The Square: Sweet

Contents

INTRODUCTION

PRE-DESSERTS

Almond-Milk Yoghurt with Plum Compote, Champagne and a Bay Sugared Beignet

Vanilla Yoghurt with Rhubarb Compote, Blood Orange Foam and Warm Citrus Beignet

Cardamom Yoghurt with Alphonso Mango, Coconut Foam and a Lime Beignet

Vanilla Yoghurt with Crushed White Peach, Lemon Verbena Foam, Crushed Raspberries and a Warm Vanilla Beignet

CHEESECAKE

Brillat-Savarin Cheesecake

Brillat-Savarin Cheesecake with Gooseberry, Pink Champagne and Elderflower

Brillat-Savarin Cheesecake with Passion Fruit and Lime

Brillat-Savarin Cheesecake with a Tasting of Strawberries

Brillat-Savarin Cheesecake with Redcurrant Jelly, White Currant Purée and Blackcurrant Spheres

SOUFFLÉS

Elderflower Soufflé with Sauternes Ice Cream and Elderflower Fritters

Peach Melba Soufflé with Almond and Vanilla Ice Cream

Bay Leaf Soufflé with Caramelised Pear and Salted Beurre Noisette Ice Cream

Mocha Soufflé with Dulce De Leche Ice Cream and Coffee and Chocolate Macaroons

Rice Pudding Soufflé with Prunes and Armagnac

Seville Orange Soufflé with Toast Ice Cream and Butter Sauce

PASTRY

Puff Pastry

Caramelised Wafers with Gooseberry Fool, Wild Strawberries and Currants

Tarte Fine of Quince with Elderberry Ripple Ice Cream, Crab Apple Jelly and Hazelnut Oil

Tarte Tatin of Pineapple with Lime Ice Cream and Coconut Powder

Sweet Pastry

Crème Fraîche Tart with Blood Orange

Salted Caramel Tart with Praline Macaroons and Ginger Vanilla Ice Cream

CREAM

Rhubarb Fool, Mousse, Jelly, Sorbet and Doughnut

Crème Brulee with Cherries, Crème Fraîche Sorbet and Yoghurt Powder

Crème Caramel with Golden Raisins and Sauternes

Rice Pudding with Clementine Jelly, Blood Orange, Vanilla and Cardamom

Vanilla and Almond Cream with Crushed Fig, Thyme Ice Cream and Olive Oil

Walnut Oil Parfait with Macadamia Sablé, Almond Florentines and Pedro Ximénez and Prune Purée

Pannacotta with Rhubarb and a Warm Rhubarb Ripple Soufflé

FRUIT

Blueberry Poached Pineapple with Yoghurt Ice Cream

Poached Apricots with Camomile, Honey and Fresh Almonds

Apple and Blackberry Spheres with Blackberry Jelly and Blackberry and Bramley Doughnuts

Pomegranate Jelly with a Fine Fruit Salad and Passion Fruit and Banana Sorbet

Soup of Strawberries with Champagne and Vanilla

Port-Roasted Figs with Crème Fraîche Custard, Lemon Beignets and Olive Oil

Roasted Pears with Date Cake and Sherry Vinegar Ice Cream

CHOCOLATE

Chocolate Soufflé with Orange and Almond Ice Cream and Hot Chocolate Sauce

Fondant of Chocolate with Milk Ice Cream, 100s and 1000s and Bitter Chocolate Foam

Chocolate Mousses and Textures

Chocolate and Burnt Citrus Pavé with Bitter Chocolate Sorbet, Goat’s Milk Purée, Espresso and Olive Oil

