BERGAMOT CHOCOLATE TRUFFLES ON AIR

One of the modern pastry chef’s greatest secrets is air.  He captures air and whips it into his preparations with cream, chocolate, or butter.  Temperature, texture, and beater speed all play a role in this delicate collection of microscopic bubbles that create so many of our favorite desserts.

Bergamot pairs deliciously with chocolate.  You will find light and airy chocolate cream in each of these little dark chocolate caps. Some are topped off with homemade lemon sugar.

To make homemade truffles that stay pretty, you need to temper the chocolate. This simply involves heating, cooling, then heating again your dipping chocolate. Why would you bother with such a thing? For a number of reasons, one being that untempered chocolate develops an unsightly dull white sheen.  You need a thermometer to do it right. Mine is broken at the moment, so I did without. The results were not bad, but not outstanding. You might notice in the photos that these truffles are not very shiny. This is because they were poorly tempered. For a very good explanation read David Lebovitz’s article, How to Temper Chocolate.

I found the recipe for the whipped milk chocolate ganache that fills these truffles on pastry chef Ron Mendoza’s blog, One Spoon Quenelle. After a few tweaks, it became whipped bergamot dark chocolate ganache that you can easily make at home.

Start 3 days in advance.

recipe for bergamot chocolate truffles on air:

ingredients:

• 225 g milk
• 50 g corn syrup
• 300 g dark chocolate
• 580 g heavy cream
• Zest of one bergamot
• Juice of half a bergamot
• Plus about 200 g dark chocolate

…

Day 1:

Bring milk, corn syrup, and zest of bergamot to a simmer.

Break 300 g chocolate into small pieces into a large bowl.

Pass the hot milk mixture through a fine mesh strainer (to take out the pieces of zest, unless you prefer to leave them) pouring over the chocolate and whisk by hand until the chocolate is melted and the mixture is smooth and creamy. It helps to start whisking in the center of the bowl, slowly incorporating the edges.

Add the cream, blend well. Then add the bergamot juice a little at a time, blending well after each addition.

Cover, and refrigerate overnight.

Day 2:

The next day use an electric beater to whip the ganache to soft peaks. I would say that I whipped to good peaks, not soft ones. You should have a mixture that looks and tastes like a rich chocolate mousse. You could always stop here and serve in little bowls.

Use a pastry bag or teaspoon to make small rounds, kisses, or any form of chocolate onto the lid of a Tupperware, or in something that you can cover without smashing the ganache rounds. I used the lid of a Tupperware bowl and used the bowl to cover the chocolates. Here is the upside down Tupperware held up to the light.

Place in the freezer for at least 4 hours or overnight.

 

Emmett the cat loves to smell each ingredient when I cook.

Day 3:

Temper the 200 g of dark chocolate. Take the frozen chocolates out of the freezer and quickly dip them into the melted chocolate. Place them on a sheet of waxed paper to dry. This can be done with forks or special chocolate making forks.  They will harden very quickly.

Usually I don’t keep chocolate in the fridge, but I kept these refrigerated in a tin and we finished them within the week.

Flavored sugar is very easy to make. These lemon sugar disks were made with sugar, lemon zest, and just enough lemon juice to humidify the sugar. Once humid, you can roll the sugar out flat and use a cookie cutter or knife to cut shapes, or press into molds, then allow to dry for a day or two, or in a slightly warm oven.

Two bites!

PUCKER UP BERGAMOT COCKTAIL

A refreshing parenthesis if you like sour with just a touch of sweet and spicy.

recipe for two of our new (and only) cocktail maison: pucker up bergamot

2 shots vodka

1 bergamot

2 tsp sugar

1 inch fresh ginger, and some candied ginger if you would like

ice cubes

…

Peel and slice ginger into two small pieces with a little slit for garnishing the glass.

2 fun glasses: Rub fresh ginger around the rim of the glass.

In a shaker: ice cubes, 2 shots vodka, juice of bergamot, sugar. Shake. Shake. Shake.

Pour into two glasses and garnish with ginger. Use candied ginger for the garnish if you want to be sweet, and fresh ginger if you dare.

