Part 109 Mmm Mmm Mmm

Cookbooks, dried yeast and fried bread.

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OK, we’re back. And this week, we’re gassing up a doughnut.

Ya see, our new chap, Richard, had come up with a dead good idea, and this was it, doughnut mousse, milk ice cream and espresso gel. It was meant as a bit of a joke, you know, like when you see a movie and two coppers are eating coffee and doughnuts in a patrol car, it was based on that.

Now, you have to realise that the recipes we used didn’t exist anywhere else, but in our heads.

Let’s put that into perspective, imagine, you fancy making a cake for your mate, just because you’re a nice person. So you pick up a cookbook, turn to page 42, and there it is, Indulgent Choccy Woccy Fudge Cake. Sorted, that’s what you’re making for your buddy.

However, what would happen if, instead of there being an actual recipe, or a picture, the page was blank. The title is there, but that’s it. How many eggs do you need, how much sugar should you use, is it cocoa powder or chocolate?

But hang on, no problem, you’ll just use another cookbook. But lo and behold, all the pages of every cookbook are blank. That’s a bit freaky deaky.

This means that you’ll have to just make it up yourself, you’ve made cakes before so you have a fair idea where to start. Chances are, you’ll probably mess it up a few times, but you’ll get there in the end.

And that’s how it was with our recipes, they didn’t exist, so we had nothing to work from, and that’s a bit of a chew on. It’s even more of a chew on when there’s the regular prep to do, diners to look after, suppliers to speak to and leaking pipes to fix.

But of course, as Ritchie would say, “We’ll work up to it”. And we worked up to coffee and doughnuts.

Ritchie did all of the experimenting himself, and liaised with me during the process. The espresso gel was the easiest. Take an amount of espresso, simmer some agar agar into it, set it, then once set, blend it. This gave a a result which was neither gel nor liquid, it sat in the middle. Probably why it’s called fluid gel. It needed a couple of attempts to get the consistency correct, but easily sorted.

Oh yea, sorry, agar agar is a gelling agent derived from seaweed, but it doesn’t taste of seaweed though, but it’s a gel which contains no animal products. Only thing is, if you try to make a regular gel with it, it’s quite brittle, but we blended ours so the brittle thing wasn’t a problem.

There ya go.

Then the milk ice cream. Ritchie made a few batches until we were happy with the flavour. This element was intended to represent the milk and sugar in the coffee which you would have with your doughnuts. Ritchie froze the ice cream in a shallow tray, then once frozen, he cut the ice cream into cubes which were the same size as sugar cubes. Bit of a buggar to do because as they were small, they were defrosting too quickly, so you could only do a few at a time, then you had to whack them straight in the freezer.

Eventually, we started to freeze the chopping board which was used to slice the ice cream on, to slow down the defrosting.

Then Ritchie blended some dried yeast, you know, that stuff in a sachet you use to make bread, and mixed it, to a certain ratio, with sugar.

Why the dried yeast? Well, a doughnut is basically a bread bun, which obviously contains yeast. So adding yeast in a different part of the dish, carries on the theme, you’re tasting it in two different forms. A bit like when you put on a bonny frock, if it’s red, you might also wear a set of paler red beads, or even pink, so the colour red is duplicated. Similar thing really.

The milk cubes were then rolled in the sugary yeast and popped back in the freezer.

But the part which was causing the problem, the part which we thought would be the easiest element, was the doughnut mousse.

Ritchie made up a bread dough, formed it into bun shapes, then deep fried them. He then immediately rolled them in sugar, and there we go, doughnuts. He then took an amount of half milk and cream and blended a couple of doughnuts into it.

“Andrew, taste this please.”

“Mmm, it’s not awful, but the doughnut flavour isn’t there is it.”

“That’s correct Andrew. Now, I could just add more doughnuts, but then the resulting mix would be too thick and it wouldn’t go through the whipper.”

“Hang on Ritchie, if we need more flavour, just think, where is the flavour in a doughnut?”

“That’s a very beneficial question Andrew. I suppose the inside of a regular doughnut tastes merely of bread, the real flavour is on the outside, that which has been fried and sugared.”

“Exactly, so we only need the outside, the bready bit is useless to us. So……….could you trim the doughnuts and just use the fried sugary part?”

