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

 

 

 

Spaghetti Day

 

I recently dusted off the 'spaghetti kit' I got from Koerner way back. Basically, the kit consists of coiled surgical tubing, a squeeze bottle, and an attachment for the iSi canister allowing removal of the noodle with a blast of gas.

Of course, I'm rarely, if ever a first-adopter: it's been a solid decade since El Bulli shocked the world with its consomme noodles, rendered heat stable with the use of agar agar. My pal Johnny Iuzzini even went light years further with the idea, running carrageenan-gelled mixtures through a peristalic pump to ramp-up production. And one of my favorite pastry chefs, Patrice Demers of Montreal's Newtown, featured a composed dish incorporating a clementine noodle in his last book. I'd been thinking about it a long time, too, but despite others being able to pull it off well, I never quite settled on how best to employ the technique to fit what we do, rather than just riff off of someone else.

 

 

A noodle- conventional or otherwise- is a challenging texture in a dessert context, something I realized many years ago while attempting several variations on sweet ravioli. It's tough, in that you either have to go all the way, or not at all, and I don't see us doing bowlfuls of faux pasta at LB anytime soon. But shrinking it down to a pre-dessert bite seemed to preserve the novelty without beating anyone over the head.

Here we extracted strawberry water, clarified it, and set it with agar and locust bean gum (I think to create a longer, chewier texture, I'll substitute the LBG for gelatin next time or try Johnny's carrageenan blend; it also threw off a lot of water through syneresis after the fact). I coiled one long single noodle onto a demitasse spoon and imbedded tiny,tiny cubes of strawberry pate de fruit, a thin slice of semi-candied celery and leaf, fresh strawberry, and orange zest.

 

 Download Strawberry Noodle- Workbook 14.6.09

As a base for the noodle, I used this strawberry consomme (further clarified with 0.5% gelatin) that I wrote about a couple years ago in this Notes From the Kitchen post. A puree would work just fine, but wouldn't offer the same translucence.

Download Strawberry Consomme

 

 

 

Snapshots

Of course, so many moments speed by without proper documentation. For instance, this year's New Zealand greengage crop came and went without me going on about it like I do every year. At least here anyway. We did end up discussing its merits, clafoutis-style, on Martha Stewart Radio back in late March. And then Chef and I shot a greengage-yogurt-rhubarb dish for photographer Mary-Laetitia Gerval's next book project. But I digress. A few more snapshots from our kitchen and beyond... 

 

   

The LB team also busted out a new cookbook over a mere few weeks in April. My contribution to the project- a companion book to ER's PBS series- included about twenty dessert recipes. Above, a few of my reference images for the recipe tester- Roasted White Chocolate Panna Cotta, Blueberry-Almond Budino, and a classic Chocolate Mousse. And below, evidence discovered along the way that not all vessels are in fact oven-proof.

 

 

As usual, Spring was event season here in NYC, and I must have averaged one such out-of-house gig a week. Above, for the Tap-n-Tapas event, we riffed on our pistachio-cherry-white chocolate dessert. A few weeks later we twisted it further: black sesame, soy, mandarin, yuzu, and cherry, for the inaugural Lucky Rice festival. Below, going back further, our prototype for the SoBe dinner honoring Daniel Boulud. Our plate-up for 600 was a mashed-up vacherin of sorts: lemon, praline, coconut, cocoa pain de genes, and meringue.

 

 

When you get the call to make a special surprise birthday 'cake' for Dave Arnold and Nils Noren, you accept the challenge without question. Above, my test semla- a favorite dessert from Nils' homeland- essentially a sweet bread flavored with cardamom, hollowed out, it's interior shredded and soaked in milk, blended with almond paste, and stuffed back in, before being finished with clouds of whipped cream. Pretty good, I thought. But not as cool as Brooks Headley's commisioned Fudgie-the-Whale, complete with decor of fried pasta. This will give you a good sense of how the evening progressed.

 

 

Above, a loose strawberry-rhubarb tart designed for our project in DC. Below, changes made there earlier in the year, rocking out the classics, if you will: Profiteroles, Praline Mille Feuille, Apple Tatin, and a coupe- Pistachio, Vanilla, Rasberry, and Caramel. Heading back this coming week to do more; I will also be paying a visit to the White House.

 

I haven't yet really followed through on the 'Covers' idea, but not for lack of inspiration. Pulled this book off the shelf a while back. As you can see, it saw quite a bit of use when it appeared in the mid-90s. I must have lifted every single component in that book at one point. Classic indeed.

 

Breakfast functions at LB aren't all that common, but rather than out-source pastry when they do pop up, I recently decided to upgrade and produce everything in-house because, well, we can. It's been fun re-learning this facet of the profession after fifteen years of restaurant work. Simon took the lead in fine-tuning the doughs and lamination. In addition to bagels (of course), we're now at the ready to pump out croissant, pain au chocolat, several danish, muffins, etc. Good stuff.

