Dinner with the parents
The inspiration for this dish came from a very memorable meal that I had year ago at the stunning Three Chimneys restaurant on the Isle of Skye. I won't go on about the meal and experience there too much, as it was years ago, and in a previous life, but if anyone ever gets the chance to go, or even if you're on a visit to Skye, then seriously, really do try to get there.The dessert that I had there was listed on the menu as "Marinated Fresh Pineapple with Passion fruit Jelly, Coconut Ice Cream, Rosemary Sorbet & Cardamom Biscuit". A real mix and explosion of flavours and it was the Rosemary sorbet that stuck out for me. It was unlike anything I had ever tasted, it was sweet yet had the fragrance, taste and almost the feeling of the rosemary which you would normally associate with savoury dishes. I had bought their recipe book from the restaurant itself, and was told by the waitress that if the recipe for the sorbet wasn't in there, just to email and they should be able to send it to me. The sorbet recipe wasn't in, and so I sent the email. I received a reply rather quickly from Sarah and the team at the restaurant thanking me for the visit and complimentary comments, and letting me know exactly how they made it. Hurrah!
Anyway, I decided to try and re-create elements of the dessert at home, and with the added bonus of having an ice cream maker, I was really looking forward to re-trying the rosemary sorbet.
To re-create the whole thing would be way to complex for me, so I decided on the coconut ice cream, marinated pineapple, a gluten-free experimental tuille biscuit and the rosemary sorbet.
I couldn't remember exactly what the pineapple was marinated in at the restaurant, apart from a small amount of fresh chilli, so I went with a mixture of Lime juice, orange juice and chilli. I used the juice of one lime, and one orange and a whole chilli, de-seeded and finely chopped.
Pineapple marinating
The recipe for the coconut ice cream was adapted from here, mainly because a lot of other recipes had what seemed to be crazy ingredients. I used sweetened desiccated coconut rather than just grated coconut, and therefore adjusted the sugar accordingly. It wasn't as successful as I'd hoped as the recipe says to blend the coconut with milk until smooth to start, and this didn't actually work as the coconut and milk mixture just seemed to whizz round rather than blend. This gave a grainy consistency to the ice cream.The tuille recipe was from another online source, which I can't find right now, and was almost successful, but by the time of serving they had gone soggy, and were rather more like super-thin cakes rather than biscuits. This could have been because I hadn't let them cool completely before putting them in a box, or maybe something to do with the gluten free flour, I don't know, but I am no pastry chef. Clearly.
Anyway, the main event. The sorbet.
The recipe is as follows
6 sticks of rosemary
Grated rind & juice of 1 lemon
500g sugar syrup (450g sugar+ 1pint water)
250ml water
250ml dry white wine
Bring syrup, water, rosemary & lemon rind to boil, remove from heat, add
white wine, cool, then add lemon to taste.
Strain, to remove rosemary then churn in an ice cream maker.
I thought this was great. Very reminiscent of my outing in Scotland. I think I perhaps used too much Rosemary as we do have a very well established Rosemary bush in the garden, and I did choose a couple of very bushy stalks. Next time I will use less for a more subtle flavour. This almost tasted like ginger, which seemed very odd, but when people didn't know what it was their first guess was ginger. Maybe this is a flavour combination or substitute we should consider further.
Experimental desserts
The dessert itself did seem a bit out-there for us, and more like a collection of ideas on a plate. At the Three Chimneys everything is clearly more refined and more thought out, and this was my rough attempt at something vaguely similar. One thing we did think about the sorbet is that it needs to be with something, and not by itself. It is too much, and rather too odd to be eaten as a dessert alone. The pineapple and the coconut ice cream were both very good and went down really well, perhaps the sorbet should only be served in more refined places than our kitchen! It has inspired me to think about other experimental type ideas in the world of sorbets and ice creams.