Deconstructed Chłodnik

Chłodnik is a Polish cold beet soup along the lines of a cold borscht (борщ) that comes to my mind each year when the first beets arrive just as the weather is turning miserably hot and humid. You can see the shockingly pink soup in all its glory in this post, garnished with hard-boiled egg, dill, and diced beets.

In very recent days, we have done a deconstructed version of this soup for our nightly Chef's Whim tasting menu, a version that customers have raved about.

Traditional chłodnik (where "traditional" means "what my grandmother used to make" and varies quite naturally from person to person) is roughly made from beets, sour pickles, cucumbers, dill, and some form of tart dairy product, such as buttermilk. That said, it's a soup and I'm certain that very few cooks follow a formal recipe and each batch will contain whatever ingredients are at hand.

Deconstructed Chłodnik: Dill Pickle Soup with Pickled Beet Sorbet

For our tasting, we pulled the soup and the beets apart. Our soup is Greek yogurt, cornichons, cornichon brine, water, cucumber, dill, and just enough honey to tame the vinegar and yogurt. Once it comes out of the blender, it almost tastes like a refreshing dill pickle soup.

The beets we roasted, pickled for 48 hours, and blended very fine with the pickling liquid and then put in the ice cream machine to make a sorbet.

Final plate up is the yogurt soup base down in the bowl, then we scatter around chopped cornichons, chopped hard-boiled egg, dill fronds, and smoked sablefish. In the very center, we place a quenelle of the pickled beet sorbet and top that with a cucumber-tasting borage flower from my garden.

Honey-Lime Greek Yogurt Panna Cotta with Blackberries

I have a Chef's Tasting tonight and I developed this recipe for it. I was searching for something small, light, and refreshing enough to serve at the end of a 9-course menu, not an easy feat by any stretch. It takes full advantage of the ultra-delicious blackberries that are in full swing right now.

Panna cotta, which means cooked cream in Italian, seems lighter than most custard desserts such as crème caramel or flan because it is usually made from lower fat dairy products and because it contains no eggs. It is set with gelatin. Panna cotta is really a misnomer: the cream is never cooked; it is merely heated to facilitate melting the gelatin.

Honey-Lime Greek Yogurt Panna Cotta with Blackberries

12 sheets gelatin
2 cups milk
2/3 cup honey
1 cup heavy cream
1 cup sour cream
2 cups Greek yogurt
zest of two limes
16 4-ounce custard molds
blackberries, honey, and lime juice for garnish

I have to say that I love sheet gelatin and I despise powdered gelatin. Once you've seen how easy sheet gelatin is to work with, you'll never go back. I use Gelita Silver; it works every time. If you use powdered gelatin, you'll have to figure out the conversion. I think it is four sheets to the standard gelatin packet.

Cover the gelatin sheets in cold water and let them soften, about ten minutes will do. I never time it because by the time I have everything else assembled, the gelatin is ready to use.

Mix the honey and milk in a pan and warm it. It does not have to be super hot to melt the gelatin. Meanwhile, mix the cream, sour cream, yogurt, and lime zest in a bowl.

Squeeze the excess water out of the gelatin and stir into the warm milk. It should melt immediately. Let the milk cool for a few minutes.

Pour the milk-gelatin mixture into the yogurt mixture and stir well, but try to avoid introducing air bubbles to the mixture.

Spray the custard molds (I use disposable aluminum ones) with pan spray. Fill the molds and transfer to a refrigerator until set, about 4 hours should do.

To serve, run a knife around the edge of the mold and invert on a plate. If this doesn't do the trick, warm the panna cotta in a water bath for a few seconds and it should slide right out. Top with fresh blackberries mixed with honey and a squeeze of lime juice.