My sweet vegetables

The best vegetables, in a delicately syrup with white chocolate mousse and honey, vanilla ice-cream with sauce made from the jujubes in the woods near my house

Pietro Leemann

For 4 people

1 100 g fennel bulb
100 g of pumpkin
100 g of green celery
100 g of American potato
5 g of star anise
1 cinnamon stick
1 orange
100 g of sugar

100 g of cream
50 g of white chocolate

200 g of milk
40 g of sugar
1/2 a Tahiti vanilla pod
10 g of chestnut honey

40 g of jujubes
30 g of sugar

40 g of raw red beetroot
20 g of icing sugar

20 g of butter
20 g of unrefined sugar

 

Make a syrup with 500 g of water, 100 g of sugar, anise, cinnamon, the zest and juice of an orange. Clean the vegetables, chop up the pumpkin and American potato into large cubes and the green celery into 5 cm sticks. Cook the pumpkin in the syrup for 5 minutes, the potato for 7, the green celery for 4 and the whole fennel for 20 minutes.

Cut the beetroots into 2 mm thick slices, sprinkle with icing sugar and dry in the oven at 90 °C for 4 hours.

Boil the cream and pour it over the white chocolate. Dissolve and leave to rest for 24 hours. Then whip as you would whip cream. Boil the milk with the sugar and the vanilla pod. Leave to rest for 12 hours and place in a sorbet machine. Cook the jujubes with the sugar for 5 minutes, blend and sieve through a fine strainer.

Cut the fennel into 2 cm thick slices and toss in a pan with the other vegetables and a knob of butter. Sprinkle unrefined sugar over the vegetables and caramelise with a stick of cinnamon.

Place the sweet vegetables on a plate, place a quenelle of white chocolate mousse next to them along with a ball of ice-cream dressed with the jujubes. Garnish with the slices of dried beetroot and fresh mint