The Square Chocolate Bar with Peanuts, Salt and Caramel

DESSERTS IN A GLASS

Lemon Posset with a Blueberry Compote and Warm Vanilla Beignets

Peach and Raspberry Trifle

Greengage, Nectarine and Gooseberry Fool

Chocolate Mess

SORBETS

Blackberry Sorbet with Granny Smith Granita

Charentais Melon Sorbet with Watermelon Granita and Monbazillac

Passion Fruit Sorbet with Lime Granita

Rhubarb Sorbet with Blood Orange Granita

CHRISTMAS

Christmas Crumble Tart with Muscovado Ice Cream and Vanilla Sauce

Mincemeat Roulades

Christmas Pudding with Burnt Butter Ice Cream and Brandy Foam

Christmas Pudding Souffle with 21-Year-Old Glenfarclas Whisky and Malted Milk Ice Cream

BREAD

General Bread Methodology

Sourdough Starter

White Baguette Rolls

Granary Rolls

Walnut and Raisin Rolls

Sourdough

Fig and Hazelnut Bread

PETITS FOURS

Nougat

Hibiscus-Dipped Pineapple

Blood Orange Pâté De Fruit

Cider-Dipped Apples

Grapefruit Confit

Passion Fruit Swiss Roll

Salted Caramel Truffles

SUPPLIERS

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

Introduction

I have always had a sweet tooth. For those of us who consider a cracking pudding to be the ultimate eating experience, it seems inconceivable that there are people out there for whom desserts are nothing more than a sugar-laced mystery. For some, sugar represents a lifelong obsession, for others it’s a complete waste of time. I am firmly in the sugar camp, believing that puddings deliver pleasure in a way that simply cannot be achieved with savoury food. A meal seems incomplete without a sweet conclusion and, for me, one of life’s great delights is to end a first-class meal with a first-class dessert. No matter how much has gone before, I always have the capacity to indulge in the sweet stuff.

I arrived in London from South Africa as a young lad. We lived in a Kensington backwater near a small parade of shops, including a newsagent’s. My brother and I would spend hours combing the streets for dislodged lead wheel weights that had become embedded in the tarmac. We would gouge them out, melt them down and sell them to the local scrap-metal merchant, spending most of the proceeds on sweets from this lovely little shop. South Africa had sweets, of course, but not like this. Not in huge jars, row upon row, shelf upon shelf. How I have any teeth left at all is a mystery to me.

My mum was, and still is, a great cook. As far as puds go, she had a pretty good repertoire, knocking out a mighty fine upside-down cake, a sublime crème brûlée and wonderful cakes. Banana custard was a weekday staple – good when served freshly made, better if left long enough for a skin to form, and best of all from the fridge the next day. There were jellies, crumbles and meringues galore. Of all the puddings that my mum made, I enjoyed lemon surprise pudding the most. A rich lemon batter is poured into a deep dish and baked, causing extraordinary things to happen. The mixture quietly separates into two layers – an airy, lightly crusted top half with a heady, unctuous pool of curd-like lemon custard lurking below. The key to enjoying this was to let it cool slightly before delving in with a spoon, lacing its centre with cream and allowing it all to come together in perfect hedonistic harmony.

The fascinating thing about sweet foods is their capacity to bring happiness. Savoury food, particularly when coupled with a rampant appetite, can give immense pleasure, and I am every bit as much a savoury person as a sweet one. But as I sit here writing the list of puds from my distant early years, it brings happiness to the moment. Desserts do not need to cater to hunger – that, generally speaking, has been dealt with by the preceding courses. Desserts are surplus to requirement. They are wholly indulgent little pleasures that satisfy the soul in a unique fashion.

When I went away to university, there were two fundamental changes in my life: no mother nearby to cook for me and no money in my pocket for eating out. This was when I did my most significant research into chocolate bars. I still acknowledge the brilliance of their creators, for the treats that are machine produced by the million are often truly delicious. An understanding of how to deliver pleasure is demonstrated in the world of chocolate bars perhaps better than anywhere else. The combination of chocolate, biscuit, caramel and maybe nuts has been presented to us in countless formats, yet the great classics of years gone by have never been ousted from the shelves. Crisp biscuit, brittle chocolate, chewy caramel and roasted nuts – it’s not rocket science, yet all these years down the line the quest to innovate distracts chefs from their primary purpose of simply producing something delicious to eat. How many attempts to displace the classics have failed? How many self-conscious chocolate bars and desserts have completely missed the mark?

