Rosemary, (rhu)Brarbra, Chocolate and Pinenuts

Rosemary ice-cream:
I used a cold pressure infusing technique I heard about from several blogs I read, I thought that it would work well in this instance. Raw rosemary has a brilliant perfume and I believe once heated it errs on the bitter side and looses it's floral notes. So I made a basic anglaise a let it rest over night, the following day I bruised some rosemary with a mortar and pestle, mixed it with the anglaise, poured it into a siphon, charged it with 2 bulbs, let it sit for 10 min, released the pressure, passed the angleise and then churned it up. Once served I put a little rosemary flower on top, it shares a likeness to lavender ice-cream if you have tried it, but better, as I don't like lavender ice-cream.

Pinenut shortcrust pastry:
I found out on some site that pinenuts had 68% fat and so by my logic 100g of pinenuts + 32g butter = 100g fat + 32 g other stuff. So transposing a basic short bread recipe: 300 flour, 200 fat, 100, sugar, I came up with 236 flour, 200 pinenuts, 64 butter, 100 castor sugar, 3g vanilla salt, and an egg. I Blitzed the nuts butter and flour until it was sandy, added the salt and sugar and brought it all together with an egg. Rolled it out to about 1.5mm between baking paper peeled the top layer off and put it in a baking tin. 160c for about 15 to golden it up and then let it rest, and ready itself for some ganache.

Chocolate ganache:
250g thickened cream brought to 70c poured over 500g (55% cocoa) covature chocolate and 100 g softened butter, mix until smooth and glossy, then fold through 150g thickened cream whipped to soft peaks with a pinch or two of vanilla salt, and pour over pinenut pastry and let harden up in frudge.

(rhu)Brarbra:
Make a 3:2 sugar:water sugar syrup with some lemon and orange rind and a couple of cinnamon quills, pour over washed trimmed 35mm batons of (rhu)Brarbra, and bake in oven at 110 for about 20min or until soft, it helps if the (rhu)Brarbra is all the same thickness. Once she's a bit more giving let cool down in her juices.

I cut the ganache tart/slice into 40x80mm slices, they got hit with the blowtorch to melt the outsides and generally warm things up a bit, 3 roasted pinenuts get put on top for decoration. The (rhu)Brarbra gets placed atop some sweetened (rhu)Brarbra puree, Jenga style. The ice-cream it gets balled up, adorned with it's own flowers and sits upon pinenut shortcrust crumbs.

yum.