Food book: dessert recipes from world's best pastry chef, Jordi Roca
Roca, who runs one of the world's top restaurants, El Celler de Can Roca in Girona Spain, with his brothers has produced recipes graded according to difficulty, but many are not that hard for the home cook, writes Susan Jung
Jordi Roca is one of the three brothers who run El Celler de Can Roca, in Girona, Spain, which has three Michelin stars and which topped the World's 50 Best Restaurants list last year. In 2014, Roca was voted the world's best pastry chef.
Obviously, the desserts Roca creates at El Celler de Can Roca aren't going to be easy to make for the home cook, but many of the recipes in the book are surprisingly accessible, and he rates them according to difficulty.
"Easy" is truly easy - such as fig, grape and walnut salad; and carpaccio of caramelised figs and star anise. But even the "medium" and "high" ones aren't that difficult: vanilla cake with loquat and honey is a simple yeast-based cake glazed with honey gelatin and decorated with loquats. Caramel lollipops - ranked "high" - will be easy for anyone who's ever caramelised sugar.
The "very high" ones are slightly more challenging. "An Adaptation of Carolina Herrera's Perfume" has passion-fruit cream, vanilla and tonka bean gelatin, red fruit infusion and sugar candy. "A Trip to Havana (I) Mojito" calls for rum and almond paste cake, lime soup and mint granita - doable, as long as you can find invert sugar and dextrose.
Other recipes include caramelised apricot (OK, this one does sound hard); orange blossom cream (ditto); tapioca pearls with watermelon, pomegranate and orange; apple cream with macadamia nuts and chestnuts; citrus and orange blossom madeleines; chocolate ginger cookies; and mint and pistachio cream with chocolate mousse.