“That’s a good solution Andrew, but it means that we would have to make a lot of doughnuts for each batch. A lot of time would need to be allocated to that part of the process.”

“That’s true. I tell you what Ritchie, bollocks to it, I’ll run over to Greggs and grab a bag of doughnuts. We can use them for now, just for the experimenting.”

Now although this worked, the same problem kept coming up, we needed lots of doughnut ‘skin’ to give flavour. This also meant that there was a lot of bready bits going to waste, which seemed wrong.

“Ritchie man, I’ve got it, let’s fry the waste bready bits and sugar them, then we’ll have more doughnutty flavour to use.”

Ritchie tried this but it didn’t work. Because the bready bits were already cooked, they soaked up too much oil, which in turn, messed up the recipe.

Ritchie stood staring at one of the failed batches, “What we need is a doughnut which has a low bready to ‘skin’ ratio. Yes Andrew, I am aware that I’m using the word bready.”

We dragged Emma and Bobster into the conversation, so far they’d kept their distance, as if being involved wasn’t allowed.

“Guys look, we need something which is a doughnut but doesn’t contain much bread.”

Emma piped up, “Could we roll the bread thinly then deep fry it? That way there would be less bread and more ‘skin’.”

We pondered, it wasn’t a bad idea, but Bobster found a flaw, “There could be inconsistencies, how could we roll it out to the same thickness each time?”

Bobster was right, this was bloody hard.

“Right come on, let’s leave it for now, there’s loads of prep to do and it’s rammed tonight.”

But the next morning, the clouds parted and a message was sent from the gods, to earth, directly to Bobster.

As we all grabbed a couple of boxes of the vegetable order and met in the kitchen, Bobster announced…….

“Guys, I may have a solution to the doughnut problem.”

He reached into his rucksack and pulled out a box of…………….…..Yum Yums, and dropped them onto the workbench.

“I got myself a coffee from Greggs on the way in, it’s quite cheap in there, anyway, I saw these, they look like flat and twisted doughnuts. There’s a glaze on them but could we just adjust the sugar somewhere to compensate?”.

Ritchie’s eyes were fixed on them, “Robert, I think you may have come up with the required result.”

Emma snapped one in half and took a bite, “Oh my god, they’re just flat doughnuts, but a little sweeter. This is brilliant.”

Bobster was chuffed to bits, you could see him forcing a smile downwards. Got to keep cool you know.

I was pleased for him, “Nice one Bobster, Ritchie, we could easily replicate these couldn’t we?”

But Bobster had a better suggestion, “Actually guys, I was thinking, couldn’t we just buy them from Greggs? I checked the ingredients and there’s no meat products or nasties in them. Would be a lot easier.”

Ritchie swung around to face him, “That’s correct Robert, and the consistency issues would be deleted also.”

And so that’s what we did.

When Ritchie plated up the first test, we all gathered around the workbench. He released the doughnut mix from the whipper, straight into a conical shaped bowl, and it appeared as a fluffy doughnut mousse. He took the squeezy bottle of espresso gel and let it pour, in lines, over the mousse. And finally, the light, milky sugar cubes, with their yeasty coating, were tumbled over the top.

Was it any good? No it was crap. Of course it was good. The bitter strength of the espresso helped to tone down the sweetness of the doughnut and the yeast kinda mirrored the doughnut flavour.

We added it to the menu as soon as we could, but first of all, we needed the front of house team to try it so that they could describe it diners.

Donna tried it first, “Mmmmm, that’s really good, it messes with your mind, it’s like eating coffee and doughnuts, but in different textures.

Next it was Fern’s turn, “Mmmm, that’s so good, yes you’re right Donna, textures of doughnut and coffee.”

Big Sophia next, “Yes, it’s very good.” That was a massive compliment from Sophia.

Then Tina Terminator, “Mmmmm, this is amazing. Right, the rest is mine, you’re not getting anymore.”

Then Tina hugged the bowl and scurried off.

But did diners enjoy it?

Apart from a comment from Jim and Jean, “That’s not espresso, it’s instant coffee,” it was a massive hit.

In fact, many chefs even asked us how we made that doughnut mousse.

But did we tell them that it was Yum Yums blitzed into milk and cream?

Nah!

Thanks for reading this, see you next week.

Donna and Andrew