Thursday 26 November 2015

labneh labneh labneeeh

Ever since my family switched to commercial yogurt, I've almost forgotten what the home made one tastes like. Sure, its almost got a cheese like set, but it usually all I can perceive is th tartness fro the yogurt that should last 2 weeks (sad, real sad yogurt).

As it turns out labneh is a super thick yogurt- well beyond the greek. When done right, for me it happens to be a bit reminiscent of cultured cream. Technically, it should make a nice gelato- which it did, especially by using invert sugar, which prevented a lot of technical flaws to otherwise occur. 

Yogurt, providing the white of the canvas, was ready to take on a shade of lime leaf. Just like vanilla makes almost everything better and cohesive, the lime leaf added another dimension.  

With room for acidity to be present, I felt sea buckthorn could be played with here. Turns the Himalayan region grows these really delicious berries, which ended up in a sorbet.

I wanted to avoid using any wheat based products for crunch, but couldn't quite figure out what it would be until I tried the dist with some freeze dried raspberries, which tasted like the best raspberry I've had in years.  

I still wanted an egg yolk in there. It works well in dishes with a sharp zing (the sorbet and raspberries) giving a little extra heaviness for the other components to relieve. An egg yolk custard, tocino de cielo is made with just the yolks, sugar and water. Bearing that in mind, I poached the egg yolk in a lime leaf syrup instead- enough for the outside film to become custard like and manageable, and the inside runny. It worked out pretty well, though I felt that the sugar syrup would need to be much thicker. 






Labneh and lime leaf gelato, freeze dried raspberries and basil, ''tocino del cielo'', sea buckthorn sorbet 







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