SEA BASS & BERGAMOT MOUSSELINE SAUCE

Here, on the Mediterranean coast, sea bass is known as “loup” or “wolf,” a name earned by its voracious character. In the rest of France, it is called “bar.”  We find plenty of fresh fish at the markets, sometimes still sold by the fishermen themselves… or their wives, though much of the market is now controlled by the supermarkets. The freshest fish is usually whole. We have them cleaned out and scaled by the fishmonger. Then we tote them home, chatting about how we might attempt to cook them.

Cooking whole fish is intimidating. We have discovered that it is in fact simpler than cooking most things. One stress-free way is simply baking in a Pyrex dish with a few herbs, shallots or onions, and a dash or two of white wine. You don’t have to worry too much about overcooking if you set the timer.

Baking fish is simple, but making a mousseline sauce is a bit tricky unless you already know how to make a hollandaise sauce. If a hollandaise sauce is already in your repertoire, a mousseline sauce is a piece of cake. It is a light and airy alternative. On top of it, you can save it in the fridge if you prefer not to serve right away.

If you do not make the sauce ahead of time, you have plenty of time while the fish is baking.

recipe for baked sea bass

• 1 large or two small sea bass, cleaned and scaled
• fresh or dried herbs such as thyme and bay leaf
• 1 onion or 4-6 shallots, peeled and thinly sliced
• a few tablespoons of white wine
• a sprinkle of salt
• 1/4 cup flour
• 2-3 tbs olive oil

Preheat oven to 375°F.

Make 3 diagonal slashes on each side of the fish.

Heat olive oil in a large non-stick pan over medium-high. Sprinkle the fish with flour and cook for about 1 minute on each side, until the skin crisps and browns.

Place the onions or shallots in a baking dish, add the fish, herbs, wine, and salt. Drizzle with the oil left in the frying pan. Bake for about 15 minutes. Turn. Then bake for 10-15 minutes more, until the flesh is opaque throughout.

Ready to serve!

recipe for bergamot mousseline sauce

I used very small portions because I didn’t have enough butter, and we were only two. If you want to make more, you can easily double the recipe. Note: I used far less butter than many recipes call for and it turned out quite well.

If you already have a super recipe for hollandaise sauce, just skip to the step where you add whipped cream.

• about 80 to 100 grams butter (3 – 3.5 oz)
• half an egg yolk
• about 2 or 3 tbs bergamot juice (or lemon juice if you have no bergamot)
• about a 1/2 cup of heavy whipping cream

Prepare the ingredients first.

Press the bergamot for juice. I used just 2 tbs, but a little more juice might not hurt. Notice that the bergamot in the photo had already been zested for another recipe.

Separate the yolk of a fresh egg. Notice in the photo that the yolk is very plump and round. This is a sign that it is very fresh.

Clarify the butter. This means to put the butter over very low heat so that it melts but does not boil. You will notice the milk solids fall mostly to the bottom. For the recipe, you want only the butter fat, not the white milk solids. Any floating solids can be skimmed off. Clarified butter is also called ghee.

Don’t skip this step, or your sauce will have a bitter buttermilk flavor.

Next, also using a very small bowl, whip the heavy cream until thick and frothy, just before the soft peak stage. In my photo, this is a small bowl with a mini whisk. Store in the fridge.

Here is the tricky part, where all of this fat and acid become a delicious sauce. There is a fine line between an omelette and a thick sauce, especially with such tiny quantities. Be careful!

Set a bowl next to your stove and a spatula next to it. You will need these on hand as soon as the sauce thickens.

In the smallest sauce pan that you own, on the lowest heat that your stove can possibly give you, heat the half an egg yolk with the bergamot juice, whisking constantly. (Use a double boiler if you want to be even more careful.) If you have doubled the quantities, it’s actually easier to do. Here is where you want to have plan A and plan B.

Plan A: All is going well, no signs of an omelette

As soon as the egg and bergamot juice are well mixed and mousse-like, begin to add the clarified butter about 1 tbs at a time, whisking constantly. Remove from heat and pour into the bowl that you prepared ahead of time. Your sauce will be thick and creamy, the perfect hollandaise.

Plan B: Egad! You think you saw a little part that is turning into an omelette! (Or you just want to be safe).

