Admiration

 

I've never met Philippe Conticini, but from a handful of friends who've known him or worked with him, the same words tend to pop up when his name is mentioned: he's a technician, he has an amazing palate, he's sensitive, generous, funny, and perhaps a little crazy. In my opinion, all attributes of a great chef. He's well known, but his influence is also over-looked. He's a bit of a rebel. When he appeared on the cover of Pastry Art and Design, the caption read, "The Man Who Put Salmon in Sorbet."

The New York Times ran an eight-part series about him back in 2000, while he was at the helm of the Petrossian shop in Manhattan (and Paris). Here are a few choice quotes from the first of those articles:

...My palate lies somewhere between savory and sweet. I've never quite been able to separate the two.

I have a little problem, you see. I began as a patissier, and it has indelibly marked my work as a chef. With pastry, I was always the experimental type, inclined to use spices like cumin and pepper to make sweets that would have horrified Lenotre. But once I saw how well they worked, it was liberating. Possibilities suddenly sprang up everywhere.

... I use classic techniques, of course. But when it comes to flavor, I erase all tradition and open my mind to any seasoning.

One thing that I don't think he'll ever get enough credit for is his virtual creation of the trend that saw everyone and their mother putting things in glasses, both savory and sweet. Looking at the dominant plating style today- seemingly spacious and haphazard arrangements- I'm starting to think the concept has again reached its zenith. I'm starting to take a fresh look at Conticini's initial approach of flavors and textures in close proximity, their juxtapositions shifting. His desserts tended to say, "Eat me," rather than, "Look at me." Again, from the New York Times:

One of the early breakthroughs in my creative life came when I discovered the plated dessert. Dessert was no longer a slice of cake or an individual souffle, but a synthesis of flavors and components.

Over the years, however, this concept, too, fell short. The flavors and complexity were all there, but they seemed somehow diffuse. What creates synergy in a dish, as I slowly figured out, is not just the combination of flavors, but how they are combined. And often with a dessert, a plate simply won't do. Because it's flat, it does not allow the components to mingle as they are eaten. And it makes it hard to get the proper range of flavors in each bite.

I played around with different dishes and bowls and finally decided on a glass. In a shallow one, like a martini glass, the flavors are like neighbors in a small community. They bump into one another, they interact and they are concentrated.

It's been awhile now, but I've had the pleasure of tasting his stuff on more than one occasion: just after he took over the famed Peltier shop in Paris, and two meals at the Michelin-starred Petrossian in Paris (where he doubled as pastry chef and chef de cuisine). My copy of his book, Tentations, is well-worn. As a sort of secret admirer, the frustrating thing for me is that he tends to disappear every few years. As best as I can tell, his most recent venue, Exceptions Gourmandes- a tiny shop selling his subtle twists on classic pastry- has closed after little more than a year. And his website is no longer active.

But as I've been thinking about him recently, and about his style and philosophy, I spent an hour or so digging through all of my paper archives to see what I had. In addition to the NYT clips (here's a link where you'll find some, but not all of those 2000-2001 articles), I also have a copy of his Thuries spread from about the same time.

   

   

Browsing the lengthy Thuries piece, which includes a dozen dishes both savory and sweet, you easily get a sense of what he was trying to do presentation-wise. Each recipe, given a fanciful name, reflects a cacophony of components, but combinations that you find yourself wanting to try. His Yablock consisted of apple, carrot, and corn. Chocolate, sesame, cinnamon, mint, licorice, coffee, coconut, and pine nut all comprised his Aracaju. So much of his cooking is simultaneously sophisticated, nostalgic, and audacious. Rather than seeing him as a tortured genius, I always imagined him in the kitchen, laughing.

There have long been things of his I've wanted to try out, so I picked out a few of the most interesting. In the dish he called Angara, tomatoes cooked in reduced sangria co-mingled with citrus confit, mango, pineapple, basil, passion fruit seeds, an olive oil sorbet, and olive tuile. When it comes to olive-based desserts, I've never felt too strongly pro or con, so that seemed a good component to start with. I found the sorbet interesting as well.

The sorbet seemed to defy everything I've come to learn about the science and formulas, but I jumped in anyway. An infusion of lemon and basil went into egg yolks whipped up like a sabayon. A fairly large quantity of nonfat fromage blanc no doubt helped emulsify the addition of the olive oil. The texture is unreal; the resulting flavor is definitely shaped by the fromage blanc, yet you really taste the clean, pure olive oil. In the context of all the other components, it probably made much more sense than on its own.

We adjusted the tuile a bit, using nicoise olives rather than green, and omitting the buckwheat flour. Again, it's an odd bird, but it works. The composition I assembled, albeit not exactly in the Conticini style, consisted of the sorbet and tuile alongside a 'salad' of strawberry, blanched olive, mango, tomato, orange peel, and basil, all 'dressed' in lemon, simple syrup, and olive oil. I also knocked out some quick oven-dried slices of strawberry.

Download: Olive Oil Sorbet (Conticini)-Workbook 17.3.09

Download: Olive Tuile (Conticini)-Workbook 17.3.09

 

   

 

Perhaps slightly more conventional, but no less alluring is his cinnamon mint ice cream. One doesn't see the combination much outside of breath mints and toothpaste. But I like it.

OK, it does sort of taste like toothpaste. But then, I keep finding myself going back for yet another spoonful...

Download: Cinnamon Mint Ice Cream-Workbook 17.3.09

 

Comments

[Roberto N.]

I ran into a snippet of information in a Thuries mag a while back talking about Conticini's Buches de Noel. It was about 6 years ago. They looked spectacular and their flavor combinations read amazing too. I'll look it up and if I find it, I'll try and send you a scan.

[Ted Niceley]

Ahhhh, I can always read anything about Conticini!
I've got to try the olive oil sorbet, after all of these years.
I have to say one of my fave ice cream flavors of all time is the cinnamon mint.
Reading your comments about the olive oil sorbet made me think of how that cinnamon mint hits my palate.
It's a perfect balance of flavors and (to me) one moment the mint hits me, the next the cinnamon.
This is what I'm waiting for one day.
The "Velvet Goldmine" of pastry, instead of Iggy and David we get Pierre & Phillipe!
There's a book there somewhere!!!