Dessert: Cranberry Sauce Ice Cream; White Cranberry Foam
Dessert was something of a disappointment. I recently bought some
"molecular gastronomy" supplies, and was hoping to make a cranberry
fruit caviar a la El Bulli.
Unfortunately, cranberry juice appears to be too acidic to properly "gel" in the calcium chloride solution, so I had to abort the experiment after a couple of tries. (There are apparently some work-arounds for spherifying acidic liquids, but they look to be a good bit more advanced than I am.)
So I ended up doing one old-fashioned item -- ice cream -- and one new-style dessert item -- white cranberry foam.
I thought that a really tart cranberry ice cream might taste a bit off, so I decided to try to replicate the somewhat sweeter flavor of cranberry sauce in frozen form.
2 cups heavy cream
1 1/2 cup sugar
6 egg yolks
1/8 tsp salt
2 12-oz bags frozen cranberries
2 cinnamon sticks
1 tsp clove
1 tsp nutmeg
1 tsp powdered cinnamon
1 oz Cointreau
zest of 1 orange
1/2 cup chopped walnuts
1/2 cup dried cranberries
Bring cream and 1/2 cup sugar just to a boil; keep stirring until sugar is dissolved. Remove from burner and cover to keep warm.
Beat together eggs, salt, and 1/2 cup sugar until thick. Slowly add the hot milk to the egg mixture, stirring constantly. Cook over low heat, stirring, until custard reaches 170 degrees. Strain custard and let cool.
Combine cranberries, 1/2 cup sugar, Cointreau, and cinnamon sticks in heavy saucepan and bring to a boil.
Simmer over low heat until cranberries burst. Let the mixture cool, then remove cinammon stick, transfer to blender and puree.
Stir cinnamon, nutmeg, cloves, and orange zest into the custard. Fold the cranberry mixture into the custard, stir in walnuts and dried cranberries, and process in ice cream maker. Keep ice cream in freezer overnight to set.
To garnish the ice cream, I made some sugar ornaments by boiling 1 cup of sugar and 1/4 cup cranberry juice in a saucepan until it caramelized, then drizzing the sugar over a heatproof mat and letting it cool.
The foam was cool and super-easy. I dissolved 1 1/2 sheets of gelatin in 8 oz. of white cranberry juice. I added the mixture to my new
Isi Whip charger, charged the dispenser with a nitrous cartridge, shook it, and put in the fridge overnight. Just before serving, I shot a cloud of foam on each plate.
The garnish dots around the plate are reduced and thickened cranberry wine.
Although the caviar failure was disappointing, I was pleased with the end result. The ice cream was intensely red, really creamy, not too sweet, and actually tasted like homemade, chunky cranberry sauce. The foam had an incredibly light, airy texture (much, much lighter than whipped cream), but the cranberry flavor came right through.