pistachio and strawberry Mille feuille
Recipe courtesy of Matthew Ratliff, Executive Pastry Chef, The Everglades Club (Palm Beach, Fla.)
Ingredients
- Ingredients for Pistachio Mousseline Cream:
- milk - 670 gms.
- sugar - 185 gms.
- yolks - 122 gms.
- eggs - 50 gms.
- cornstarch - 62 gms.
- vanilla beans - 2 ea.
- butter - 160 gms.
- 100% Sicilian pistachio paste - 90 gms.
- butter (room temperature) - 160 gms.
- Ingredients for Strawberry Jam:
- strawberry purée - 250 gms.
- granulated sugar - 268 gms.
- apple pectin - 4 gms.
- powdered glucose - 37 gms.
- lime juice - 10 gms.
- Ingredients for Feuille:
- pistachio mousseline cream
- 100% Sicilian pistachio paste
- strawberries - 100 gms., medium, diced and a few more to garnish
- Sicilian pistachios
- gold leaf
Instructions
Procedure for Puff Pastry:
(Chef’s note: We use all-butter, ½-size puff dough from Lecoq Cuisine.)
- Sheet puff pastry down to 2 mm and dock well.
- Bake thinned puff sheets between 2 air mats, with a sheet pan on top to weigh the dough down.
- Bake in a 340°F convection oven for about 20-22 minutes until golden brown.
- While warm, lightly sprinkle granulated sugar over the puff pastry and heavily dust with powdered sugar.
- Re-bake puff pastry with lots of top heat in a deck oven or at 460⁰ F in a convection oven with very low fan speed. Bake until sugar melts and looks glossy.
- Reserve and let cool. Cut 6 each 8” x 5” rectangles with a very sharp serrated knife.
Procedure for Pastry Cream:
- Mix ¼ of the sugar with cornstarch and stir in enough cold milk to make a slurry.
- Add yolks and eggs into the slurry.
- Heat milk and the second part of sugar with vanilla beans.
- Temper yolk/starch and boil for 2 minutes until fully thickened.
- Whisk in first butter to emulsify. Pour out onto a hotel pan and chill.
- When the pastry cream is cool and rested (for at least one hour), use a mixer to whip the pistachio paste and the second butter light into the pastry cream. (Chef’s note: You may need to warm up the custard. The mousseline cream should be the consistency of thick butter cream.)
- Place in a bag with a 803 plain tip.
Procedure for Strawberry Jam:
- Mix 1/3 of the sugar, glucose powder and the apple pectin. Stir sugar mix into strawberry purée.
- In a pot, bring purée, pectin and sugars to a simmer.
- In 3 portions, add the rest of the sugar, letting the puree come back to a simmer each time. (Chef's note: You do not want to cool the mix down too much.) Cook to 222°F.
- Take off the heat and mix in the lime juice. Pour out into a hotel pan and let cool.
Assembly:
- Pipe bulbs of mousseline cream around the border of the two of the puff pastry rectangles.
- Fill in the inside of the puff pastry.
- Arrange diced strawberries, pistachios, dots of jam and dots of the pistachio paste on top of the cream.
- Stack up the puff pieces. Garnish the top piece of pastry with cream, strawberries, pistachios and jam.
