Yesterday, I was lucky enough to spend my afternoon with Pallavi Srivastava from Pickle Tango. We decided it was time to marry our two passions, food and wine, or in this case food and crémant.
Pallavi had the great idea to make a healthier version of the traditional Indian dessert Shahi Tukda, which literally translates to “piece of royalty”. I had no idea what to expect, but the result was truly delicious.
We started with a simple loaf of bread. You can opt to remove the crusts, but this time Pallavi simply used a rolling pin to flatten the crusts. Afterwards, Pallavi showed me how to fold the bread into a muffin pan to make individual bread cups which we spread some melted butter over to keep the folds in place. Traditionally the bread is fried, but in an attempt to cut at least some calories we baked the cups instead. And when we pulled them out, things were already looking very promising.
The next step was to dip these beauties into simple syrup…well this was at least Pallavi’s instruction. When I heard simple syrup, I offered to make it, as I knew this would be my chance to slip in some crémant. I made a traditional syrup and when it was completely cooled, I added in the crémant.
Normally when pairing desserts and wines, it’s suggested to have wine that is slightly sweeter than the dessert. As I’m not a huge fan of traditional sweet wines, I thought adding some crémant to the dessert would justify enjoying another coupe with the final product.
Lastly, we plated the cups on a traditional cranberry sauce, filled them with fresh cream and clementines. And of course, we washed all this down with a fantastic Rose crémant from Sunnen-Hoffmann.
Recipe
Ingredients:
1 loaf sliced bread of choice
1-2 tbsp unsalted butter, melted
1 cup sugar
1 cup cold water
4 tbsp rosé crémant
1 pkg cream- whipped
Cranberry sauce
Clementines
Directions:
1) Preheat the oven to 175 degrees Celsius
2) Prepare a simple syrup by combining sugar and water- bring to a boil and then reduce to a simmer until all the sugar is evaporated (3-5 minutes)
3) Set simple syrup aside to cool
4) Either remove crust from bread, or roll the crust flat using a rolling pin
5) Fold the flattened bread into a muffin pan, making the shape of a cup
6) Spread the melted butter over each cup (if the bread is not staying open, you can use a bit of water to hold the edges together
7) Bake the cups for 15-20 minutes
8) Once simple syrup is cooled, add the crémant
9) Dip each bread cup into the syrup, covering it completely
10) Put a generous portion of cranberry sauce in the middle of the plate, place the cup on top, fill with the fresh cream and clementines
11) Most importantly, enjoy with a glass of the same crémant used in the syrup!!!