After I graduated, I spent a summer working in a château in the Dordogne. Three dishes stay in my memory: gratin de salsifis au parmesan, brochettes de ris de veau au madère and that great classic, tarte Tatin. It was my first encounter with tarte Tatin, a dessert that has the potential to be as delicious as it is famous yet, more often than not, lets us down. Once in a while we get served a cracker, so good that we forget the disappointment of the preceding ten, and so the cycle goes on. The finest tarte Tatin I have ever eaten was made by Roger Pizey, the pastry chef at Harveys (Marco Pierre White’s legendary outpost), where I worked for a while. Four ingredients: apples, butter, sugar and puff pastry. Deceptively simple. Yet, with a little know-how, a decent pan and a furnace of a stove, these four ingredients can be transformed into one of the greatest creations of all: a deep, rich, golden mass of caramelised apple slumped in a rigid, glistening, caramel-laden pastry shell, leaching its excess sauce when turned out on to a plate. Top this with freshly churned vanilla ice cream and you’re away.

On my return from the Dordogne, I went to work in the contract catering arm of the renowned Roux brothers’ empire. Here, while struggling with a steep learning curve, I watched the resident pastry chef from afar. Day after day she produced the wonderful Roux classics. Délice au cassis was unlike anything I had ever seen before. Such technique, such beauty and so delicious – a blackcurrant mousse, set in a ring mould on a layer of wafer-thin sponge and topped with an intense, deep-purple glaze of staggering gloss and finish. Tarte au citron appeared most weeks too. Perhaps the best of all tarts, it became ubiquitous on dessert menus during the 1990s – probably off the back of the fame of Marco’s ‘Assiette of Lemon’. The origins of this dish in the UK, however, rest, I am sure, with the Roux brothers. I have made many lemon tarts in my time and I like to think I know what I am doing. There is always an air of apprehension and anticipation at the outset of every lemon tart journey. I undoubtedly know what constitutes a perfect one. Yet somehow, despite its apparent simplicity, a flawless lemon tart is one of the hardest things to produce. It’s easy to score eight out of ten, but ten out of ten? That’s tricky. It all starts with the pastry – making it, rolling it out, using it to line the tart tin, resting it, baking it blind to a precise shade of golden. Does it shrink at all, drawing the sides in at an unattractive angle? Does it crack and therefore require remedial patchwork – a procedure that may well be concealed by the custard and go unnoticed by the consumer, but a definite loss of a mark or two for the creator. Does it leak when the mix is poured into the tart shell? If so, will a blowtorch under the baking tray at the source of the leak stem the flow? Exactly how much of the pastry has become soggy as a result of the leak? Marks lost for any of these. Out comes the tart, still just wobbling in the middle and, hopefully, on the way to a perfect set. Or not? As it cools, does the custard crack, first a little, then a lot, and render the tart all but unusable? Or is it the other way, undercooked, through fear of overcooking it, and slumping on the plate once sliced? Or is it, for once, just right: a flawless tart of crisp, golden pastry and delicate lemon custard, the perfect combination of crumbling sweet crust and sublime, tangy, rich yet light, ethereal lemony bliss? A perfect lemon tart needs nothing to accompany it, no cream or ice cream to detract from its wondrous purity. It was one just like this that blew me away at Harveys in 1988, when having dinner there with my wife-to-be, Jennie, and I remember it as if it were yesterday. With hindsight, the lemon tart was probably the final piece of the jigsaw that became the decision to apply to work there. Not in my wildest imagination had I thought that food could be like the meal I had there, but I certainly wanted to know how it was done and in particular how to make that tart.

