Small & Oats: You Make My Creams Come True

For this dish I drew on the David Chang (Momofuku) "Cereal Milk" dessert for inspiration. I appreciated his idea infusing milk with a cereal (in his case toasted cornflakes) before using it to make a dessert but departed from his more avant garde approach of pairing it with avocado puree and a "chocolate hazelnut thing." Instead I chose a more homely combination, one that shied away from excessive sweetness, that possessed a certain lightness and an almost savoury quality. Having rolled oats as my starting point lead me to make something that mimicked the flavours of a fruit crumble.

Wobbly Crumble (Serves 6)

1/4 cup rolled oats

300 ml thickened cream

100 ml sour cream

50 ml milk

1/4 vanilla bean (seeds scraped)

20g brown sugar

10g caster sugar

generous pinch of salt

2 gelatin leaves (4 grams)

Preheat oven to 150C. Toast oats on a tray until they are a golden brown (around 20 minutes). Once they have cooled for a couple of minutes add them to 200 ml of the cream and the milk and allow to sit for 45 minutes.

Strain out the oats and use a rubber spatula to gently extract 200 ml of liquid (some will have been absorbed by the oats). Transfer the cream/milk into a saucepan with the vanilla bean, sugars and salt. Place over a low heat, stirring regularly, to dissolve the sugar. While this is happening bloom or soften the gelatin leaves in cold water (I like to do it in ice water) until they become floppy (2-3 minutes). At this point remove them remove water and squeeze them to get rid of excess moisture, then stir them into the milk mixture until dissolved. Strain into a bowl (you can rinse and reserve the vanilla bean for another use). Cool to room temperature.

Fold in the sour cream and pass ensure that there are no lumps. Whip the remaining 100 ml of cream to soft peaks and fold into the mix. Divide the mix between six, lightly greased, molds (around 100 ml capacity). Allow to set in the refrigerator for around five hours.

To serve, unmold the set cream (to do this gently use a finger to pull it away from the mold on one side creating an air-pocket that should allow it to slide out onto the plate). Scatter the plate with the apple and blackberries and the reduced fruit syrup. Finish the plate with the caramelised rolled oats.

Stewed Fruit 

3 Granny Smith apples (peeled, cored and cut into a large dice)

1 punnet of blackberries (washed)

2 tbsp butter

1/4 vanilla bean, seeds scraped

brown sugar

caster sugar

white wine

 a generous pinch of .salt 

lemon juice

Ratios for this are difficult are inexact as the ripeness of the fruit will dictate how much sugar is required, how much liquid cooks out of them and how much lemon juice is required to provide balance to the sauce.

To a large frying pan over medium/high heat add the butter, apple, salt, vanilla bean and sufficient brown sugar to coat the apple. Once the sugar has dissolved and the apple has started to soften, add the blackberries and deglaze the pan with white wine. Cook until the apple is soft but still has bite and the blackberries have bled some colour but not collapsed. Remove the fruit from the pan and reduce the syrup until it has thickened (adding caster sugar if necessary). Adjust the flavour with lemon juice to achieve the desired balance between acidity and sweetness.

Caramelised oats

1/4 cup rolled oats

2 tbsp caster sugar

pinch of salt

1 tbsp butter, melted

Preheat the oven to 150C.

Combine the oats, salt and butter, then sprinkle evenly with the sugar.

Bake on a lined tray until the sugar caramelises and turns a deep golden colour ( at least 20 minutes). 

Remove from the oven and allow to cool.

Store in a sealed container at room temperature for up to a week.