall be done many times more in the future, I can promise you that.

Raspberry and lemon millefeuille with basil, lime and milk ice cream … Done!

Next up: Chargrilled monkfish tail with confit duck, red and yellow peppers, courgettes and red wine sauce

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