Day 8: Fermented Rowan berries in white chocolate

Rowan berries, Sorbus aucuparia


I have never been a great fan of Rowan berries - I love the colour and look of them - but have failed over the years to make much of them, in the form of jellies or preserves.  This, if I am honest, has caused a bit of a resistance to trying them with chocolates!  This changed a number of years ago, when I learned from a fellow forager, that the young spring buds have a fabulous bitter almond flavour - even 'better than sloe blossom'.  And it is true!  a friend made some ice cream flavoured with rowan bud and it was amazing - possibly the most delicious ice cream ever tasted - and this inspired me to try a white chocolate ganache.  It makes a fabulously rich, heady almondy ganache with a very delicate pale green hue. Absolutely delicious.

But back to those berries!  This year, prompted by success with salting sloe berries over the last few years, I thought I would have a go with rowan berries.    I just added salt to a jar of berries, and everytime I walked past the jar, I picked it up and shook it.  They don't have a great deal of juice, so not a great deal, if any, liquid developed, as it does with plums and blaeberries, but the berries slowly changed colour and after about 10 days, had started to taste quite interesting.  The salt anad fermentation seems to manage any astringency and bitterness in the berries, bring out the flavours lurking underneath all of that.  Fascinating!

The process also lightened their colour, turning them almost orange and I decided to go with a white chocolate - partly to sweeted the tartness, but also to capture that flavour.  We used our own Eich Ghael 40% white chocolate for this, for which we use Chocolat Madagascar natural cocoa butter.

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