This dessert is a memorable and sensitive flashback of my childhood holidays in the French Alps where my family has built a cottage in the 70’s.
Everything here obeys a precise approach, transcribing the perfumes into taste, because these memories are first olfactory.
Of the 5 senses, smell is surely the one, which disseminates most information to the right hemisphere of the brain, the emotional side.
I believe that following the emotions related to memories of childhood is a safe path in the kitchen, because to touch people,it is an absolute necessity to have our heart involved in all tastes we create , then just guide it all by pure logic and solid technique.
The strawberries are marinated in vinegar, honey and sweet spices, they are the mirror of the scents spreads along mountain trails, so often pierced with the sweet smell of strawberries from the Woods, raspberries & wild blackberries, these fruity scents were often mixed with the acidic and metallic odor of the wild rhubarb that grows wildly there.
The pea and the almond are used as a creamy and soft mousse, it materialize the smell of the farm’s fields very near to our place, the farmer cultivated mainly green beans, beans and peas, emanate from its lands a sweet and green fragrance that I loved and still remember deeply.
Finally of course, the first perfume that comes to mind is that very particular one of the goats who grazed in the fields everywhere around, carried by the wind the smell of their hormones, their skin and even their dung, and this one was the hardest of course to transcribe, but the goat cheese was perfect for it, refined by Chamomile for its notes of old leather and noble fabrics, all this gathered in an ice cream.
As in my olfactory memories, these three tastes blend harmoniously and creates an emotional wave hold by the vivacity of strawberries, the sweetness of peas and the strength of goat cheese
Somehow, through this, I pay back a dept to this land that inspired me and contributed to adult I became
Lionel Beccat