Green Salad
El Celler de Can Roca
Chef: Joan Roca
Country: Spain
City: 17007 Girona
Address: Can Sunyer, 48
(+34)972222157info@cellercanroca.com
Roca’s brother's cuisine is synonymous with permanent inspiration, generally based on evolutionary creativity. After Jordi materialized his Green Chromatism last year –an anthological work that won the Dish of the Year award (see in this section), this time, Joan transfers the same cooking line from desserts to salty dishes with another original, light and refreshing formula: the very green –both conceptually and chromatically– green salad. They also created an orange version, the orange salad, predominantly based on sweet sensations. In the green one, acidity, bitterness and the liveliness of the vegetable garden express themselves in a more exuberant way, with stronger and brighter contrasts, faithful to the silkiness and harmony that distinguish the house.
The Recipe
4 SERVINGS
COMPOSITION
•Green tomato
•Baby cucumber
•Lime jelly
•Avocado cream
•Olive ice cream
•Chartreuse candies
•Sauce of cucumber skin
Green tomato seeds
1 green tomato
Cut the tomato into halves and carefully remove all the seeds. Cut them in three parts and set aside.
Baby cucumber
1 baby cucumber
Wash the skin carefully and slice with a mandolin. Cover and set aside.
Lime jelly
20 g sugar
75 g water
20 g lime juice
1,2 g agar-agar
Boil water and sugar until sugar grains melt. Allow to cool, add the agar agar, boil again and remove from the heat. Add the lime juice, mix and transfer to a mould to harden.
Once cold, grind the whole until obtaining a soft jelly.
Avocado cream
140 g ripe avocado
14 g lime juice
Salt
Blend the avocado pulp, mix with the lime juice and salt. Introduce into a pastry bag and keep in the fridge.
Green olive ice cream
375 g Manzanilla green olives
145 g olive brine
25 g dextrose
2 g stabilizer for creams
2 g salt
37 g edible glycerin
Grind the olives and their brine until obtaining a very fine mixture without lumps. Strain through a thin conical strainer and mix the obtained juice with the dextrose. Heat until 40°C while stirring, add the remaining ingredients, whip and pasteurize at 85°C. Cool down and put in PacoJet containers. Freeze and process into the PacoJet just before serving.
Chartreuse candies
20 g water
60 g sugar
12 g green Chartreuse
Mix water with sugar and heat until 109°C. Remove from the heat, let cool down and add the Chartreuse. Set aside.
Prepare a sheet of cornflour and dehydrate for a few hours at 80°C. Press, smooth down and make little holes that will be filled with the syrup/Chartreuse mixture.
Sprinkle the surface carefully with a bit of dehydrated cornflour and let for about 24 hours at 40°C.
After that time, remove from the cornflour, clean with a paintbrush and set aside.
Cucumber skin jelly
330 g cucumber
0,4 g xanthan gum
Salt
Remove the cucumber skin leaving about 1 cm pulp. Blend and keep the juice. Salt and grind together with the xanthan gum.
Remove the air that has appeared while grinding with the help of a vacuum-machine. Set de jelly aside.
Finishing and assembly
Extra virgin olive oil
16 soft arugula sprouts
16 soft watercress sprouts
16 scarlet pimpernel leaves
Draw 3 dots of avocado purée and 3 dots of lime jelly on the plate. Place some fine slices of baby cucumber and a Chartreuse candy on top of the avocado dots. Put 2 seeds of Kumato tomato in the centre of the dish and surround with the arugula and watercress sprouts and the pimpernel leaves. Finish with the cucumber skin juice, a quenelle of Manzanilla olive ice cream and a few drops of olive oil.