Monday 19 April 2010

Champagne Rhubarb & Blood Orange Syllabub with Black Pepper Honeycomb


The posting order is a bit back to front, but this dish is the culmination of what had been a wonderful cooking day at my friend's apartment in Southwark. Having spotted these exquisite Champagne Rhubarb stems at Tony Booth's, I had the idea of pairing it with Blood Orange, to create a tangy and luscious pudding. Not being one for fancy desserts, I figured a low maintenance syllabub would do the trick. I added whipped double cream and Greek yoghurt to the cooked fruit, and topped with an easy and fun to make honeycomb.


Ingredients (serves 4 approx)
4 Stems of Champagne Rhubarb
1 Blood Orange
200ml Double Cream
100 ml Greek Yoghurt
50g Caster Sugar
1 Teaspoon Vanilla Paste or Essence
75g Caster Sugar
50ml Honey
1 teaspoon Bicarbonate of Soda

- Slice Rhubarb stem into pieces, place into a glass baking dish, add 50g Caster Sugar, the zest and juice of half a blood orange. Cover with kartouche of greaseproof paper and bake in a medium oven for 30 mins until the Rhubarb is cooked. Allow to cool.
- Whip the double cream into soft peaks, add the Greek yoghurt, flavour with vanilla paste. Fold through the warm Rhubarb compote and serve into glasses. Allow to chill.
- To make the honeycomb, melt Caster sugar and honey until the grains have dissolved and bubbles well. Add the Bicarbonate, mix and allow to foam up. Empty onto a non stick surface and allow to chill. Grind Black Pepper over the hot honeycomb. Crunch the cooled honeycomb over the syllabub.

1 comment:

aforkfulofspaghetti said...

adding black pepper to honeycomb - genius... Which is exactly why I wouldn't have thought of it!