Create Peter Gilmore’s garden peas with cultured butter, sea salt and crisp pea blossoms
Turning the first page of award-winning chef Peter Gilmore’s new cookbook Organum is an exhilarating experience only comparable to sitting down at the maestro’s famed Sydney restaurant, Quay. In this gorgeous new tome of culinary treasures, Peter harnesses a love of working with nature and sourcing ingredients from his experimental edible garden to create a fine collection of 40 recipes, which aim to use as many components of each plant as possible. In this recipe, garden peas mingle with pea blossoms, white bean blossoms and carrot blossom florets to create an edible work of art.
INGREDIENTS
Cultured butter with eschallots and garlic
1 garlic clove
2 small golden eschallots
150 g cultured butter
2 litres grapeseed oil
sea salt
Peas and pea blossoms
2 kg baby spring peas in the pod
80 pea blossoms
16 carrot blossom florets
64 white bean blossoms
24 agretti sprigs
Crisp pea blossom batter
100 g wheat starch flour
50 g cornflour
50 g rice flour
100 ml soda water
TO MAKE
First, prepare the cultured butter with eschallots and garlic. Finely dice the garlic and eschallots and put them in a heavy-based saucepan with the cultured butter. Gently simmer for two to three minutes or until the garlic and eschallots are translucent. Set aside until required.
For the peas & pea blossoms, shell the peapods to yield 800 g peas. Set aside until required. Trim the pea blossoms to the base of the blossom, leaving on just a couple of millimetres of green stem. Set half aside to be deep-fried, and reserve half to be used fresh. Rinse the carrot and bean blossoms and the agretti in cold water, dry gently and set aside.
Next, make the crisp pea blossom batter. Mix all of the flours together in a bowl. Weigh out 50 g of the combined flour and whisk in the soda water to form a loose slurry. Set aside the remaining flour.
To finish, bring 5 litres of water to the boil in a large saucepan. In a large, heavy-based saucepan, heat the grapeseed oil to 70°C. Take the pea blossoms, set aside for deep-frying and dip them individually into the batter then straight into the reserved dry combined flour, shaking off any excess. Put the battered flowers into the hot oil (without overcrowding the pan) and fry for 1 minute or until lightly golden. Drain on paper towel. Add the peas to the boiling water and blanch for approximately one to one-and-a-half minutes minutes or until just tender. Drain the peas and immediately add the cultured butter mixture and season with fine sea salt to taste.
To plate, divide the hot buttered peas into eight warmed serving bowls and garnish with fried pea blossoms, fresh bean, pea and carrot blossoms and agretti sprigs. Serve.
Recipe and images from Organum by Peter Gilmore. Published by Murdoch Books. Available now.
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