I’ve been waiting for this for almost a year Miso waited. When I met Peter Koch from Black Forest Miso When I was interviewed again on the occasion of the new edition of my book MISO, he told me about it. In recent years, he has received more and more inquiries from pastry chefs after chocolate brownies and miso pralines took the world of sweet cravings by storm. True to the motto: where there is sugar, a little bit of salt isn’t bad either. Everyone who has ever baked a cake knows this. And miso provides the salt and an intoxicating depth of umami to boot.
So why not just the components? Vanilla and cocoa add it to the miso? Peter Koch took the risk. When starting a new barrel of miso, you can never tell in advance whether what has emerged after several months of maturation and fermentation is totally great or a failure. It’s an investment that no one can tell you whether it will be worth it or not. Hence the risk. Red vanilla from Madagascar and Chickpeas The vanilla miso comes from controlled organic cultivation. Fair trade Cocoa nibs from Peru and chickpeas are the ingredients for the cocoa miso.
I was so excited. The vanilla developed a light, exciting acidity and the cocoa made the miso round and full-bodied with a subtle bitter note. I’m thrilled.
I quickly realized that I wanted to make a very special dessert with the vanilla miso – chocolate mousse with vanilla miso. And because it’s winter, you can buy it from an organic retailer on the Viktualienmarkt untreated bergamot. Bergamot is the name given to a whole group of citrus fruits and is believed to be a cross between bitter orange and citric lemon. In any case, it comes from the south (90% of world trade comes from Calabria), is rather green and the flesh is very sour and tart.
I’ve made curd from lemons (classic) and oranges, but never from bergamot. I like its distinctive aroma, which is so reminiscent of Earl Gray tea. The recipe for the curd is more than what you need for the dessert, but that’s something to be happy about: it’s not just in England that people like to spread lemon curd on their morning toast.
Chocolate mousse with vanilla miso and bergamot curd
For four
Chocolate mousse
2 organic eggs
25g butter
1 tbsp brown sugar
0.5 packets of vanilla sugar
1 tbsp vanilla miso (order online from Schwarzwald Miso)
70 g dark chocolate
80g milk chocolate
100g cream
Bergamot curd for 1 glass of 350 ml
(if you don’t get bergamot, use a mixture of lemon and clementine, untreated and organic)
2-3 untreated bergamots, the peel rubbed off
225 ml bergamot juice
180g butter
4 medium eggs
360g sugar
For the Chocolate mousse Break the chocolate into pieces and melt it in a water bath together with the butter and miso. If you don’t have a whipping bowl for this, take a metal bowl, fill a pot halfway with water and then put the floating bowl in.
Separate eggs.
Beat the egg yolks with the sugar and vanilla sugar with a hand mixer until foamy.
Beat the cream in a separate bowl until stiff.
Beat the egg whites in a separate bowl until stiff.
Mix the melted chocolate with the egg yolks.
First fold in the cream with a whisk, then the beaten egg white.
Pour into glasses and chill for at least 3 hours.
For the Bergamot curd Put the butter, sugar, juice and zest in a metal bowl (also in a water bath) and melt over low heat.
Beat the eggs with a hand mixer and add them to the butter-bergamot mixture. Continue beating until the mixture thickens. This takes a good 10 minutes.
If you like, you can now strain the curd through a sieve. I like to skip this step because I like the peel in the curd.
Chill for about 6 hours.
Pour the curd onto the mousse and decorate with chocolate sprinkles if desired.
I use the luxurious chocolate caviar balls (Caviar au Chocolat from Vincent Vallée from Les Sables d’Olonne. This man won the Patisserie World Championship and these little balls are incredibly good. I brought them with me from my last trip, but you can also order online.)
