MASTERCLASS
Executive pastry chef Choo Eng Tat and executive chef Darren Ong Thean Heng of Royal Plaza on Scotts showcase how the underrated beetroot goes well with chocolate and cheese. By Priyanka Elhence
You can’t beet this: Dark chocolate and beetroot gâteau, and truffle dauphine potatoes with pickled beets
Beetroot bashers may loathe its earthy flavour, but it's exactly this quality that makes it the perfect partner with chocolate. A proponent of this pairing is executive pastry chef Choo Eng Tat of Royal Plaza on Scotts who shares his Dark Chocolate and Beetroot Gâteau recipe. Beetroot keeps the chocolate cake moist and balances its natural earthy flavour. Throw in a handful of melon seeds, which are high in magnesium, and you get another layer of texture to each bite. While his recipe is not complicated, Choo stresses that all the ingredients need to be at room temperature so that the cake batter doesn’t split or curdle. Finally, to achieve Instagram-worthy frosting, Choo also adds a touch of glucose into the ganache mixture to prevent anticaking and to retain that glossy shine.
For the second recipe, executive chef Darren Ong Thean Heng shares the steps to making Truffle Cheese Dauphine Potatoes with Pickled Beets and Roasted Artichoke Purée. Ong advises using cheese with high melting points for this recipe, since deep-frying may destroy the texture of other more delicate cheese. When the texture is too runny, the cheese balls cannot hold their form. “I have used Saint-paulin for this dish because of its rich taste, but Mimolette will also work well,” says Ong. Pickling the beetroot overnight preserves its bright red colour and adds an element of
crunch to the plate, while charcoal powder accentuates the truffles in the potato balls. “Although fresh produce is always preferable to frozen, using frozen artichoke bottoms works well for this recipe as they will be mashed rather than used in their entirety,” says Ong. Likewise, fresh truffles can also be substituted with their frozen or brined counterparts, especially when the truffle season is over.
Check out epicure on Youtube for a behindthe-scenes video of this masterclass.