As soon as the mixture thickens, pour it quickly into the bowl and continue whisking for about 30 seconds while the sauce cools. Add the clarified butter little by little, whisking well after each addition. Your sauce might just look like melted butter, and not even close to a creamy hollandaise, but don’t fret. Be happy that you are making a mousseline sauce and not a hollandaise sauce. This is what happened to me.

Whether you followed plan A or plan B, the next step is the same. Season your hollandaise or semi-hollandaise sauce with salt and pepper. Take your slightly whipped cream out of the fridge and add in a slow stream to the sauce, whipping as you pour. Voilà! It should become light and airy, and look like the creamy, pale yellow peak in the photo below.

Serve it dalloped, piped, or however you would like. If you refrigerate, it will harden like a whipped butter, but even more airy in texture. So if you decide to refrigerate, do it in single portions.

Enjoy! (And hope that someone else will do the dishes!)

BERGAMOT SABLÉ COOKIES

For all of you earl grey aficionados, and I know you are out there.

Consider yourself lucky if you come across a little citrus fruit too small and yellow to be an orange, too plump and round to be a lemon. Bergamot oranges are grown around the mediterranean. The oil extracted from bergamot peel is the fresh scent we know so well in Earl Grey tea but most of the little spherical fruits are used in the cosmetics industry.

It was the year 2000. Each day after school I stopped at the Church Street coffee shop and ordered a mug of earl grey tea with a chocolate chip cookie. I was 17. I didn’t know it then, but bergamot was probably my high school sweetheart.  When summer came, I ordered it in a glass on ice and sometimes skipped the cookie.  Unlike other high school sweethearts, bergamot grew with me, and I later discovered it in dark chocolate. No surprise to me: it was the dark chocolate in my after school chocolate chip cookie that made the match.

Ten years later. A little box of bergamot oranges was posed unassumingly by clementines and lemons at a small organic grocery shop that I frequent. By rule of thumb, when I see bergamot, I buy bergamot. So four of them went home with me.

The next step: find recipes! Borrow them, make them up, anything to make the bitter perfumed oranges edible, because alone, they are like lemons.

If they had sold these little cookies I discovered on Lucy’s delicious blog, Hungry Cravings, I might have skipped right to it and become a pastry chef.  But then, things could always have been different.

my adaptation of Lucy’s recipe for bergamot orange dreams

ingredients

• 1 ¾ cups all-purpose flour
• ¼ cup cornstarch (or potato starch, as I had)
• ¼ teaspoon kosher salt
• 6 ounces (1 ½ sticks) unsalted butter, at room temperature
• 1 cup powdered sugar
• 1 tablespoon grated Bergamot orange zest
• 2 tablespoons freshly squeezed Bergamot orange juice
• 1 tsp vanilla extract

Preheat oven to 350°F or 180°C.

In a bowl whisk together the flour, corn starch (or potato starch in my case) and salt. Don’t be afraid to go a little heavy on the starch and a little light on the flour.

In another bowl, beat at medium speed, using the paddle attachment, the butter and 1/3 cup of powdered sugar until fluffy and creamy.  Mix in the bergamot zest, juice, and vanilla extract.

Mix in the dry ingredients until the dough comes together.

Roll the dough into little logs and slice them into l inch long pieces. Place about 1 inch apart on a non-stick cookie sheet or on parchment paper.

Bake for 16 to 18 minutes, until the bottoms are slightly browned, but the tops are still pale.

Note: If you haven’t got very thick or good quality cookie sheets, double them up to help your cookies not to burn on the bottom. I have two types of cookie sheets, one from a consumer cookware shop, and one from a professional cookware shop. The difference was remarkable. The professional sheet yielded a much more evenly baked cookie than the other sheet. Over-baking is a no-no for citrus flavored cookies. The citrus flavor is easily thrown off by the slightly burned flavor. I admit that I sometimes enjoy a very well-baked crust with a lemon curd pie, but these cookies are much more fragrant if not overcooked!

I like to roll the cookies in powdered sugar almost directly after baking. The sugar absorbs some of the cookie’s melted butter, giving a silky effect.  But if you prefer the sugar to stay white and snowy, wait until the cookies are almost cooled down before rolling them in powdered sugar.

Now, eat!