Banana & Clove Won Ton, Golden Raisin Consomme, Vanilla Straw, Saffron, Rose Ice Cream

It has been far too long since my last post, I have been looking for that next bit of inspiration, yet too find it, so rather than wait any longer, here is a recent dessertEveryone who knows me, knows I love Vanilla....

You can use vanilla in so many applications, one of the worlds most expensive ingredients along with saffron also used in the dish, because of my love of vanilla I like to use all of it. I love to make vanilla straws, for this they are used to sip the warm flavours of the golden raisin consomme which is so light and delicate sipping through the straw adds that little bit of depth to deeply flavour the clear soup. I find with vanilla that there can be a fine balance when used in cooking going from balancing a flavour to completely overpowering in just a slight adjustment either way, this is a way of giving that subtle hint without the use of it in cooking it too much into the dish. Cut the ends off of a vanilla pod and with a bamboo skewer push out all the seeds, you'll need to do it several times, save the seeds, leave the pod on the bamboo skewer and dry out until hard..

Golden Raisin Consomme.. its fantastic just warm, I like to use a Rooibos tea base and blend the raisins making it into the clarification. I made this whole dessert while I was working with the middle eastern flavours, years ago I used to make a rum & raisin consomme with banana gnocchi & mincemeat ice cream, a real christmas dish, which I'll go back to around christmas again and play with the flavours although with the temperature here last week it would have been good then. To the base tea stock I added extra anise flavour, later adding a few raisins to the consomme to serve which had been soaked in a saffron solution I later used for the syrup..

TGRWT11.. Banana & Clove, I know this combination is old to a few of you, to some others maybe new http://blog.khymos.org/2008/10/02/tgrwt-11-banana-and-cloves/ anyway banana & clove won tons, I baked the bananas in their skins studded with cloves and removed the flesh, added a touch of cardamon powder for me it just lifted it a little. The mix was wrapped in phyllo I added a very delicate flavoured clove syrup between the layers....

The won tons baked and drizzled with a saffron and honey rich syrup, I wanted a thick syrup rather than soaking the whole thing and making a baklava..

There we have it, I just added a little rose syrup to the ice cream, brings all the flavours together..