Red Cabbage Gazpacho with Mustard Ice Cream

Motivation
I've been reading Heston Blumenthal's The Fat Duck Cookbook lately and I like cabbage.  So imagine how excited I was when I found a recipe for a chilled cabbage soup that I could actually make.  The Fat Duck is a three star Michelin restaurant and Heston doesn't pull any punches.  The recipes in the book have not be altered to accommodate for the home cook.  If he uses liquid nitrogen they call for liquid nitrogen.  If he uses a PacoJet machine, the recipe calls for a PacoJet machine.  Seriously, a PacoJet!  Fortunately I had the ability to juice red cabbage and make ice cream (ice cream!) so I was all set to make this cabbage soup.  The recipes are all in grams so it's a good time to break out your digital scale and get some use out of the tare weight function.

Special Equipment
Fruit/Vegetable Juicer
Ice Cream Machine
Digital Scale.

Mise en Place
Mise en Place is actually making the following three separate recipes to they'll be ready to combine into the finished dish.

Red Wine Mayonnaise
Ingredients
36g egg yolks
15g Dijon Mustard
180g Grapeseed oil
15g Red Wine Vinegar
30g Red Wine

Method
Combine egg yolks with the mustard, then slowly whisk in the grapeseed oil to form an emulsion.  When the mayonnaise is very stiff, in the vinegar and red wine.  Refrigerate until needed.

Red Cabbage Gazpacho
Ingredients
450g Red Cabbage Juice (1-2 red cabbages worth)
80g Red Cabbage Juice (used right before service)
30g White Sandwich Bread (1-2 slices)
40g Red Wine Mayonnaise (see above)
60g Red Wine Vinegar
15g Salt (too damn salty)

Method
Remove cores from red cabbage and juice 450g into a container.  Add the bread and refrigerate for 2 hours.

Strain the cabbage juice through a fine sieve.  Press out as much juice as possible from bread.

Blend juice and mayonnaise, then season with the vinegar and salt.  Strain the liquid into a clean container and refrigerate until needed.

Add an additional 80g of red cabbage juice right before service!

Mustard Ice Cream
Ingredients
85g egg yolks
40g caster sugar (powered sugar)
500g whole milk
25g skimmed milk powder
70g grainy mustard (the stuff with seeds in it)

Method
Put the egg yolks and sugar in a bowl and whisk together for 5 minutes and set aside.

Put the milk and skimmed milk powder in a pan and heat to ~140 degrees F.   Pour the milk mixture over the egg yolk and sugar mixture then return to the pan.  Heat to 160 degrees F for 10 minutes, stirring constantly.  Cool the mixture quickly in an ice bath.

Once mixture is cool, stir in the mustard and refrigerate for 8-24 hours.  Transfer to an ice-cream machine and churn.  Place in freezer until needed.


Service
Mix the last 80g of red cabbage juice into the gazpacho.  Finely dice a cucumber into 2mm x 2mm cubes.  Place cucumber into bowls and add a scoop off mustard ice cream.  Then surround ice cream with gazpacho.


Verdict
Yuck!  The soup was way too salty.  The recipe calls for 15g of salt but I stopped adding salt after 5g and I'm wondering if its a misprint all together (1.5g maybe?)  This took hours to make and was pretty much inedible.  A huge disappointment.

Still there were redeeming qualities of the individual components.  The color of the soup was very cool.  How often do you get to work with naturally purple food.  For that reason alone I'll consider making future dishes with red cabbage juice.  I think if the soup hadn't been so salty it might have been good.  Surprisingly the strangest part of the recipe, the mustard ice cream, ended up being the big winner.  It was my first experience with a savory ice cream and I think it was pretty positive.  It turns out that sweet and mustard work well together - like honey mustard.