Pear, tomato confit, spider crab and red prawn with green apple juice and ice cream
Martín Berasategui
Chef: Martín Berasategui
Country: Spain
City: 20160 Lasarte (Guipúzcoa)
Address: Loidi, 4
(+34) 943366471martin@martinberasategui.com
There are those who discredit the present creative capacity of Martín Berasategui, considered by many to be an articulator of others’ ideas, restructured from a very personal perspective and taken to unheard-of heights, as befits one of the two or three most complete chefs in the world. There is of course much truth to this view, but there are elements missing before we can characterize Martín’s entire body of work. In his honor, we must highlight his collection of 2004 creations, distinguished by a degree of fantasy and spark his cuisine has never had before. Exquisite is his Parmesan curd with green tomato juice and apple. In a similar vein of freshness, lightness, purity of flavor, essence and taste combinations are the bean sprouts and oyster with coffee, curry and pepper. In a more rustic vein is the fresh country egg at low temperature with roasted bacon, sweet chickpea juice and garlic-thyme bread: an intelligent cocido for the third millennium. The scallop and herb sandwich with spider crab infusion and raw artichoke and turnip-root celery salad constitutes a clairvoyant testimony of time and space without losing sight of the synchronicity of its components. At what point in his career has Berasategui shown such abandon so as to prepare a foie gras roasted with such attractive and talented touches as are given by mint and green tea in a liquid sheep’s milk curd. The roasted sea bass with seaweed, ginger chestnuts and green lemon milk validates the richness of its elements. Wonderful and daring is the pork jowl with pineapple saffron cream and sautéed apples and raisins with white grape juice. And absolutely heavenly is the green apple infusion with green apple ice cream, spider crab, diced pear, tomato confit…a dessert made into a celestial experience, a zenith reached through familiar flavors. And the line of new creations does not end there—this chef has become obsessed with culinary experimentation, fantasy and new principles.
The Recipe
Green apple infusion
Ingredients
- Juice from 1 lemon
- 5 green apples, liquefied
Method
Mix the ingredients and place in the freezer. When half frozen—that is, when the impurities of the green apple have frozen but the liquid has not—strain through a cloth so that the impurities are separated and you are left with the clean liquid.
Salad
Ingredients
- 1 c/c “Conference” pear, diced (3mm)
- 5 dice (3mm) tomato confit 1 cooked prawn, pealed with head on
- 6 dice (5mm) avocado
- 10g spider crab meat
Method
In a deep plate, place the tomato confit in the base and top with the spoonful of pear with the avocado. On one side, arrange the pealed prawn so that it leans on the salad with the head apart and add the spider crab meat.
Green apple sorbet
Ingredients
- 850g green apple juice (cored but not pealed)
- 675g sugar150g dextrose
- 590g water4 gelatin sheets, previously soaked in cold water
- Juice from 1 lemon, strained
Method
Mix all of the ingredients except for the juice. Warm, then incorporate the gelatin, stir well and add the apple juice. Strain and pour into a PacoJet.
Tomato confit
Ingredients
- Some ripe tomatoes
Method
Wash some ripe tomatoes, remove the cores and with a knife point make a cross on the underside.
Blanch them in plenty of boiling water for 30 seconds, just enough to make them easy to peel, then chill in ice water. Peel them, halve them lengthwise and remove the seeds as well as the interior flesh.
Cover a tray with a sheet of sulfurized paper and sprinkle with salt, sugar, finely chopped thyme and a few thin garlic slices. Arrange the tomatoes and sprinkle again with salt, sugar, finely chopped thyme and thin garlic slices. Drizzle a teaspoon of Assut extra virgin olive oil onto each tomato and place in the oven for 1 hour and 30 min. at 110ºC. Once the time has elapsed, turn the tomatoes over and leave in the oven for 1 hour and 30 min. more. When they have reached the optimal cooking point, place the tomatoes in a bowl covered in virgin olive oil. Cover well and store in the cold-storage room.
Assembly
In a deep dish, arrange the tomato confit with the pear and avocado. On one side and leaning on the salad, place the pealed prawn with its head and 8 basil sprouts. Spoon a small quenelle of sorbet on top of the salad; the waiter will serve a small half jar-full of cold liquefied apple.