I made many lemon tarts at Harveys but most of my mornings were spent making tuiles. Five varieties of wafer-thin biscuits were baked and shaped over broom handles – almond, hazelnut, coconut, orange and almond, and brandy snap. Producing these became a daily challenge and, at fifty-plus of each tuile every morning, it was enough to keep me busy. The mission? To make the lot without breaking a single tuile. I would get into the kitchen first, grab the trays, flick on the oven, get out the mixes, butter the trays and apply the mixes to them. The application was different for each biscuit – some needed templates, some a fingertip of mix swirled on to a frozen tray, others a dollop from a spoon on to a tray that was too hot to handle. And this was the easy part. Teasing the baked biscuits off the trays (no non-stick mats in the good old days) and shaping them was where the fun began. I would fire a tray in the oven every two minutes to keep the pressure on and ensure it did not take all bloody day! At first all was calm, just slipping a tray into the oven every couple of minutes. Then it would turn into a tour de force, or not, of juggling trays in, trays out, trays cooling, tuiles being peeled off, tuiles being moulded and tuiles being layered in boxes. It felt like throwing a couple dozen balls into the air and having to juggle them all to a tidy conclusion. The reality was that most days trays would tumble, tuiles would stick, burn or shatter and the mission would have failed once more. Until the next day, that is. And the next day always seemed to come round so very quickly at Harveys. Working on the pastry section there taught me something important, however: no matter how beautiful a dessert might look or how clever its production might have been, at the centre of each one must be an element that will deliver pleasure and nourish the heart and soul. All of Marco’s desserts excelled in this respect. None of them produced the disappointment that can come from a pretty little collection of sweet confections masquerading as dessert.

Eventually I moved on to Bibendum, run by Simon Hopkinson. One of the great chefs of his generation, he stood proud over the kitchen, a true master of flavour. No pretence, no gimmicks, just outstanding produce, bucket loads of knowhow and the finest dining room in London in which to serve his wonderful food. Working in the pastry section there for some months, I came across some of the great classics of French bistro cooking: crèmes brûlées, tartes fines, biscuits glacés and the like, plus almond tart and passion fruit bavarois. All of them wonderful, proper, delicious desserts. His signature dessert, pithiviers au chocolat, was one I had never seen before and in fact have never seen since. It was about as deliciously rich and indulgent as a great pud can be. A ball of butter-laden cocoa-based frangipane, spiked with chocolate chips, is encased between two discs of puff pastry and baked into a golden wonder of oozing, chocolatey wickedness. As if it needed bolstering – but hell, why not? – it was served with ivory-coloured organic Jersey cream, the type that requires a flick of the wrist to detach it from the spoon. Heaven for those wise enough to order it.

After a brief spell back at Harveys, I found myself chosen to head up the kitchen for restaurateur Nigel Platts-Martin’s new venture, The Square. My very considerable lack of experience was offset by a bottomless pit of enthusiasm, naivety and energy. The opening pastry menu was as follows:

Crème brûlée

Tarte Tatin

Lemon tart

Tutti-frutti ice cream

Port-roasted figs with cinnamon fritters and mascarpone

Nougat glacé

Sorbets

The lunch menu is still a bargain... but not quite the bargain it was 22 years ago!

The brûlée was, more often than not, a great dessert. I followed the Bibendum recipe for the double-cream-based custard and simply poured it into a tray and left it to set. A dollop of this was served on the plate – sometimes as it should have been, a thick, almost upstanding quenelle of golden cream, and other times a pool of undercooked custard, equally delicious but just not quite right. It was topped with a wafer-thin, super-brittle square of nougatine – a technique I had perfected while working at Harveys. It was, although I say it myself, a pretty nifty modern take on a true classic. It was just inconsistent!

As for the tarte Tatin, we young (once upon a time) cooks always want to be different and I rather bizarrely decided not to use the traditional round pans but to go for rectangular Le Creuset terrine moulds instead. The caramelisation was truly sensational but inevitably the slices from the centre would weaken, causing their sides to cave in and collapse. I still harbour a burn from making those.

