Michelin-Starred Strawberry Sorbet

Keywords:	Ice Cream & Sorbets ¦ Dessert ¦ Affordable gourmet ¦ Philippe Rochat (Swiss chef) ¦ Fruits
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Learn how to make the very best strawberry sorbet you will ever taste exactly like they do at one of the world's top restaurants, Philippe Rochat in Switzerland. Read my interview of chef Rochat where he tells which strawberry to use for this sorbet.

Every meal at Philippe Rochat ends up with a serie three ice creams and three sorbets. I snatched a picture last week end of a waiter scooping the ice creams from the ice-cold silver jars. These are just the most amazing ice creams I've ever tasted, and God knows in how many fancy restaurants I've had ice creams. Even the Italians don't get to these heights.

Strawberry Sorbet
1kg/2lbs Gariguette or Mara des Bois strawberries*
100gr/3oz sugar
Juice of 1 lemon
An ice cream machine

Gariguette strawberries [gahreeget] are one of the most prized varieties in France and come late spring or early summer. The same French institute who created this gourmet strawberry selected the Mara des Bois [mahrah-dayboah], an obese wild forest strawberry with the most amazing taste. Both strawberries are very fragile and are not usually found in supermarkets, even in Europe. They are so delicate that half my strawberries are usually a bit damaged after the short walk from my local farmers' market to my home. These gourmet strawberries are sold directly to gastronomic restaurants or on some farmers markets. If you can't find either of these two varieties, just make another sorbet. Use only beautiful and ripe fruits - there is just nowhere you can hide bad strawberries in such a simple dish.

If you follow the instructions hereafter, you will obtain the exact same luscious flavor as chef Rochat's legendary strawberry sorbet in under an hour. Deviate one inch from this recipe and you will be back to run-of-the-mill sorbets. This is a light dessert with only 10% added sugar and absolutely no fat. Try comparing this with a cake or cookies! It will make a vivid impression on guests who rarely have tasted such an intense strawberry flavor with no artificial flavor of any kind. They will remember it for long.

Gently wash your strawberries and cut off any dark or rotten flesh that you would not eat.

With love and care, stem the strawberries one by one.

Discard the stems or keep them to prove to your guests that the sorbet was made from real strawberries. They will tend to think it is a Haribo concoction, so intense is the flavor.

Pass the strawberries through a food mill...

... until you run out of strawberries ...

... and you get strawberry purée.

Add the sugar and lemon juice and mix so that the sugar dissolves in the purée.

Churn in the ice-cream machine until frozen. Mr Rochat recommends an exit temperature of -5°C. It is best to do this the same day you will serve the sorbet, because if you freeze it for a few days microscopic drops of water will form ice crystals that will turn the sorbet flaky and hard at the same time.

You can serve this before other desserts. A more scrumptious palate-cleanser has not been invented and if they have make strawberry sorbet in Heaven, it does not get better than this!

I served this to my guests last week end and went into a long-winded explanation of how the Gariguette strawberry was the very best you could use for this sorbet and halfway through my can-you-taste-the-difference speech, I realized that I had used a Mara des bois and not Gariguette. I told them and was quite embarassed. But my interview with Mr Rochat and Villeneuve proves the Mara des Bois is a stand-up gourmet strawberry too.

Who is Philippe Rochat?
Chef Rochat's restaurant outside Lausanne in Switzerland has been named the best restaurant in the world by Gault Millau, a leading French restaurant guide. It is almost unbelievable that Parisian food critics of such high standing would name a foreigner, let alone a Swiss, to this honor. Rochat spends most of his time in his kitchen and not clowning around for the media like Bocuse nor opening a restaurant a week all over the world like so many celebrity chefs nowadays. A chef's chef and a respectable man.

Philippe Rochat [raw-shah]
Restaurant de l'Hôtel de Ville
In the former city hall of Crissier, a town just outside Lausanne on Lake Geneva
www.philippe-rochat.ch
CH-1023 Crissier
Switzerland
Tél. +41 21 634 05 05