Carrot ganache?

Recently, I've been in a bit of a decluttering and organizing mood. It's something that strikes a few times a year and almost always occurs in August as the new academic year approaches. I try to lean into it when it does hit, because typically it is fleeting!

And so earlier this week, as I began moving some documents from my bookcase and into wooden magazine racks that my mother gave me when I was home in July, I also started pulling items from the shelves to relocate or rehome. A copy of Canadian Folk Music magazine that evaded a purge during the pandemic, the documentation from a real estate transaction that was never completed, lecture notes from a course I taught a decade ago... Then I spied a copy of Wildness: An Ode to Newfoundland and Labrador. My sister had received it years ago, I think as part of a prize package featuring Newfoundland authors, and gave it to me. I recall flipping through it at the time, but it came to rest in my office and has lived there ever since. I pulled it down, fully intending to toss it in a rehome bin, but then decided one last look was warranted. 

The first cook book of chef Jeremy Charles, Wildness captures some of the spirit of the people and landscape of Newfoundland that was featured in Parts Unknown with Anthony Bourdain. The book highlights traditional ingredients from Newfoundland foodways and demonstrates how they are reimagined in Charles' emerging modern cuisine. Think rabbit ravioli and molasses lavash. 

As I reviewed the recipes, I thought that many were interesting, but few seemed like recipes I would actually try myself -- though I will admit that molasses madeleines do have me curious. I concluded that I'd rather visit St. John's and eat at one of his restaurants (while I believe Raymonds closed as a result of the pandemic, the Merchant Tavern appears to still be open). Not surprisingly, I found myself skipping to the dessert recipes and focussed my time there. 

Sure enough, there were a few chocolate recipes. One was a spiced carrot cake with ricotta cheese that calls for a carrot ganache (‽), made of carrot puree and white chocolate, but after reading the recipe a few times and reviewing the plating, it's unclear where and when the carrot ganache actually appears in the dessert. My mind, of course, has gone to its potential as the centre for a bonbon (perhaps in a Christmas collection). Could you imagine eating a spiced carrot truffle? 🤔 The other was an alder ganache chocolate, made with alder-infused cream. If you're willing to forage your own alder pepper, the recipe sounds interesting, but the resulting quantity seems high for the home cook, especially when experimenting with this sort of flavour. 

Interestingly, both recipes call for glucose. From prior chocolate reading, I understand the primary role of glucose to be in the production of improved mouth feel or texture in the ganache. I've never used it in a ganache because it isn't necessary, but now I do wonder whether it would be worth trying it. 

Perhaps my most important takeaway from this recipe study is the method employed for infusing the alder pepper in the cream for the ganache. I've been contemplating how to make a spruce tip ganache for a while now and had been leaning toward an infused cream. Charles' cook book has confirmed that as an appropriate approach; however, where he infused the cream for 30 minutes, it will likely take some experimentation for me to determine the length of time required to infuse the spruce tips, given they would have a more delicate flavour than the alder peppers. 

As fall approaches and the temperatures become more conducive to working with chocolate, there may be an experiment in my future. 

And, for now, Wildness will escape the back-to-school purge.