Technical virtuosity, playful irony, disruptive taste concepts, old and new, blended like vinaigrette. The baba bread is a dessert that well represents the multifaceted philosophy of a great master: Massimiliano Alajmo.
Baba bread with green cardamom apple soup, oil, morello cherry sorbet and vinegar
The story
This is a good summuary from Massimiliano Alajmo's cooking, the baba bread. Emulating the baba texture through a siphon sponge cake is certainly the virtuosity of a kitchen nerd. But there is much more to the dessert.
Credits Lido Vannucchi
"On the occasion of my first-born daughter Adele's christening in 2005, I dedicated a cake to her. I focused on the softness of her cheeks, and so we worked on a sponge cake with the characteristics of a very fluffy baba," says Massimiliano. "The cake, soaked and filled with lemon, precisely took the name 'Lemon Adele.' The various decorated cupcakes were arranged on a huge sugar music box, twirled by a cook disguised as a rabbit hidden under the large cake." 
Credits Pal Hansen
"In the following months, we focused on an extremely light end-of-the-meal version seasoned with little oil, salt, and vinegar. A declination created to emphasize lightness and freshness through air and water. Then there is another version on the plate, much more like cake, which undergoes a limoncello bath served with a very soft lemon cream and freshly frozen wild strawberries, served just frozen."
Credits Marco Peruzzo
The dish
What stands out above all is the disorienting taste without provocation, due to the use of licorice but also the use in pastry of raspberry vinegar which, with its decisive fruity expression, you can smell it also in the aromas. The result is a new concept of imbibing, which ends up recovering the all-Italian topos of oil pastry.
Credits Lido Vannucchi
Any advice? "It is essential to siphon the baba cake immediately so that the texture remains soft. An excellent cake can be made with the baba cake soaked in raspberry syrup and filled with Chantilly cream and seasonal fruit. Sprinkle with powdered sugar and serve immediately."
Credits Lido Vannucchi
In the glass, Le Calandre sommelier Matteo Bernardi recommends a Nero Musqué from Zanovello, a sweet Sicilian wine made from black muscat, a wild grape variety in the Euganean Hills, because of the similarities in olfactory and retro-olfactory, morello cherry notes with refreshing references.
Baba bread recipe with green cardamom apple soup, oil, morello cherry sorbet and vinegar
Credits Wowe
Ingredients for 4 people
For the baba cake
(Dose for 4 circular molds of 10 cm ø and 8 cm high)
- 180 g whole egg
- 155 g sugar
- 120 g medium flour
- 60 g of egg yolk
- 20 g potato starch
- 6 g honey
- 6 g salt
- 2 pinches of soy lecithin
- ½ teaspoon baking powder
- 1 teaspoon raspberry vinegar
- Scent of natural vanilla powder
- Scent of ground green cardamom
- Scent of grated lemon peel
Method
Blend the egg, yolk and sugar with an immersion blender for 30 seconds. Combine the remaining ingredients and whip again until frothy. Transfer to two siphons and load each with 2 cartridges for cream and 1 for soda. Shake and siphon the mixture inside the previously buttered and floured molds. Bake immediately at 175°C ventilated with 20% humidity for 15 minutes.
For the sorbet
- 200 g of cold water
- 60 g morello cherry syrup
- 10 g raspberry vinegar
- 5 g dried untreated rose petals
Method
Steep the rose petals in cold water for 15 minutes. Strain and combine with the rest of the ingredients. Freeze the mixture in the Pacojet glass and freeze in the sorbet maker.
For the soup
- 200 g rennet apple juice
- 2 g lemon juice
- 8 crushed green cardamom seeds
Method
Mix the ingredients together cold. Allow to steep 15 minutes, strain and serve at 8°C.
Cake composition
- ½ grated yellow apple, scented with a pinch of whipped green cardamom seeds
- 16 1-cm cubes of ripe banana
- 12 drops of raspberry vinegar
- 1 pinch of smoked sea salt
- Extra virgin olive oil
- 4 leaves of sorrel
- Edible flower petals
Method
In a bowl, pour the soup, raspberry vinegar, grated apple, and banana cubes. Garnish with a drizzle of extra virgin olive oil, chopped sorrel, flower petals, salt, and a quenelle of morello cherry sorbet. Serve with the warm baba bread.
Address
Ristorante Le Calandre
Via Liguria n 1 – 35030 Sarmeola di Rubano (PD)
Tel. +39 049 630303
Mail info@alajmo.it
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