   

 

 
   
 
 
  

On the plated front, a sketch: Black Sesame, Mandarin, Cherry, Shiso

 

 

Another rough draft. Almost too similar to the Black Sesame dish in terms of techniques and components, this is a play on the idea of Tres Leches. It all began with Jesus, and after much back and forth, he put together a traditional version, which led to this interpretation, blown out to include a condensed milk ice cream, brown butter micro-sponge, banana, coconut, and caramelized white chocolate. Needs more work.

 

 

I traveled quite a bit in the interim- quick trips to Miami, LA, Seattle- but the highlight was a chance to tour cacao plantations in the Dominican Republic. Hosted by Michel Cluizel, a small group of us pastry chef types were offered access to the Rizek family's Los Ancones and La Esmeralda plantations outside San Francisco de Macoris. To say that it was inspiring would be an understatement. No matter how much of you read about it from a book, there's just no substitute for seeing, feeling, and tasting the process from tree to bar up close and on location. It will change your view of chocolate, for sure. We were suprised with a last-minute challenge to prepare a dessert on the plantation for local chefs and media. The group I led produced a conceptual dish inspired by the surroundings, composed of hand-ground cocoa paste, young coconut, green mango, cashews, lime, ripe mango pearls, goat's milk caramel, freshly-roasted nibs, beans/pulp taken straight from fresh pods, flower buds, and garnish made from chocolate produced in the next room.

   

 

 

I've been digging these little matcha truffles. We've messed around with them off and on, first for the Lucky Rice event, and most recently, for the lunch attended by the Dalai Lama, where they found a place in boxes of take-away chocolates.

 

Lots of other fun stuff happened, but the question will always remain, 'What's next?'

As always, it's a pleasure to be here.

 
 

 

Conquered

Concord grapes always tend to sneak up on us. A first signal of autumn, it’s not uncommon to begin seeing them as early as late August. I love them, but for some reason I usually get stuck for ideas. Because of their seeds, they have to processed, and in the end, they just seem to lose a little something along the way. And simply turning them into coulis or sorbet seems boring.

 

Undeterred, we've set about blending and straining several cases since their arrival, incorporating them into a few different applications this season.

 

  

We're still exploring complimentary flavors via pate de fruit. Here, concord grape is teamed up with pear:

 

Though we haven't ever introduced gelatin clarification into a regular production or menu item, we play around with the method from time to time. It's a great way to transform a muddy-looking grape puree into a more refined end result. A dosage of 0.5% gelatin is dissolved into the puree, and then its frozen. The solid block is then allowed to slowly thaw through a chinois, producing a translucent to clear juice; the nasty bits get caught up in the protein network provided by the gelatin. Knowing that tannins can sometimes affect certain hydrocolloids, we haven't played around with this enough to notice.

   

Cheese has found its way back into some of our pre-dessert work; most recently, chevre has been given the spherification treatment. We using the 'reverse' method, of course, and a 0.8% alginate/water bath The natural calcium present in the goat cheese mixture is sufficient for the skin to form. Heavy production of this and a couple other spheres has taught us how a holding bath can help us control the end result. Storing the finished orbs in syrup make sense in a sweet application. A weak syrup actually helps to nicely 'tighten' their shape, though we learned the hard way that the syrup itself can suck away too much internal moisture, shrinking the spheres down to half their original size.

 

The grapes enter the dish in the form of cold oil/agar agar pearls, and the whole is finished with candied walnut and a half-grind of black pepper.

 

Concord season has also afforded us the perfect opportunity to work on a technique that's been on my to-do list for months. Borrowing a concept from the El Bulli camp, the goal is to create a stable liquid that can be baked into the center of a cake. I've seen a few minor variations, but the basic idea is to gel a fruit mixture with aglinate and calcium gluconate, followed by blending, molding, and freezing. The frozen center is then inserted into a batter. I've seen a similar effect achieved by Stupak, using gellan to  give his carameilzed brioche pudding a liquid caramel interior.

   

Here, the soft grape is baked into a standard financier piped into silicon molds. Perhaps I see a peanut butter and grape variation in our future.

Download: Concord Grape Pâte de Fruit- Workbook 01.11.09

Download: Concord Grape Pearls- Workbook 01.11.09

Download: Chèvre Spherification- Workbook 01.11.09

 

 

 
 
 

Michigan Banana

 

That sounds like the punch line to a joke, but it’s just one colorful alias among many for a curious fruit. The paw paw also goes by Hoosier banana, poorman's banana, etc. I say curious, because it seems out place, as if it should come from the tropics. Yet this is truly an unique American specimen, its growing range covering the Great Lakes down to the Gulf, and from Texas east to the coast. It tends to thrive in the Midwest; the individual varieties themselves evoke visions of the heartland: Shenandoah, Allegheny, Taytwo, and Pa. Golden. 

 

     

 

Though I hail from Michigan myself, this year brought my first encounter with the paw paw. Visually, it could be mistaken for a small green mango, the size varying from three to six inches in length. On slicing it open, a soft white to yellow flesh is revealed, with a central grouping of hard, brown seeds. The fragrance hits you immediately- notes of banana, mango, and melon all combined. The appearance, texture, and flavor all call to mind the exotic cherimoya, or guanabana- indeed it is a distant relative, the only member of the Annonaceae family that thrives in a temperate climate.