I liked the idea of serving an ice cream as a dessert in its own right and, rather bizarrely, settled on tutti-frutti as the flavour. I had seen some amazing glacé fruit that I wanted to use but, when it came to opening the container on the first day of service, it turned out I had actually been sent finely diced synthetic candied melon. Irresistibly convenient, so out it came and, spoon by spoon, was folded into the vanilla ice cream base. Jonathan Meades was one of the A-list critics at the time and his comments on the dish still haunt me – it was the first full-blown annihilation of my cooking.

Twenty-one years down the line, we still serve port-roasted figs towards the end of summer in pretty much the same way as we did at the outset. Old-school and very, very good. Nougat glacé was straight out of Harveys and originated from Pierre Koffman’s La Tante Claire – so if it worked for them, it had to work for me too! Simple and delicious, it’s a combination of meringue, whipped cream and caramelised nuts. As for the sorbets, I can’t remember what flavours we started with but on the many days when I was on pastry I plumped for Sauternes. This was a spectacular sorbet that required no preparation whatsoever, just the bottle and a corkscrew.

I have included bread in this book because it is one of the responsibilities of the pastry chef. We have baked bread at The Square twice a day, every day, for over twenty-one years. I’m proud of that. I reckon that’s over a million rolls or 100 tons of dough. Bread is a big commitment and the pastry department has never wavered in its determination to keep the tradition going. One has to question oneself from time to time, though, and in the case of bread I have asked, ‘Why go through all the effort of baking it when exceptionally good bread is out there to be bought?’ At times, maybe it could have been better, but that process of kneading, shaping, proving and baking is as much a part of life in the kitchens of The Square as the making of our lasagne of crab. I would not dream of changing it. These days, there is no doubt in my mind that our bread is up with the best in London, but it takes time and dedication and just cannot be rushed.

In those same twenty-one years, of one thing I am sure: the consistency and quality of all that comes out of the pastry section has quietly progressed under the leadership of a string of talented pastry chefs. At the outset we had one pastry chef to cover a seven-day week with over a thousand covers. We now have a team of five to deal with a mere 750 covers a week. It would be pretty poor if those figures did not couple up with progress. Barry was our first pastry chef, a lovely lad on short-term loan from a good friend, Chris Chown, who owns the beautiful Plas Bodegroes in Wales. Chris closes his restaurant for a couple of months each year and I was the lucky recipient of his team. Barry passed the baton to Justin, an incredibly talented Cornish lad who raised the bar forever more. There was Johan, the mad Frenchman, who was given unprecedented free rein and brought technique and humour to the fore. There was Dirty Dave and his millefeuille of grapes, Beatrice and her total command, and Regis, the wild, high-energy and very able Frenchman who contributed so much. They have come and they have gone but I owe an awful lot to each and every one of them. They all lead to Fraser, aka Captain, who has been running the pastry section for years. I have become utterly aware that success is far less about your own ability than that of those around you. Fraser came from a pedigree background by the name of Midsummer House, in Cambridge. He was not hugely experienced but when I met him it was immediately clear that I was looking at a man of substance – uncomplicated, incredibly nice, ambitious and polite, and that, I can tell you, is a rare thing in the world of pastry. That sounds like an insult to pastry chefs at large and it is certainly not intended to be, but all I have ever wanted is to find someone who aims to please and to be a part of The Square team, rather than feel the relentless urge to express their inner self on a plate. There is no doubt that pastry chefs are specialist operators and all too often they are let loose by head chefs to do whatever they want. Over time, Fraser has become so tuned in to what I like and what is right for The Square that he now runs that department with a minimum of consultation, and it is a joy I have come to take for granted. Under his stewardship, the pastry section has matured, its product improved, its methods refined, its management come good and, as a result, its staff turnover has diminished.

