Workbook

Variation on a Theme

 

 

Saying that presentation comes second, after flavor, of course, makes for great theory, but we really do put it into practice. Sometimes that process of arranging and rearranging is an important part of constructing a finished dish; I find I learn more about the components themselves and how we can further manipulate them. And by trying this and that, new ideas are improvised on the spot.

 

 

 

With the recent discovery of our caramel sheets, I began thinking of riffing on the idea of the familiar caramel-dipped apple. There’s a fascinating contrast at play, notably the soft, rich caramel against the crisp and juicy raw apple. In most plated dessert situations, apples are often cooked, transformed, and laden with spice; we rarely get a glimpse of their formerly snappy tendencies.

Part of the plan in preserving that freshness involved taking a page from the Sam Mason playbook, borrowing his idea of a stewed apple confit set with gellan gum. I’ve always loved how mixing low and high acyl gellan provides a toothsome, poached fruit quality. I simply switched out a slowly cooked apple purée with one of fresh green apple, heated just enough so not to prematurely set once incorporated into the hydrated gellan.

 

 

 

So, with a fresh tray of our caramel film and the green apple gelée- set into various shapes- I could then play around with plate presentations, and just how these two components worked in tandem. Interestingly, I kept finding myself increasing the proportion of caramel to apple for balance, or figuring out a way to wrap or layer the apple in such a way, that there was sufficient caramel in each bite. What follows are various exercises toward a pre-dessert or full plated dish. Some themes that inspired me include terrines, mille feuilles, maki rolls, and of course, the classic caramel-apple on a stick.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

This was all just the result of just an hour of messing around, so we’re not quite there yet. The components themselves are in a state of flux as well, but I’ve included the latest versions of them here:

 

Download: Caramel Film- Workbook 25.10.2010

Download: Green Apple Gelee- Workbook 25.10.2010

 

 

 

Downsized

 

 

The true joy of cooking, for me anyway, is recognizing the amazing results of simple transformation, the inherent nature hidden within a product. In that sense, cooking is often less about manipulation, and more an act of enabling something to be what it ‘wants’ to be, fostering the right conditions for a few basic ingredients to create something way, way more than just the sum of its parts.  Bread certainly teaches us that, and cheese, too. And recently, the cacao bean taught me that when we approach our ingredients with respect, of their properties and potential, we appreciate what they express a lot more.

 

Enter my love of praline. Simple. Hazelnuts and sugar. Roasted, caramelized, and ground. Two ingredients- or three, if you count heat- and enough force to render them into a paste. One of my favorite flavors, it’s a smooth and rich complexity a hazelnut on its own just faintly suggests. Yeah, I could just eat the stuff with a spoon. It never ceases to inspire me.

 

A few months back I had been playing around with some classic bistro desserts for a consulting project. One of my favorites of the group was a simple mille feuille, an attempt to in some way channel the ethereal lightness of the one I’d had at Arpege several years ago. The filling in my version was a simple praline mousseline- just a matter of loosening up the praline paste just enough to take on the addition of gelatin and whipped cream. I can’t say it flew off the menu, but I sure loved it.

 

 

 

Working on a different project just a couple weeks ago, it hit me that the real inspiration was the classic Paris-Brest- a large choux ring topped with smaller puffs, all filled with a praline cream- strike that- the choux merely becomes a delivery system for it. Done well, it deserves its classic status. I nicked the all-important recipe for the cream from Gilles Renusson, one of those great pastry masters we probably don’t talk enough about. We shrunk it down into an individual quasi-plated dessert…

 

 

Download: Praline Choux- Workbook 21.6.2010

 

 

But I couldn’t leave it alone. Next we downsized it even further, to petit four scale. We pride ourselves, in a way, in how small we miniaturize these items, but even I was surprised when I realized they make a dime look big in comparison…

 

 

 

 

Covers

 

I started this second blog on January 1^st, 2009 as a way to document our daily work in the kitchen. It just seemed like a cool way to kick off the year, another outlet apart from the other thing I have going. I had no grandiose plans at the beginning, but I quickly realized how punk rock it would have been to post every day for a year. Of course, that was a huge challenge that I didn’t even come close to meeting, but I’m proud of what we put up here, and I know by the traffic it sees that it remains a useful resource for people.

 

I could certainly continue on with this basic concept forever, but I like the idea of shaking things up a bit. I realized recently that my library of books, the filing cabinets full of recipes and notes, all the sites and blogs bookmarked on my computer… They are all sadly under-utilized. I realized that the way I work has become insular in a way, that although my repertoire is vast enough, I’ve begun plagiarizing myself, simply mixing and matching old components in new ways. Or it’s the opposite, where we find ourselves attempting to create something out of thin air. I’ve lost that sense of excitement that a young cook has when browsing a new cookbook or magazine. The new is always exciting, but so too is re-discovering something from the past.

 

 

So I propose a new idea for the Workbook. I’ve always been quick to offer due credit to my inspiration in the past. But I think it would be cool to start a series of posts where I blatantly ‘rip-off’ those dishes and chefs that turn me on: the pastry equivalent of the cover song.  It might be a random bit that I pull out of the mountain of material disguised as my bookshelf, or it might be something I saw or tasted from someone that I think you should know about. Not exactly a Julie/Julia kind of thing, but more about the process of discovery, the interpretation, the learning experience, and of course, the homage.

 

I can’t promise a year’s worth of this, nor should it be assumed that the intention is to add the results to our menu. I may share the recipes, I may not. Rather, like any good cover song, it’s simply about the joy of playing someone else’s riff. I get to sift through all my stuff, and it’s a practical way to share it all with my staff as well. Like any good cover song, there’s an element of surprise. Who knows what I might lay on you, and what unexpected source it came from.  Like any good cover song, it’s paying respect to the original, and hopefully, introducing the original to someone who might not hear it otherwise.

 

 

Thanks, as always, for checking in.