Some flavours just work so well together, here Chocovic's Tarakan chocolate is paired with salted caramel and almond to stunning effect. Burch & Purchese have developed this dish for the restaurant No.35 at the Sofitel here in Melbourne and it has been well received. Luscious chocolate cream infused with vanilla has been set in the shape of a turron and sprayed with a mixture of Tarakan, Kendari and cocoa butter. Salted caramel fills an indent in the mousse and is topped with 'gold' salt. The turron is finished with coarsely chopped cocoa nibs and plated, more salted caramel is piped along with almond milk thickened with kuzu and lightly salted. The dish is simple in presentation and speaks for itself. Sometimes less is more and we feel the clean finish let's the dish really speak for itself.
A work in progress this dish but WOW the flavours are fantastic together. Burch & Purchese were lucky to receive this fresh wasabi root, flowers and leaves this week. We went to work producing a sublime wasabi & mascarpone cream and paired it with fresh and candied grapefruit, matcha green tea 'surf' a and yuzu jelly. The freshness of the perfectly ripe and in season ruby grapefruits are a perfect temperate to the addictive and unique heat and flavour profile of the wasabi. Spun isomalt adds a crunch and the dextrose powders of grapefruit & wasabi really are welcome additions. The green tea finishes off the dish in a well rounded way, Burch & Purchese love working with premium product and unusual flavours and this is a perfect example of that. We will be reworking and improving this dish as we receive more wasabi from Tasmania. A version of this dish is on the dessert menu at No.35 restaurant at the Sofitel hotel in Melbourne.
Adam Melonas is an Australian chef living and working in Spain. He is a talented man and currently holds the position of lab chef for Paco Roncero in Madrid. Adam was introduced to us by Ryan Clift of The Tippling Club in Singapore, we have checked out Adam's blog and we are very impressed with his work. Adam has arranged a tour of the kitchens of elBulli for Darren in July and arranged possible introductions to Oriol Balaguer and Quico Sosa. For that we are indebted to him and all we can say is thanks Adam and keep producing quality dishes and techniques the way you have been doing. We fully support any Brit or Aussie making a name for themselves in our chosen profession and we look forward to meeting up with Adam at Madrid Fusion next year. Thanks again mate.
Burch & Purchese have had the honour of being asked to be ambassadors for the Mycook Pro heat assisted kitchen blender. Robert & Lynda Erskine of Rely Services here in Australia have just returned from a trip to Barcelona where the head of International Cooking Concepts Marc Calabuig introduced them to this exciting piece of machinery. Upon their return to Australia Robert contacted us and asked us to promote MyCook, we are happy to try any new technology which can assist us in our work. Darren Purchese is in the process of arranging a visit to I.C.C. headquarters on his trip to Spain to see MyCook up close and upon his return Burch & Purchese will test and review MyCook for Rely Service & I.C.C. We will keep you updated on other technological developments and the potential of MyCook. In the meantime MyCook can be purchased through Rely Services here in Australia.
Our friends at Sisko Chocolate have a NEW retail and consultation studio open at 330 Auburn Road in Hawthorn, the shop showcases their beautiful creations including their trademark Sisko Chocolate Flowers. Christina is an extremely talented chocolate professional who is a pleasure to know, we are very excited for her and this is THE place to go for exclusive decorative chocolate pieces. Sisko use Burch & Purchese favoured chocolate, 'Chocovic', available from The Cocoa Alliance. http://www.siskochocolate.com.au/
We have developed this dish as part of the new dessert menu at restaurant No.35 at the Sofitel hotel. The restaurant has been open for just over a week and seems to be on track for an exciting dining experience in Melbourne. The dish comprises of white chocolate mixed with lactose and caolin (edible clay), and then hardened to form the base, a white chocolate clay. Freeze dried coconut shards are added along with dried lychee meringues. This sits alongside fresh lime and vanilla frozen discs. A white coconut rum jelly is added, and the sweetness of this cuts through the acidic lime perfectly. Lemon essential oil is added with a dropper to perfume the plate before coconut sorbet is fragmented to finish. This dish has received great feedback so far and forms part of the No.35 degustation menu as well as its full version as part of the a la carte menu. The wine pairing of '05 Michele Chiarlo - Moscato d'Asti DOCG from Piemonte in Italy provides a clean finish and complimentary fresh flavours. We hope you can visit restaurant No.35 and enjoy this dish.
The bergamot in Earl Grey is such a sublime flavour, this recipe for Earl Grey ice cream captures all of the characteristics of this famous infusion. At Burch and Purchese we are always working and reworking our ice cream recipes in search of the perfect balance, viscosity, flavour and enzymic bond for texture. This recipe is full in flavour and is a perfect accompaniment to the fresh nitro cooked tarragon marshmallow and the earthy milk chocolate clay (pictured above). We show below our ice cream technique which uses the mix pasteurized at a lower temperature to ensure pathogen death and reduce 'eggy' flavour. This mix is suitable for Pac-O-Jet and a conventional ice cream machine.
The raw materials we use every day in the kitchen are sometimes taken for granted, it is in our best interests though, to familiarise ourselves with even the most basic of ingredients. This allows the pastry chef or chef to understand the balance of structure of recipes and methods. In the case of sugar, we have at our disposal, a plethora of different types all of which can serve a purpose and subject a recipe or formula to various outcomes.
We at Burch & Purchese are always interested in new techniques and flavours, and this dish highlights both of these. The dish is based around orange with notes of bitter, toasted/burnt and spice. Two isomalt based sugars are produced, one with a prominent orange flavour. This is made with dehydrated orange peel. The two cooked sugars are blitzed to fine powders and kept separate in hermetically sealed containers until needed. The lighter sugar is dusted onto a sil-pat with a sieve, it is dusted onto a rectangle shaped chablon which is removed before baking. After spending four minutes in an oven at 180C the sugar is removed from the oven and left to cool on the mat. Once cooled it is dusted with the orange sugar again using a chablon, again it is rectangle but this time it has diagonal indents which create an offset stripe on to the original sugar. This is then put back into the oven for two minutes before removing and rolling over a tube. The tube is reserved for later use and we begin to make the cream filling. As we mentioned earlier we are interested in using new techniques and flavours, and this cream has both. An orange infused 'sauce anglaise' is made and once cooked is poured into a baking tray and placed into a very hot oven for around 25 minutes. The oven is pre-heated to 220C and as you can imagine, this burns the top of the custard and leaves a black crust. The other interesting thing to note is that the custard curdles with over cooking and separates the fat from the water. This is alarming for any pastry chef but the outcome is correct and can be rectified to produce a smooth and silky cream infused with the burnt overtones. The 'burnt' custard is passed through a fine sieve into a thermomix, including all of the black crust and separated mixture, a leaf of gelatine is added and the mixture is blitzed. A pale, homogeneous mass is formed which is smooth and has a flavour of burnt orange which is sensational. This mix is left to chill and then piped into the sugar tubes at the last minute before serving. To accompany this stunning component are blackened slices of orange, toasted brioche, confit orange zest, Burch & Purchese spice mix and drops of coffee extract. The dish encapsulates our desire for innovative, technical and delicious components. The brioche and sugar tube provide a crunch for textural difference and the cream is sublime, the coffee and spice lift the dish to a new dimension and we hope you find this informative and that you find the dish visually appealing.
