Blood orange, white chocolate and passion fruit

During a cooking workshop at Librije’s Atelier in Zwolle, I cooked a three-course lunch. My team was responsible for the dessert, which consisted of blood orange, white chocolate and passion fruit. At the end of the day, it was unanimously chosen as the favorite course.

At the cooking studio, workshops are held on various themes at weekends. From modern Japanese cuisine to a day dedicated entirely to sweets. You start cooking around noon, and afterwards you obviously eat your creations. The perfect way to spend an afternoon, if you ask me. The studio is equipped with the latest AEG appliances, which makes cooking even easier. I was particularly covetous of the steam ovens with sous vide function.

Perfect balance

All the dishes you cook have also genuinely appeared on the menu at Restaurant De Librije at some point—how fun is that? My team was therefore responsible for the dessert: blood orange ice cream with white chocolate and passion fruit curd. The fruit provided a perfect balance between sweet and sour, and the Huxelrebe Spätlese we drank with it was a wonderful match.

I think this was also the easiest recipe of the three, although it is still not a dish you can quickly make on a Tuesday evening. It is, however, the perfect ending to a dinner.

For more information about the various cooking workshops, visit the Librije’s Atelier website.

Method

Sorbet

Soak the gelatin in cold water.

Heat the water with the sugar and glucose until fully dissolved, then dissolve the gelatin in it.

Then add the orange juice.

Churn it in an ice cream machine.

Don’t have an ice cream machine? Freeze it on a baking sheet or something else on which you can spread it out thinly. Then put it in the blender and freeze again.

White chocolate curd

Put the white chocolate, egg yolks, sugar and five-spice powder in a vacuum bag and seal it.*

Then steam for 10 minutes at 85°C.*

When the mixture is cooked, add the butter piece by piece and blend with an immersion blender.

Leave the curd to set in the refrigerator.

* Not the lucky owner of an AEG steam oven? You can also heat the ingredients in a bain-marie until all the chocolate has melted and the mixture is warm.

Sugar syrup

Remove the zest from the lemon and orange, without the white pith.

Halve the vanilla pod lengthwise and scrape out the seeds.

Then put the sugar and water in a pan and add the zest and vanilla.

Allow to infuse gently over low heat for 15 minutes.

Passion fruit sauce

Cut the passion fruits in half and spoon out the pulp.

Bring this to a boil together with the sugar syrup.

Allow the juice to cool slightly.

Then briefly blend it with an immersion blender.

Lemon base

Bring all the ingredients to a boil together so that the sugar dissolves.

Ginger gel

Mix all the ingredients and bring to a boil.

Boil thoroughly for 1 minute.

Leave to cool in the refrigerator.

When the mixture is firm, blend it until smooth in the blender.

Endive

Separate the endive leaves.

Cut them into thin half-moons.

Blood orange

Peel the orange generously.

Then cut out the segments between the membranes.

To serve

Place dots of curd on the plate. Arrange orange segments between them. Also distribute dots of gel in between. Insert the endive half-moons into the gel and curd. Spoon the passion fruit sauce onto the plate. Finish with a quenelle of blood orange ice cream.

Image: Ron Greve