Serves 4
Ingredients
Fresh cream ice cream
250g milk
50g sugar
15g glucose powder
10g trimoline
12g milk powder
1g guar gum
75g heavy cream
Strawberry liquid
1kg strawberries
100g sugar
Compression liquid and sauce
150g Strawberry liquid
100g Meyer lemon juice
Fruity olive oil
Salt
Glazed strawberries
12 perfect strawberries, stemmed
50g sugar
15g pectin NH (thermo-reversible)
100g water
400g strawberry liquid
To serve
Tiny herbs, like anise, hyssop, fennel, mint, lemon balm
Method
Fresh cream ice cream
To make the ice cream, heat the milk to 130°F (55°C) with all other ingredients except the cream. Off the heat, mix in the cream. Blend with a hand blender, and freeze in a Pacojet beaker overnight. Spin just before serving.
Strawberry liquid
For the strawberry liquid, combine the strawberries and sugar in a covered mixing bowl and hold over 98°F (37°C) water for 4 hours. Strain the resulting juice through a chinois, pressing the strawberries to extract all of their liquid. Discard the strawberries, which have given everything.
Compression liquid and sauce
For the compression liquid, combine the strawberry liquid and Meyer lemon juice, and season with salt—not to make it salty, just to bring up the flavor. Compress the strawberries once at 100% power with the compression liquid. After the compression, remove the strawberries and then strain the liquid. Season the liquid with fruity olive oil, Meyer lemon juice and salt. This is your sauce.
Glazed strawberries
To glaze the compressed strawberries, mix the sugar and pectin and dissolve in the water and remaining strawberry juice. Heat to 130°F (55°C). When fully dissolved, bring to a boil and transfer to another container. Keep the temperature around 120°F (50°C), and dip the compressed strawberries in the pectin gel twice, allowing the glaze on the berries to set between each dip (about 60 seconds). While you are glazing the strawberries hold them on a wire mesh rack, to allow the extra glaze to drip through. When the glaze is set transfer to a sheet tray lined with parchment paper and hold at room temperature.
Note |You may not need to compress the strawberries, depending on their quality. This spring we put the dish on the menu, without the ice cream, as a transition course after the meat. The early season strawberries were intensely flavored, with both high sugar and high acidity, and needed nothing in the way of seasoning. So we glazed them raw.
To serve
Put a few bowls in the freezer for the ice cream. Place 3 glazed strawberries in the center of the plate and sauce around them with a spoonful of the reserved sauce. Add a few herbs on top of the strawberries, whatever is sweet, floral and aromatic, nothing bitter. Serve with a scoop of fresh cream ice cream in frozen bowls on the side.