Over the course of his long career, Jordi Roca has crafted dozens of masterpieces. The dessert he is most proud of, however, is "sheep's wool", a creation he came up with in 2003: a quasi-monograph devoted to sheep's milk, taking you into the magic of a farm in the Pyrenees through stills of technique and the power of synesthesia.
The idea
Everyone in the great little world of food knows Jordi Roca, pastry chef at The Celler, as a prolific and ingenious professional, as adept at handling chocolate and ice cream as he is at plate desserts. When the American magazine Tasting Table asked him what recipe he wanted to be remembered for, however, he had no hesitation: it is the "postre lactico" created for the 3-star restaurant in 2003 and never made it off the menu, which also changes constantly.
The main player in the composition is the milk of Ripollesa sheep, a Pyrenees native breed, whose milk is particularly sweet, creamy and aromatic. In the great pastry chef it evoked feelings of peace and life, in liaison with the scent of newborn grandchildren.
The dessert
Of course, technique puts its own spin on it, drawing a variety of flavors and textures from the white liquid: dulce de leche, yogurt drops, ricotta mousse, and milk ice cream, plus a gill of guava for acidity and a cotton-candy cloud for surprise effect.
The game is further elaborated in a synaesthetic sense by the combination of a card scented with sheep's wool essential oil, which smells like a farm in the Pyrenees.
It is obtained by vacuum maceration of wool in acetate for 12 hours and subsequent distillation of the filtered liquid at Rotovapor, as Directo al Paladar details, echoing a social media post by the great pastry chef.
SHEEP'S WOOL by Jordi Roca: the recipe
Ingredients
For the guava gill
- 500 g guava puree
- 100 g sugar
Heat 100 g of puree with the sugar, dissolving it. Incorporate the rest of the puree. Spread thinly on a silicone sheet and freeze.
To make dulce de leche
- 1 l sheep's milk
- 500 g sugar
- 1 pinch of baking soda
Heat milk with sugar and reduce until it turns a caramel color. Add baking soda and let reduce a little more, without stopping stirring. Set aside in a cool place.
For the sheep's milk mousse
- 500 g fresh sheep's milk ricotta
- 500 ml sheep's milk cream
Mix the ricotta and cream and load into a siphon.
For the sheep's milk ice cream
- 500 ml of sheep's milk cream
- 500 ml sheep's milk
- 100 g invert sugar
- 200 g of sugar
- 100 g dextrose
- 5 g stabilizer
- 500 g soft fresh sheep's milk cheese
Mix cream, milk and invert sugar, then heat. Incorporate sugar, dextrose and stabilizer, pasteurize at 85 °C without stopping stirring. Strain, cool and blend in cheese. Refrigerate for12 hours, whip and store at -18 °C.
To make the cotton-candy cloud
- sugar and milk powder
Insert the sugar into the cotton candy machine and sprinkle the cloud with milk powder.
To guarnish
- sheep's yogurt
In a round dish place the dulce de leche at the base, a scoop of ice cream in the center, and on top the mousse skewered with a guava gill. Finish with cotton candy and a few drops of yogurt.
Contacts
El Celler de Can Roca
Carrer de Can Sunyer, 48, 17007 Girona, Spagna
Phone: +34 972 22 21 57
