Wednesday 20 February 2013

Hidemi Sugino's Sicile



This is the first time that I have ever attempted to make a recipe by professional pastry chef, that too them being Hidemi Sugino. If you don't know who he is just google his name and drool at the pictures of his desserts and you will soon realise that his cakes aren't just 'cakes' they are art. Wouldn't it be amazing to eat gourmet dessert everyday? Well like most people I don't have that luxury of having a gourmet pastry shop near me especially no Hidemi Sugino so the only way to eat these state of the art desserts is to make it myself, or at least have a go.

Evan's kitchen is a lovely blog which inspired me to say the least, as I realised that anyone can create these master pieces of desserts at home, whilst I was browsing through the vast array of mouth watering recipes and pictures. It seems so simple when you have the know how, but of course there are a few special tools and ingredients you need to acquire. One piece of kit which I highly recommend you get for this recipe is metal dessert rings; I only had 2 and I ended up struggling a little as I had to assemble the dessert in batches whilst the pistachio custard was thickening before I could fill the rings again, disaster, so the more the better. This recipe also used some new ingredients to me/, for example kirsch, so I ended up substituting, in this case I used raspberry juice instead. I also made everything from scratch including the  pistachio paste and almond paste. I guess they're difficult to come across in the shops would be expensive to buy, on the other hand it's pretty time consuming to make it yourself and you'll definitely need patience.


This is no 'quick' dessert as it has quite a few components to it, so I recommend that you make it over 2 days. For me it was worth the effort, but I'm not sure that I'm going to make it again anytime soon just due to the amount of time involved. Why don't you try giving Sugino's masterpiece a go



Source:
Evan's Kitchen