Wednesday, February 15, 2006

Paper Chef #15: Limes, beetroot and pears?

The latest edition of Paper Chef - # 15 to be precise - is hosted by MagicTofu and the required ingredients are limes, beetroots, pears and aphrodisiac of your choice. My first beetrooty idea is either bortsch (no, not the noodles, but the delicious Eastern European soup) or then a simple beetroot salad. But however happily I'd cook that soup or salad, I'm not prepared to incorporate pears and limes into either of these dishes. Some dishes are best as they are.

As it happens, I'm preparing the dish on the über-sweet Valentine's Day, and thus a dessert would be more appropriate anyway. The aphrodisiac I chose was chocolate, or more precisely, white chocolate. After the ultimate chocolate blogger David Lebovitz himself praised this particular type of chocolate recently, I picked up a bar of Green & Black's white chocolate with Bourbon vanilla.

Here's my entry:

Mascarpone mousse with white chocolate and lime juice, topped with candied pear and beetroot



The mousse is a mixture of mascarpone, whipped double cream and melted white chocolate, seasoned with freshly squeezed lime juice. Topping - beetroot and pear slices that I first cooked in sugar syrup (separately, of course), and then dried in a very cool oven. The idea for candied beetroot slices came from here.

My previous Paper Chef #8 entry

MagicTofu's round-up of Paper Chef # 15

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7 comments:

Ilva said...

This sounds really really nice, I love the idea of white chocolate and lime!

MagicTofu said...

Beets and pears confit in syrup! I love the idea! And the extra colors they add to the mousse...

(I am getting hungry now)

Clivia said...

What a challenge to make something of those ingredients together! It looks so delicious...

Alanna Kellogg said...

CANDIED beets -- why not?! Just lovely!

Anonymous said...

Pille, see küll teemaväline s6num, aga ei leidnud kusagilt Su eestikeelset blogi, et sinna kirjutada. Leidsin Šotimaalt t6elise kohupiima! Siin on ta tuntud "crowdie" nime all. Teada-tuntud mägismaalaste toiduaine ja toodab seda vähemalt üks meierei Ross-shire's. Ostsin poest proovimiseks 140 ml(4,5% rasva) topsiku, maksis £1.05. Kohupiimaplaadikoogi tegemiseks kalliv6itu, aga ta on vähemalt olemas!

Anonymous said...

Nice! Mascarpone cheese is such a great thing to work with. And, it's actually easy to make ;-)

I like the idea of candied beets too. Accentuating their already wonderful sweetness.

Pille said...

Ilva - white choc and lime were lovely together indeed, the sweetness of one counteracting the sharpness of the other.

Magic Tofu - thanks for your kind words, and a great round-up!

Clivia - it was a challenge indeed, but am much more pleased with this dish than I was with my sugar high/low Friday one..

AK - candied beets was the most unusual bit of this dish, but beets are very sweet on their own, so they worked just fine. I'm thinking of trying that cake where I took the candied beets idea from.

Anonüümne - aitäh teatamast! Olen crowdie'st kuulnud, ent maitsenud ei ole. Peaks proovima, aga kuna nüüd saan kohalikust poola poest osta ehtsat kohupiima (99 penni 250grammise paki eest), siis kohupiimaroogi saan nüüd ikka tavalise kohupiimaga teha.
(ja niiiiiii tore oleks teada, kes mu anonüümne lugeja on:)

Chopper Dave - I buy mascarpone in 250 gram tubes, and I eat probably 50 grams of it straight from the tube before I even start cooking. Delicious (though very naughty, considering the amount of calories it contains). Spread on a slice of biscuit or scooped with strawberries - mmmmmm.....