The pastry team is responsible for a huge proportion of a diner’s overall food experience and their day is jam-packed with flour- and sugar-related mise en place and high-octane service from 7 a.m. to 1 a.m. It is a whirl of mixers, banging of trays, clattering of whisks and fighting for stove space. It is the folding of sourdough, the baking of soufflés, the dipping of chocolates, the buttering of bread trays. And then there’s the cheesecakes, the endless cheesecakes. From all this activity come the canapés, the bread, the garnishes for the amuse-bouches, the desserts, petits fours, chocolates and nougat. They create the first and last impression for every single guest. So important is the role of the pastry chef that, head chef aside, they are the most important person in the kitchen. We rely completely on their ability to deliver their specialist contribution seamlessly, in time, every time, without fail. That’s responsibility.

The truth is, the world of the pastry chef is very different from that of their savoury counterparts. The endless tasting and judgement that play such a critical role in cooking savoury courses are, for the most part, replaced by accurate measurement and exacting technique. The pastry work at The Square is not overly complex or riddled with fiddly methods but it does require a very different mindset and an appreciation of the importance of quantities, cooking times and technique in general. Our repertoire of desserts is relatively contained. This is mainly because I am unwilling to deviate too far from the things I love to eat myself. My stomach never lies, it knows all too well when something special has reached it, and I base my pastry menus very much on those things. With savoury cooking, it is not particularly difficult to refine dishes into the realms of sophistication and elegance without detracting from their inherent deliciousness. Desserts, however, pose a much more challenging task, for over-refinement is very likely to strip away the dish’s heart and soul. Multi-component assemblies of tricksy little titbits just do not deliver pleasure for me. It is the humble puds that we all tend to love, the crumbles and tarts, brûlées and brownies. Yet it is so hard to refine them or come up with alternatives that both titillate our gastronomic expectations and nourish the soul. Our respect for this one fact alone has helped keep our creative pastry egos in check at The Square and, generally speaking, I believe the repertoire of dishes in this book to be both refined enough to serve at the very highest level and delicious and satisfying enough to keep those who love a good pud thoroughly happy.

Above all, I hope this is a collection of recipes that will be used. One thing is for sure: they have all been conceived to be enjoyed rather than oooh’d and aah’d at and the vast majority of them are, with a certain amount of organisation, very much achievable in a domestic kitchen. If you want to produce a special dessert at home, it is important to acknowledge that you probably just do not have space and equipment comparable to those of a professional kitchen, so it is critical that you select your recipe carefully and do all the necessary thinking ahead to ensure you have what is required to do what is being asked of you. When desserts go wrong they can go very wrong, and these catastrophes occur as often as not after considerable amounts of time and effort. Do not let this happen to you – it is entirely avoidable if you plan carefully and keep realism rather than fantasy to the fore. Desserts and petits fours form the conclusion of a meal and as such are the most likely resting place of judgment on the whole experience. Give their preparation the time and commitment they warrant and you and your guests will be rewarded well.

Behind every great restaurant... with my pastry chef (left), Fraser Thomson.

USING THE RECIPES IN THIS BOOK

The one thing that has struck me about glossy, high-end and, for the most part, ‘fine-dining’ cookbooks over the years is that the information given in a recipe is generally insufficient to achieve results even remotely close to those depicted – that is, if you are lucky enough to have a picture to look at. It is hard, though, given that the reader is probably lacking the resources a professional chef has to hand. I therefore decided that if I were to write such a book I would be as thorough and comprehensive as possible. To this end, the recipes may appear longwinded and rather laborious, but hidden in their detail is enough guidance for success, I hope.

Prior to the ingredients list and method for each recipe is a section of four short introductions. These are intended to give a clearer understanding of what the dish is about, what to focus on, what difficulties lie ahead (if any!) and how to tackle them chronologically.

Overview

This gives a sense of what is required to cook the dish. It outlines its contents and how they will be cooked.

Focus on

In every dish there are inevitably ingredients that require careful selection or methods that require careful execution. These are highlighted here, with tips given to ensure success.

Key components

This is simply a list of the key assemblies that constitute the dish. It gives an indication of how