Having Desserts with Passion

Passion fruit layered with sweet strawberry sauce, fresh wild strawberries, and whipped cream makes an elegant dessert especially when served in passion fruit shells. This gourmet dessert by Michelin Chef Etienne Krebs is easy to prepare and best served chilled. You can prepare it ahead of time and store it in the refrigerator so that it is perfectly chilled and ready to serve when your guests arrive. This is a very refreshing and light end to a heavy or spicy meal. Passion fruits and wild strawberries make an exotic presentation and a lovely dish.

Of course, you can also use raspberries or regular strawberries if you can’t find wild strawberries to make this recipe, but wild strawberries add an exciting touch to the dish. The appearance is different from commercial strawberries and it has a mildly sweet flavor that complements the subtly sweet and wonderfully tangy passion fruit. Wild strawberries are smaller than cultivated strawberries and look more like wild berries. They grow wild in fields and in forests.

Wild strawberries are delicate and bruise easily and should be consumed as soon as they are harvested or they will turn soft or mushy. They also make a delicious strawberry sauce since they have plenty of juices. To make a simple strawberry sauce, simply use a food processor to puree fresh strawberries. You can pass the resulting puree through a sieve to get rid of any pulpy material if you want the sauce to be fine, although pulpy sauce is fine and can be pleasurable in the palate.

An exotic fruit, passion fruit is not always available and makes a rare treat. As its name suggests, it helps lighten up the mood and quite nutritious too. The seeds of the fruit are eaten together with the pulp and separating them can be difficult. Some pass the flesh through a fine sieve to extract the juices of boil it down to make syrup.

Ingredients

18 passion fruit
1 cup whipped cream
7 tablespoons sugar
5 ½ tablespoons powdered sugar
6 teaspoons strawberry sauce
0.77 lbs. (about 1 ½ cups) wild strawberries

1. Split the passion fruit into two and scoop out the flesh. Reserve the pulp and the emptied fruit shells.
2. In a saucepan, add strawberry sauce and 7 tablespoons sugar and heat over low fire. Reduce until you get a thick liquid. Cool.
3. Whip the cream with the powdered sugar. Add the passion fruit, reserving 6 teaspoons for garnish.
4. Place the emptied passion fruit shells in dessert bowls and pour a spoon of strawberry sauce into the bottom of each.
5. Place the wild strawberries on top then add the beaten cream.
6. Decorate the dish with the passion fruit and strawberry sauce. Serve with a sugared biscuit.