Oven Dried Tomatoes

This is another example of dishes I came up with that I was hoping would be more successful on the plate. I debated if I should post about it or not at first. However, I try to make this blog an accurate “diary” of food and movies  so of course I should post about it. Also, this plate as a whole needs work and refinement but its several components are good and some (the sorbet) are excellent. If I do revisit this dish at some point this post should be a lot of help in making it better.

The basic idea here is rice pudding and fruit. Rice pudding is one of those desserts that I think every culture makes. Versions differ in flavoring but the base of rice, milk and sugar are universal. In Mexico and across Latin America, it is usually flavored with cinnamon and maybe rum. In Lebanon we flavor it with rose water. In Europe you might find it served with a dollop of jam or fruit preserves. In this recipe I went with a combination of both European (rice pudding + cooked fruit) and middle eastern by including the flavors of roses in the plums.

To prepare the plums I used an idea from Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall’s book River Cottage Everyday and baked the fruit with a mixture of sugar, a couple of vanilla beans and plenty of dried rosebuds. These fragrant buds are ones I bought from a spice vendor in Beirut and are from the same species of flower that rose water is distilled from. They have an amazing heady perfume that works really well with the ripe plums. I basted the plums with the sugary juices a few times while roasting them until soft and a bit blistered. The plums where used for two preparations. First I made that aforementioned nice sorbet. I used an identical process to the one I used for the citrus blossom sorbet a while back. I used another portion of the plums to make a plum-rose sauce. I made a rose syrup by soaking some more of the buds in hot water and then mixed it with a little sugar to make a syrup. The syrup got blended with roasted plums for the sauce.

Instead of rice pudding that will just puddle on the plate I wanted something more…geometrical. I had in mind a preparation from Migoya’s Frozen Desserts where rice pudding is prepared traditionally and then set with gelatin in a sheet pan. The pudding then can be sliced into rectangles or squares for serving. Migoya also uses a torch to brown the surface of the cubes right before serving. I managed to make the pudding rectangles perfectly well, but the torching step went a bit wrong and I ended up half melting them!

I have the rice pudding in place and the nice fruit to go with it. I just needed some texture in the dish. Almonds seemed like a natural for both the plums and the pudding. I decided to make almond tuiles to highlight the nuts’ flavor and bring in some caramel notes to the plate. The idea of having wavy thin cookies also really appealed to me. I made the tuiles using butter, sugar and ground almonds. I baked them in one sheet, spread thin on a Silpat. When they were still warm, I cut them into rectangles and laid those on metal tubes. These then went in the oven again to soften and then cool and set in a wavy shape. They worked out well but in proportion to everything else on the plate they seemed too big.

To serve the dessert, I laid three squares of the pudding and bruleed (and, in the process, melted) them. I topped these with the sorbet and added some of the sauce. The tuiles stood on their side next to the pudding squares. The flavors really worked well here but again, the plating, those ragged sorbet scoops and the bulky tuiles made this dish less than stellar.