Eddie Shepherd
Right now this might be my favourite dish on the menu. It is really just two elements but it is delicious, complex, vibrant and otherworldly.
The finished dish is a single chocolate made with beautiful passionfruit double fermented dark chocolate from Valrhona. It is flavoured
with a scotch bonnet spirit I vacuum distill at low temperature so that it has the beautiful fresh aromas of the chillies but without any of the heat.
The chocolates are served between two pieces of brittle passionfruit and osmanthus ‘glass' for guests to pick up and eat with their fingers.
Fermented Passionfruit & ScotchBonnet Ganache
Slowly melt the Itakuja chocolate to 50°C then set it to one side to cool to around 40°C.
Heat the cream, trimoline, glucose and salt to a simmer then remove from the heat and let it cool to 40°C.
In three stages, mix the cream into the melted chocolate.
Allow the chocolate mix to continue to cool to 32°C. then blend in the tempered cocoa butter using a stick blender.
Blend the scotch bonnet spirit and lime juice into the chocolate mix with a stick blender.
Finally blend in the room temperature butter.
Allow the ganache to cool to 25°C then pipe into a silicon sphere mould and freeze to at least -32°C.
Lastly un-mould the chocolates snd store them in a sealed container in the fridge. Bring them to room temperature to serve.
Passion Fruit & Osmanthus Glass
Combine all the ingredients together in a pan and bring to a simmer whilst whisking.
Pour the hot liquid into a tub and allow it to cool and set into a gel in the fridge.
Warm some of the passionfruit gel gently to 55°C at which point it should be liquid.
Pour some of the warm passionfruit liquid onto a dehydrator sheet and roll the liquid around the sheet to form as thin a layer as possible.
Dry this layer at 40°C in a dehydrator for one hour, until it forms a semi-dry flexible sheet.
Tear small sections of the passion fruit sheet off and arrange them on a fresh dehydrator sheet. Optionally spray with a little coloured edible lustre at this point.
Finally dehydrate the passionfruit pieces a second time at 60°C for 12 hours until crisp, dry and brittle.
Store the finished passionfruit ‘glass’ in an airtight container with silica until ready to use.
Scotch Bonnet Vacuum Distillation
This distillation is done at low temperature in a rotary vacuum evaporator to preserve the fresh flavour of the scotch bonnet.
Blend the Scotch Bonnet and spirit together in a blender for five minutes on high speed (wear eye protection and a mouth cover).
Distil the scotch bonnet purée at 40°C gradually reducing the pressure over the distillation run until all the liquid has been evaporated and re-condensed.
Osmanthus syrup
Mix all the ingredients together and leave to steep and infuse at room temperature for 24 hours, then strain and bottle or freeze the syrup
Fermented pineapple tepeche
Combine the sugar and water together and stir well to dissolve the sugar.
Place the chopped pineapple in a large fermentation vessel and pour in the light syrup to cover. Cover with a fermentation lid and leave to ferment for three to four days.
Then strain off the liquid and reserve in the fridge until ready to use.
To Serve
Bring the fermented passionfruit & scotch bonnet ganache spheres to room temperature and delicately place a piece of the passionfruit glass either side of each sphere.
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