I love cooking from other chefs’ recipes. I follow a recipe
closely the first time because I want to taste what the chef was thinking and tasting. I’m also curious about the recipe
writing (this is an occupational hazard). If there is something unusual about the technique or
use of ingredients, I want to learn from it rather than assuming that my usual
way of doing something will be better or just as good. I think cooks who pride
themselves on never following a recipe exactly sometimes miss out on some
spectacular outcomes and amazing nuances, but that’s another post for another
day.
Once I taste a dish, ideas come even (especially?) if the
dish is fantastic. It’s not
always about improving a recipe, but about using something learned from it to
do something else. Sometimes a recipe creates a spark that flies pretty far
from the original fire.
When I made carrot soup from Mourad Lahlou’s Mourad: New Moroccan, I was intrigued that the
carrots were cooked in carrot juice instead of stock and each serving was garnished
with fresh citrus.
The soup was
lovely. I started to imagine a new
carrot soup with raw carrot juice added at the very end to capture both the
bright flavor of raw and the lower
and mellower notes from the cooked carrots. Then I drifted to carrot sorbet made from a combination of cooked
carrots and raw juice. And now I thinking about a carrot duet: a smooth creamy carrot ice cream
to serve next to a scoop of icy carrot sorbet. Wait for it...
Meanwhile, a salad from Paula Wolfert’s Couscous and Other Good Food From Morocco inspired this seductive dessert, which will appear in my own upcoming book, Sinfully Easy Delicious Desserts (coming May 2012 from Artisan Books).
FRAGRANT
ORANGES WITH ICE CREAM, ALMONDS, AND DATES
From Sinfully Easy Delicious Desserts (Artisan 2012)
Scoops of creamy
vanilla ice cream and icy mango sorbet in a pool of juicy scented orange
segments with sticky dates, toasted almonds, and a fragrant top note of
cinnamon. Serves 6
Ingredients:
8 oranges
1/4 teaspoon orange
blossom water, or to taste
6 small scoops vanilla
ice cream
6 small scoops mango or
orange sorbet
12 plump dates, pitted
and quartered
1/3 cup (1.5 ounces)
chopped toasted almonds or toasted slivered almonds
A cinnamon stick
(optional)
Equipment:
Microplane zester
(optional)
Up to 1 day before
serving, prepare the oranges: Suprime 6 of the oranges or
simply peel and slice them, reserving the juices. Pick out any seeds and
collect all of the juices and the segments or slices in a bowl.
To serve, taste the
juice and adjust the orange flower water if necessary. Divide the oranges and
juices evenly among six serving bowls. Nestle a small scoop of ice cream and a
small scoop of sorbet in the center of each bowl. Distribute the quartered
dates around the ice cream and sprinkle each dessert with the chopped almonds.
Grate a little bit of the cinnamon stick over each bowl with a microplane
zester, if desired, and serve immediately.
