Four Seasons George V, Michael Bartocetti · Since 2019
The vanilla dessert
Michael Bartocetti’s vanilla dessert at the George V is a study in one flavour: a mousse, a crème, a crumble, an ice cream and a caramel, all vanilla, with almost no sugar and a lot of restraint.
Taste profile
Pair it with
A Darjeeling second flush or a glass of Sauternes.
Vanilla is the flavour every pastry uses and few take seriously. Bartocetti builds a dessert around it, changing the form with the season: a white dome with a soft centre in winter, a tart in summer, a plated version at Le Cinq. The pods come from Madagascar and Tahiti, the sugar is kept low so the flower shows, and the textures do the talking.
It is the dessert people remember from La Galerie precisely because it does not shout, and it is the best introduction to Bartocetti’s kitchen.
The home version · serves 6
Ingredients
- 2 vanilla pods
- 400 ml whipping cream
- 150 g white chocolate
- 3 sheets of gelatine
- 250 ml milk
- 4 egg yolks
- 60 g sugar
- 60 g butter, 60 g flour, 40 g sugar, 40 g almonds for the crumble
Method
- Infuse the milk with one split pod, make a crème anglaise with yolks and sugar, dissolve the softened gelatine in it and pour over the white chocolate.
- Cool, then fold in the whipped cream with the seeds of the second pod for the mousse; pipe into dome moulds and freeze.
- Rub butter, flour, sugar and almonds into a crumble, bake at 170 °C for 15 minutes.
- Unmould the domes, let them thaw in the fridge for two hours.
- Serve on the crumble with a spoon of vanilla caramel or a scoop of vanilla ice cream.
Where to taste it
