Corn cream with honey and goat milk foam à la SALT

Creamy, warm, slightly citric, sweet flavors condensed into a cup: a perfect dessert for chilly, cozy fall and winter evenings. Csenge Dusha, SALT Budapest’s pastry chef shared her extraordinary polenta recipe with us.

Csenge Dusha initially started her studies in the field of IT in Szeged, but later took a turn towards gastronomy and pastry-making, and has been a member of SALT Budapest’s team for two years. “I love everything we dream up with SALT, but of course the thing I love the most is polenta” – Csenge told us. But what makes her polenta so unique? “It means the warmth of home… It brings up memories for many, for the same reason, but for something still a bit different. It’s a soft, soothing moment from the past” – she highlighted.

If you’re interested, go and give Csenge’s recipe a try, but make sure you use good quality ingredients, and having a siphon won’t hurt either.

CORN CREAM WITH HONEY, SZATMÁRI PLUM JAM AND GOAT MILK FOAM

INGREDIENTS

Polenta
250 ml milk
1 level teaspoon salt
2 tablespoons cornmeal

Pastry cream
250 ml milk
1 tablespoon cornstarch
1/2 vanilla bean, chopped
60 g sugar
2 egg yolks

Corn cream
1 part polenta
1 part pastry cream
1 part ricotta, salt

Polenta soufflé
50 g sugar
50 g almond flour
15 g rice flour
50 g butter
75 g polenta
3 big eggs separated
a pinch of baking powder
the peel of 1 lemon
the juice of 1 lemon
1 tablespoon powdered sugar

Szatmári plum jam

Lukewarm goat milk foam
350 g goat milk
150 g 3.5% fat cow milk
1 tablespoon honey
a pinch of salt
1 teaspoon Proespuma Hot powder (Sosa)

For serving
pollen, fermented raw honey

PREPARATION

Put the milk and the cornmeal into a buttered pot on the stove to boil. Simmer it on low heat, and stir it continuously. When it softens, take it off the stove and leave it to rest, covered with a foil.

Mix one or two tablespoons of milk with cornstarch, the egg yolk and the sugar. Start to heat the rest of the milk with the vanilla bean, and pour in the sugary egg yolk in a thin stream, while continuously stirring. Put it back on the stove, and thicken it while continuously stirring, then pass it through a passe-vite, cover it with a plastic foil and set it aside.

Mash the polenta through a sieve, mix it with ricotta and add some salt. Add the pastry cream, and pour it into a pastry bag.

Froth the butter with one third of the sugar, add some grated lemon peel, the polenta and the egg yolk. Whip the egg white with the rest of the sugar, and then mix it with the egg yolk base. Finally sift the almond flour with the rice flour and the baking soda on it, and gently mix it together. Bake it at 160°C for 10 minutes.

In the meantime, make a syrup out of lemon juice and powdered sugar (bringing it to a boil) and pour it onto the freshly baked soufflé while still warm so that it can absorb the citric flavor.

Fill the szatmári plum jam into a bag until serving.

Heat the ingredients of the lukewarm goat milk foam to 70°C, and fill it into a whipping siphon until serving.

Keep all elements warm until serving. Add a small amount of citric polenta soufflé to the bottom of the cup. Then add a nut-sized amount of plum jam on top, and squeeze two spoonfuls of corn cream on it. Spray lukewarm goat milk foam on top of the dessert from the siphon, sprinkle some pollen on it, and dribble some raw fermented honey on top.

Photos: Zsófia Bodnár, Dávid Horpáczi
Cover photo: Local’s Lore

SALT Budapest | Web | Facebook | Instagram
Csenge Dusha | Facebook | Instagram

• east
• salt budapest