Red wine poached pears, mascarpone cream, red wine gel, and pistachio biscuit crumb with a coral tuile
27 November
Try Azraa and Waven's dessert.
Ingredients
10 Forelle pears (not too ripe, still firm)
5 cinnamon sticks
5 star anise pods
5 oranges
50 ml vanilla extract
300 g castor sugar
500 ml honey
250 g mascarpone cheese
250 g icing sugar
250 ml heavy whipping cream
10 g agar-agar powder
400 g salted butter
3 sleeves gelatin powder
180 g cornflour
5 cloves
200 g pistachios, unsalted
15 g green powdered or gel food colouring
250 ml cranberry juice
2 bottles Merlot or Cabernet Sauvignon
400 g cake flour
40 ml sunflower oil
Instructions
Poached pears and red wine gel
- In a deep saucepan, combine wine, sugar, orange juice, zest, cinnamon sticks, star anise, and cloves.
- Bring to a boil, reduce heat and simmer for 5 minutes.
- While liquid is simmering, peel pears, leaving the stem intact and being careful not to blemish the flesh of the pears.
- Slice a 1/2 inch off the bottom of the pears to create a flat bottom. Gently place pears in poaching liquid, cover, and simmer for 15 to 20 minutes, turning every 5 minutes to ensure even colour, until pears are cooked but still firm.
- Remove saucepan from flame, uncover and cool with pears upright in pan. Once cool, cover and chill in the refrigerator for at least 1 hour.
- Gently remove pears from the liquid and allow them to come to room temperature.
- Meanwhile, reduce the liquid by about half over a medium-high flame for 15 minutes, until liquid is thicker and slightly syrupy, add cranberry juice and agar-agar powder.
- Remove from heat and pour liquid into a flat dish to set in the fridge
- Once the gel is set, remove and cut into cubes.
- Place into blender and blend until jelly turns into a piping gel.
Mascarpone cream
- Whip mascarpone cream, icing sugar, vanilla extract, and heavy whipping cream until fluffy consistency.
Biscuit crumb
- Combine 130g icing sugar, 140g cornflour, and 380g butter and mix until just combined
- Add in 1 tsp vanilla extract and 330g cake flour and mix until biscuit dough is combined
- Wrap dough in the plastic wrap and set aside in fridge for 10 minutes.
- Shape dough into circles and bake for 15 minutes on 190°C.
- Once biscuits are baked, allow them to cool and coarsely crush biscuits in a food processor.
- Coarsely crush pistachios separately and mix biscuit crumb and crushed pistachios together.
Coral lace tuile
- Mix water, oil, flour, and food colouring together.
- Heat a non-stick pan.
- Pour small amounts of liquid into the dry hot pan and allow to turn into coral before removing from the pan.
- Drain on a paper towel until ready for plating.