Time to Cook

When I arrived at The Herbfarm the "Summer Sketchbook" menu was already in place and running strong. A three week menu highlighting what the area and our farm has to offer for the early weeks of summer. And while many of the area residents were referring to this time as "June-uary" (quite cold here for the month of June), there was still some fine produce to be had from our farm and the area. Cherries were already in full stride, as were strawberries and some of our farm's currents. Raspberries were seeing their first bits of menu face time by the end of the month, and that's where this dish came from.

Bee Balm & Raspberry Chip Sorbet with Raspberry-Sancho Elixir
This was the pre dessert for our last week of the menu, and one I thought brought a bit of fun to the table. The sorbet itself was a verjus base with honey as one of its sugars, and was infused with bee balm leaves (from our garden). For the Raspberry "chip"…



Whole Raspberries where frozen.















And then crushed individually, by hand breaking them along their natural segment lines.













We then kept the segments frozen and folded them into the spun sorbet. With both components
frozen we were able tokeep the "chips" from streaking the sorbet.








The remainder of the raspberries were passed through a tamis, seasoned with salt and sugar, and the consistency adjusted with a sancho (again from a bush right outside our back door) infused syrup. We served the elixir warm, and with the cooling effect that the sancho brought to drink it ended up being quite interesting.