Nutrition
| Per 100 g | Per 1 oz (28 g) | |
|---|---|---|
| Energy | 284 kcal | 80 kcal |
| Protein | 6.5 g | 1.8 g |
| Fat | 2 g | 0.6 g |
| saturated | 0.3 g | 0.1 g |
| Carbohydrate | 54.2 g | 15.4 g |
| sugars | 51.6 g | 14.6 g |
| Fibre | 14.2 g | 4 g |
| Sodium | 146 mg | 41 mg |
Estimated from the ingredients, for the finished dried product. Actual values vary with the produce you use and how far you dry it.
Ingredients
- 3 1/4 cups of steamed beetroot, skin removed
- 860 g of strawberries
- 3 vanilla pods
- 3 1/4 cups of mango flesh
Instructions
- Steam the beetroot until a knife slides in without resistance, then let it cool before it goes in the blender. Hot puree thins out and spreads well past wherever you pour it.
- Hold back a few spoonfuls of the mango before blending anything. Dripped onto the finished red sheet and dragged through with a skewer, it gives a marbled garnish rather than a flat one.
- Blend the beetroot, strawberries and vanilla seeds until completely smooth, then taste it. Beetroot varies enormously in sweetness, and this is your only chance to correct it with more mango.
- Spread the puree across a lined tray at 5 mm, right out to the edges of the mat. An even depth is what lets every shard you cut later have the same firmness.
- Dehydrate at 45 °C for 4 hours, which is deliberately short. A garnish has to bend around a glass rim, so this comes off long before it would be finished as a fruit leather.
- Test it by lifting one corner and curling it around a finger: it should hold the curl without cracking. If it cracks, it has gone too far to shape and is better cut flat into shards.
- Cut twists, discs or shards while the sheet is warm, and slit each one so it can straddle a glass rim. Cutting it cold tears it.
- Build the drink first and add the garnish last, sitting above the ice. Anything resting in the liquid softens and drops in within ten minutes or so.
- Keep spares flat between sheets of baking paper in a sealed tin in the fridge for a week. This is a short-life garnish by design: the moisture still in it is exactly what makes it foldable.
