Pre dessert: 1800 Gorgonzola Bonbon 2010-11

How 'bout a "Pre Dessert"? The "pre desserts" are interesting little dishes that serve as a transition from the last of the savory tapas courses into the desserts and morphings. In this case we have a little slab of Gorgonzola cream inside a shell of unsweetened chocolate. And it only takes 2 days.

Now, Gorgonzola comes two ways. Gorgonzola Naturale, the full blown, heavily veined, crumbly (and often rather salty) cheese and the Gorgonzola Dolce, a much less strongly flavored, rather creamy cheese. Unfortunately, the recipe doesn't specify which cheese to use. It does mention "hard" parts of the cheese and since the dolce is pretty much creamy all the way through I went with naturale.

Equal quantities of cheese and cream

The first step is making Gorgonzola cream. Nothing much to this; just bring the cream to a simmer and dump it over the cheese. Then whiz it up in the blender, strain, and chill overnight.

Squashed

There's even less to the second step. Roll out a little blob of Gorgonzola to 5 mm. I used the foam core mold I made for the Parmesan Soufflés. That goes into the freezer to firm up.

Trim into 1 cm. strips

And into 1x2 rectangles

Once frozen I cut the cheese sheet into little 1x2 cm rectangles. Then back into the freezer for safe keeping. The recipe claims it serves 4. You'll note there are 24 rectangles there.

Next day...

The Gorgonzola cream sets up pretty firm but it's still pretty easy to pipe. I spooned it into a piping bad with a fairly large tip and put a layer in each mold.

Then I put in the little cheese rectangles I made the day before.

And filled 'em up and smoothed 'em off. The recipe easily made 15 pieces and I could probably have made 20 if I'd had time to re-chill the Gorgonzola cream. The filled mold went back into the freezer to solidify. And we went off to the Pennsylvania Renaissance Faire.

I melted chocolate and cocoa butter in the microwave as instructed and mixed them together. The mixture was already way over 60° C so I let it cool to room temperature. It was still fluid. Hmmm. OK. A couple hours later it had set up. Whew...

The recipe calls for heating the chocolate mixture to 45° C. This would have been easy at elBulli since they had temperature controllable induction cook tops. I, however, have an immersion circulator, so I bagged half of the chocolate mixture and popped it into the hot water for an hour.

Now, those of you who know about chocolate have immediately recognized that 45° C is warm enough to melt all six types of cocoa butter crystals. And the recipe gives no instructions regarding cooling the chocolate down to the normal tempering temperature of 31° C. This was worrying, but I decided to stick with the recipe as written. 

I dumped the chocolate into a little container and quickly dipped the cheese wafers. The frozen cheese wafers cooled the chocolate almost instantly. So no problems with the higher temperature. They're not shiny though. Since I have half the chocolate left I'll probably try this again soon but heat it to a more typical 31° C.

The 15 wafers I made were covered with half the chocolate - there was enough left over that had I made 20 pieces it would have been just enough. Double the cheese parts and this recipe will make 40 pieces easily.

How it tastes: Interesting. Odd. It sort of grows on you as you eat it. As hinted by the pic up top, it's good with Port. This is meant to be a transition from savory tapas to actual desserts - I think it meets that goal.

Equipment and Ingredients

The Books: El Bulli 2005-2011 - Yes, freakin' expensive. Check with your local library - they may well be "in the system" and available to be reserved.


Blender
Silicone Mold

A scale that measures in grams