SUMMER // Recipe for four
Mum’s roses
The perfume of a rose, the smell of fresh chamomile and the scent of stone fruit in peak season – all these make this dish special. This tells a story of summer – warm days and bees buzzing around my mum’s roses. We serve bee pollen with this, and the stone fruit is soaked in local mead. In the restaurant we make the meringue in a nitrogen bowl – it maintains the integrity of the rose petal, keeping it pure and aromatic. If you have been storing egg whites in the freezer for this dish, a tip is to freeze rose petals with the egg whites so they take on the flavour.
PEACH SORBET
660 ml (23 fl oz) peach nectar
Seeds scraped from 1 vanilla bean
Juice of 2 limes
135 ml (4½ fl oz) sorbet base
Put all the ingredients in a saucepan and heat to 65°C (149°F). Stir until dissolved and then put in the fridge to cool. Transfer to an ice-cream machine and churn until frozen. If you don’t have an ice-cream machine, pour into a shallow freezer container. Freeze until semi-frozen, then whisk very thoroughly. Freeze and whisk again, twice more.
STONE FRUIT
2 peaches
2 nectarines
2 blood plums
500 ml (17 fl oz) mead
Take the stone fruit and score the skin with a sharp knife. Put a deep pan of water on the stove to boil. Once the water is boiling, add the stone fruit for 2–3 minutes, until the skin starts to come away from the fruit. Transfer the fruit to an ice bath to cool rapidly and stop the cooking process. Peel off the skin, cut off the cheeks of the fruit and remove the stone. Store the cleaned fruit in the mead.
Whisk the iota and peach nectar with 100 ml (3½ fl oz) water. Transfer to a pan and heat to 86°C (187°F). Pass through a fine strainer and refrigerate until set.
ROSE MERINGUE
60 g (2¼ oz) fine cane sugar
100 g (3½ oz) egg whites
20 g (3/4 oz) rose petals, roughly chopped
Put the sugar and egg whites in a bowl over a pan of boiling water (don’t let the base of the bowl sit in the water). Whisk until the meringue reaches a temperature of 34°C (93°F). Remove from the heat and add the chopped roses, then whisk until firm. Preheat the oven to 70°C (150°F).
Spread the rose meringue on a tray lined with baking paper and cook for 6 hours. Once cooked, break it up into small pieces and freeze until you are ready to serve.
Alternatively, if you own a nitrogen bowl (and you must follow the manufacturer’s safety instructions for these carefully), whisk the sugar and egg whites until firm, stir in the roses and put 200 g (7 oz) nitrogen into the bowl. Add the meringue mix and chop to make a frozen powder.
VANILLA CREME
220 ml (7½ fl oz) cream
10 g (¼ oz) honey
Seeds scraped from ½ vanilla bean
Whip the cream, honey and vanilla bean seeds until thick. Keep in the fridge until needed.