I’m afraid I have some sad news to drop: there’s no more sorrel at Flor. At least not for now. With the arrival of spring and temperatures rising, our supplier of sorrel found himself forced to stop foraging for it. Its time has come. This small leaf, presented as a pre-dessert since our opening in December, became, dare I say, some sort of early “classic” of ours. However, as mentioned in our menus, it was never really ours at all.
Back when we were looking for inspiration, we stumbled upon this highly conceptual dish in Ollie Dabbous’ cookbook about his eponymous restaurant in Fitzrovia. It consisted of a frozen sorrel leaf dusted with icing sugar. It looked so simple, yet so elegant, carrying that kind of genius that makes you feel slightly angry about how great a concept it is. A perfect crisp sorrel leaf carrying the frost of a cold winter morning. His definition of the dish was as minimal as the concept itself: “Instant lemon sherbet.” That was it.
I first heard of Ollie Dabbous when I was around 18, fresh into catering school, with a total of zero references and barely knowing how to properly handle a knife. A friend of mine had recently come back from London and told us stories about his trip, about how chefs over there cooked and just how inspiring the food scene was. His stories, with characters such as Ollie, a cooler-than-life supper club called The Young Turks, and a chef named Fergus serving people veal bones, sounded like legends. They made me dream of such a place, such a scene, such food. Without knowing it at the time, those dreams would later shape my cooking style, authenticity and culinary beliefs.
He told me about his visit to Dabbous: he couldn’t get a booking, but went to the restaurant anyway, hoping he could somehow score a table. He was sent downstairs to the bar and, apparently, after many cocktails, the staff felt sorry for him and eventually got him a table, if I remember correctly. The way he described the food made me want to be there and try it myself, to see if it could actually be that good. From that moment on, I read everything I could find online about those chefs and their food.
Unfortunately, I never got the opportunity to visit Dabbous. Apparently it closed down in 2017, and he moved on to open Hide, a much bigger project.
Since we had already defined our concept of structuring the menu like an old-school formal Italian menu, in which a salad is served after the main course, this leaf dish checked all our boxes. It was a green leaf (my first association when I think of a salad), it was semi-sweet and highly acidic, which is the core definition of a pre-dessert, it created a shockingly funny moment when presented to the diner, and it was very simple to make. We just had to find good sorrel, which proved easier said than done. Luckily, we found someone who could send us some: Santi from Finca de Los Cuervos, a long-time partner of ours from Galicia.
The big question was: we could only serve it if it was truly delicious, otherwise we’d look like fools. To be bold enough to serve a single leaf on a napkin could only work if it was perfect. So we proceeded to try it.
First, we followed the recipe to the letter: place the leaf on a tray, freeze it, dust it with icing sugar, and eat it really fast. It was very interesting and promising, but it lacked acidity and aroma. Reading about sorrel, I discovered it belongs to the same family as rhubarb, which is one of my favourite ingredients and was highly available at the time we were doing the trials. So we tried spraying some rhubarb juice onto the leaves before freezing them, hoping the juice would stick to the leaves and enhance their natural acidity. It worked perfectly.
The final step came when thinking about how to improve the sugar part. Rhubarb and vanilla are a great match, so why not infuse the icing sugar with vanilla pods and let it absorb all their aroma? Another success.
The moment our first customers tried the leaf for the first time is something I won’t forget easily. Their expressions of surprise and happiness were exactly what we had hoped for from such a course. It’s just so nice when things work out, isn’t it?
The feeling of something becoming full circle is really filling. This leaf speaks to me in so many different ways that it is a bit hard to explain. It’s, perhaps, the clearest representation of my influences in a context that is uniquely ours. I’d never thought that, so many years later, the work of someone who has been such an influence on me would come back and fit my needs like a glove. Iced Sorrel Leaf “Ollie Dabbous” is definitely coming back as soon as the first leaves start popping again. Cheers, Ollie.
RECIPE
For the Vanilla Infused Icing-Sugar:
- 1ud Vanilla, pod
- 500g Sugar, icing
Coarsely chop the Vanilla Pod into chunks and add it to the Icing Sugar. Allow it to infuse at room temperature for at least 3 days.
For the Iced Sorrel Leaf “Ollie Dabbous”:
- Sorrel, leaf, the green long ones, in perfect condition (1 per person)
- Rhubarb, juice, strained
- Sugar, icing, flavoured with vanilla pods, from above
Arrange the Sorrel Leaves neatly on a rack and spray them with the Rhubarb Juice. Place them in the freezer, uncovered, until completely frozen.
Right before serving, very quickly remove the leaves from the freezer, place them on another rack set over a tray and dust the leaves with the Icing Sugar with the help of a little sieve. Serve a minute ago.
