I'm going to put the following statement out there and you can do with it what you wish. Are you ready? Here goes.
I hate saffron.
There, I said it.
Now before you send the saffron mafia after me, let me at least explain how I came to this conclusion.
Saffron adds a metallic-like aftertaste to whatever recipe it is used in that does nothing for me. It also tends to turn the ingredients that it's used in yellow. And did I mention that it is expensive? This little baggie cost me $15.
Yes I know it comes from the crocus flower, is very popular in the Mediterranean, and needs to be handpicked. But I don't like it. I'm sure you're thinking, 'but what would happen to Paella or Risotto Milanese if we didn't have this spice?' I agree, it is a necessary component to those dishes. I just can't get past the metallic, burnt plastic like taste that saffron imparts. So you can understand my reservations for making this next recipe, a dessert nonetheless, with an ingredient that normally never pops up in desserts.
I may not be the best advertiser for saffron, and I don't want you to think that this is something that is really putrid or sickly. I would prefer it if you would be the judge on that and try it yourself. But I chose this recipe because I had some leftover saffron from the Seabass recipe that I made a few weeks ago, and I figured why not use up what's left of it. Plus I kind of had a craving for a dessert, but because it is been so humid here this week, I didn't feel like firing up the oven and heating the house anymore than it already is. So I thought 'what have I got to lose?' with this very simple, no bake dessert.
First, I combined cream, sugar, lemon zest, and saffron threads in a sauce pan. This mixture gets whisked lightly and brought to a boil.
After it has boiled, I took it off the stove and let it rest for 10 minutes to develop flavor and color.
I then added some powdered gelatin to this cream mixture. It needed to be whisked until it was fully dissolved.
I then strained it and added some cold milk.
The finished mixture then gets poured into foil cups, where it will need to chill until the custard had set.
I let these set up overnight. A note of caution though for those that are following along with their own Babbo Cookbook, there is a slight omission here in the instructions for this part of the recipe. In the recipe, Mario said to pour the mixture into chilled dessert cups and that the mixture can be unmolded by running the tip of the knife around the edge of the cup when ready to plate. This is all true, however, he never mentions that this mixture will still be warm when poured and will need time to set up in the refrigerator, otherwise you would be left with a liquid mass that would just ooze all over your plate. It's kind of confusing if you have never made something like this before. Luckily I caught it and for those that are following along with this blog and cookbook, hopefully this will save you much frustration and disaster. Especially given the expense of saffron.
Once these chilled overnight, it was time to run a paring knife around the edge of the mold and plate the dessert. In the recipe notes, Mario suggests that you switch up the type of fruit that is paired with them as he does at Babbo. He recommended using grapefruit segments and that is what I was prepared to do. But as you can see from my final product, I wasn't able to get that far.
Epic fail number one. I'm not sure what happened, but even after allowing these to set up overnight, I still wound up with a runny, oozing mess that never set. I was even very cautious to make sure that I followed the recipe to the tee.
Overall, I think that there must have been a misprint or it was just a plain old bad recipe that slipped through the eyes of the food editor. After all, there was the omission that I mentioned several paragraphs ago. This was the first recipe in this cookbook that did not work out at all.
This was rather disappointing. As I said, I'm not a big fan of saffron, but I was kind of looking forward to tasting the contrast of flavors in this dessert to see if it would somehow change my perspective on saffron. Nope. I did end up tasting my runny liquid, as a chef you should taste everything that you make, and the flavor was actually not too bad. Of course it is not supposed to be a runny liquid.
Would I try making this again? No. With the expense of the saffron I was quite pissed off that this was a complete waste. I may in the future try making this again but omit the saffron and just use the lemon zest and increase the amount of gelatin to see if it would work. But I won't be doing that any time soon.
Lesson learned. Chock one up to experience. So far this journey has been quite amazing and has allowed me to taste some amazing food. But this one was a bonk. Sorry Mario I guess you are not quite the superhero that I have made you out to be.
Okay maybe that last line was a little harsh.
I'm sorry.
But now I am going to have to try something super spectacular in this book to get back into a better frame of mind.
Until next time...
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