Cutting Edge Kitsch

I've spoken a bit before about my general distrust of the professional cooking trend to deconstruct familiar dishes. The fad sees the use of foams and ices and powders. As I pointed out in that previous post, these deconstructions often add unnecessary complications to a dish and, more importantly, don't often add anything to the flavor. Related to this trend, but much less evil, is the practice of fancying-up some peasant dish for a fine dining menu. This I can get behind.

I love the idea of taking an everyday stew or pasta and dressing it up a bit. Remember, I'm not talking about making onion sorbets and avocado clouds, just taking the rough edges off a classical minestrone soup by carefully choosing the perfect pulses and vegetables and preparing them beautifully. There are plenty of examples, several I've written about before; most recently was the fancied version of potato gratin. This light polishing is actually a very common practice in professional kitchens. Part of the goal, at least, is to get the customer to say: “Mine never tastes like this at home.”

The flipside of all this elevation of everyday foods is that some really tasty foods get left behind. Some things just can't be dressed up (how do you make chili cheese fries fancy without resorting to deconstructionism?), and so they don't exist in the finer restaurant world. Others go out of fashion, duck a l'orange, for example, and can't be served in their classic form.



If, however, being innovative means bucking trends rather than following them, is it possible that serving macaroni and cheese might not be so kitsch? Subversion is a great part of innovation, so offering a 70's-style prawn cocktail and delivering just that (iceberg lettuce included) might make you the coolest restaurant in town. Or it might just be stupid. Either way, there is a lot of good food out there fine dining chefs don't touch. Still I wonder, does undressed, plebeian food have a place on a modern menu?



This was, essentially, the discussion I was having the other day with my wife after picking a couple kilos of berries at a local berry farm. I was talking up a restaurant version of trifle, that most grandmotherly of deserts, which I wanted me make with the berries: champagne jelly layered with fruit and sponge cake soaked in brandy. My wife, on the other hand, preferred something simple and delicious, like a pie. Since I love my wife, and considering the fact that she did pick half of the berries, I made both.



So here you have it: undressed, simple, beautiful pie and polished, pretty, restaurant trifle.

Blackberry and Apple Pie

4c blackberries, rinsed
2c granny smith apples, peeled and diced into small cubes
125g sugar
5tbsp flour
50g butter, in small cubes
pinch salt

shortcrust pastry for a covered pie (purchased or using your favorite recipe)
sugar for sprinkling

Preheat oven to 200ºC. Line a large pie tin with pastry. Toss all pie ingredients together and pour into lined pie tin. Cover with pastry, trim and crimp edges, sprinkle top with sugar, and cut slits in the surface to allow steam to escape. Bake uncovered for 10 minuets, reduce oven temperature to 180ºC and bake another 30-40 minutes, until crust is golden. Cool before serving.

Blackberry and Champagne Jelly Trifle

Ok, I know you purists out there are going to want to know where the custard component of this trifle is. I left it out. Instead I used brandy-scented, whipped, double thick cream. What are you going to do about it?

I'm going to break this down into parts, there is a lot to do here. This should make about 6 individual desserts, and each one counts as a standard drink, maybe two. Be warned. Also, the recipe is tailored to a half bottle of champagne, if you want to avoid having extra bubbly when you are finished cooking. Seriously though, who's ever heard of “extra” champagne?

Champagne Jelly

200 ml champagne or dry sparkling
2 gelatin sheets

Begin by softening the gelatin. Prepare a small bowl of cold water. Break each sheet of gelatin in half and drop each half into the bowl one after the other so that there is no chance of them sticking together. Soak a few minuets.

Meanwhile, gently warm (but do not boil) 50ml of the champagne. Remove from heat. Using your hands, retrieve the gelatin from the cold water and gently squeeze to remove excess moisture. Drop this into the warm champagne and whisk in. Strain this mixture (to eliminate any undissolved gelatin) back into the remainder of cold champagne. Divide the champagne between 6 short, graduated tumblers. Set in fridge for at least one hour.

Sponge

4 eggs
150g sugar
100g flour
50g corn starch (corn flour, as it's called in OZ)
1/4 tsp salt

Preheat oven to 190ºC. Whisk the eggs and sugar together until light and fluffy. Sift in flour, corn starch, and salt, folding as you go. Do not over-mix as this will make your cake chewy. Pour into a deep sided baking tray lined with baking paper, spread evenly with a rubber spatula (it should be less than a centimeter thick), and bake 10-12 minuets, until a toothpick inserted comes out clean. Cool.

Cut 6 disks just large enough to fit over the set champagne jelly. You should have enough cake to cut 12 disks total.

30 ml brandy
30 ml sherry

Quickly dip each of the 6 cake disks into a mixture of the above alcohol, allowing the cake to absorb some of the booze without becoming soggy. Lay each disk on top of the set jelly. Return to fridge.

400g fresh blackberries
150ml champagne or sparkling
1 tsp sugar
2 sheets gelatin, softened as above

Combine 100 g of blackberries with the sugar and sit for 10 minuets. Crush these berries with a wooden spoon and strain through a fine sieve. Extract as much juice as possible. Gently heat the juice and dissolve the gelatin into it. Cool slightly and strain into the champagne.

Meanwhile, carefully layer the fresh berries on top of the cake disks in the 6 tumblers. Divide the berry-flavored champagne between the tumblers. Set for at least an hour.

Cut 6 more disks to fit the tumbler (presumably these will be slightly larger than the last 6, as the circumference of the tumbler increases as you get closer to the top.

30 ml brandy
30 ml sherry

As before, quickly dip each cake into the mixture of alcohol and place on top of the berries set in jelly. Return to fridge.

To serve, whisk about 250 ml of double cream with a tbsp of brandy and a pinch of sugar. Dip a tumbler into a pan of hot water for 15 seconds to loosen the jelly but not melt it. Turn the trifle out onto plates (some gentle coaxing by running a small pallet knife between the glass and trifle helps to release the dessert). Serve with a dollop of cream and a handful of fresh berries.


(This is the most joyful thing I can possibly think of.)