A Study In Dessert: Farro Cake

Theme: Paying homage to ancient Italian ingredients.

Inspiration: I’d love to wax poetic about being inspired by La Cucina Italia for this dessert but the truth is more mundane: I had been logging the same case of farro flour in my inventory for two months and I got tired of looking at it.  Farro is a staple grain of the Italian pantry that is traditionally used to make soups, bread and pasta. Knowing that my clientele is not ready for pasta as their dessert course, I decided to take a traditional approach to my farro dessert by using the flour in a cake. As farro is a blend of ancient strains of wheat, I decided to go old-school with the dessert composition and its plating. Rose mead, farro, and quince are hardly trendy ingredients in the food world but thanks to a little education, a smidgeon of persuasion, and multiple tastings, the dessert has finally taken off.

Technique: The cake is made with farro flour and topped with fig conserva and hazelnut brittle. The quince is poached in white wine, sugar, vanilla and lemon. I made the mascarpone  so that I could whip it without curdling, an unhappy but common occurrence with commercial mascarpone. The ginger tuile is a brandy snap batter that is flavored with dry ginger. The rose mead is made by fermenting honey with fresh rose petals. After three weeks, the mead is strained and foamed with a blend of Versawhip 600 and xanthan gum. This blend allows hot or cold foams to remain stable without having to be charged with nitrous oxide or re-whipped after a short period (as is the case with lecithin foams).  The basic formula for a Versawhip foam is 300g of flavored liquid, 70g of granulated sugar, 3.75g of Versawhip 600, and 0.45g of xanthan gum.  While Versawhip-based foams are convenient, there are some downsides. First, Versawhip tastes awful.  To worsen all matters epicurean, too much xanthan gum creates a mucilaginous texture. In layman’s terms, your foam will look and feel like snot if you overdo it with the xanthan. And sadly, this blend will not foam with fat-based liquids. So, if you have visions of mascarpone bubbles dancing in your head, you’d have to opt for the more high tech and expensive nitrous oxide version.