 

     

 

Our first delivery of paw paws would be our only one. The season is ridiculously short, straddling the last weeks of September into the first of October. Due to its fragility and quick ripening, commercial viability is limited. They don’t ship well; each of our samples arrived carefully nestled in foam packaging and bubble-wrap. To preserve what we didn’t eat immediately, I figured the best test was to incorporate them into a sorbet. And without any other guideline to follow, we moved ahead by referencing its tropical cousins.

 

     
 

 

Download: Paw Paw Sorbet- Workbook 23.10.09

 

Keep these in mind when the season rolls in again next year; the best source for fresh paw paws (and more) is Earthy Delights.

 

 

 

Mou

 

As in 'soft'. Soft caramel, or caramel mou.

I love this stuff. It's the soft texture, and the complexity of flavor from the resulting Maillard reaction- the sugar and milk proteins reducing together- that elevates this confection beyond that of mere caramelized sugar. Add some sea salt and it's a real party.

When you nail that perfect consistency, however, the caramel is difficult to handle, and thus, is often found wrapped in cellophane. That works out alright in most circumstances, but as a petit four in a fine dining setting, I'm uncomfortable with the idea of litter on the table. Something edible would be great.

 

     

 

I've had a passing interest in edible films, probably since a first encounter with one of those breath strips that hit the market a decade ago. This isn't a new idea of course; thin wrappers that you can eat have been around forever. But I bet it was the pharmecutical industry that discovered and then pushed the film-forming possiblities of our friendly hydrocolloids. The gelcap was just the beginning.

In the culinary realm, there has certianly been a lot of work in this area. The first few that come to mind: the Fat Duck's own flavored films, Aduriz's faux fish skin made of cod-derived gelatin, and Alinea's crispy Pure-Cote packages. I've never been smart enough to come up with such inventive applications myself, so I never really pursued the idea with much vigor.  But this sudden challenge of finding a refined wrapper for my caramel renewed my interest.

And though I spent several hours pouring through patent applications- there are indeed many ways (and many ingredients available) to achieve edible films- one answer jumped out at me from our daily mise en place. Whether dispensed from a squeeze bottle, or spooned out of a container, the random drips and drops of our pectin-based sauces often dry out, turning 'crusty' even at room temperature- frustratingly so- but are easily peeled away. Perhaps a solution? Sure enough, our standard passion fruit coulis, spread on some acetate and given a quick run in the dehydrator, yielded a transparent, pliable wrapper. It was a little sticky the first few times, so I simply reduced the sugar. Primitive, for sure, but it works.

 

    

 

Most of the recent patents I researched concern themselves more with the application of flavors or medicines to an array of films. But it was within those various 'recipes' that I discovered a new (to me) gum, pullulan, derived from starch, which seems to tailor-made for this kind of thing.

Fun stuff.

 

   

Download: Soft Caramel- Workbook 30.9.09

Download: Passion Fruit Film- Workbook 30.9.09

   

 

Gummy

It’s probably been at least a year and a half now since we started tinkering with our own version of gummy candies and starch molding. Of course, it was right about the time Sam was doing his various alcohol ‘bears’- including absinthe, sambuca, and amaro, and at least once, there was the infamous ‘whiskey dick’. We didn’t really want to tread on his territory, so apart from playing with starch molded fish and the like, we shelved the idea.

 

I sat in on a hydrocolloid demo at ICE a couple weeks ago, featuring George Mendes, Tim Koerner and Anthony Caratozzolo, as well as Mr. Mason, who blew through his repertoire of cold oil spherification, soft chocolate set with carrageenan, gellan films, and warm custards made possible with methylcellulose. The gummy bears just kind of came up in conversation, reminding me that I hadn’t thought about them in many months.

 

Our first test was with Pernod, a little softer and less chewy than the commercial candy we all know; we didn’t factor the blooming water into Sam’s formula (dosing gelatin at 25% of the total), nor is there the high enough sugar content to contribute much texture. And though we’ve taken a break from pearls and caviars and such, we still keep some cold oil in the walk-in, so I dropped the last few cc’s of Pernod gel into the oil to produce a nice transparent pearl.

 

 

From there, I wanted to see if they would float in water; they didn’t, but I’d love to try floating them in a slightly more viscous fluid. And then the general idea of suspension led to the thought of floating such pearls into a clear gummy. Below are basil and strawberry gummy pearls dropped into a clear gel, and strips inlaid with raspberry. We went for a firmer texture using 25% gelatin, and along with some sugar we also added a small amount of citric acid. The technique can certainly be refined, but it was a cool starting point.

 

 

 

 

Download: Pernod Gummy-Workbook 27.7.09

 

 

 

Duality

 

We stopped doing what I would call ‘traditional’ petit fours for a long stretch- pâte de fruit, nougat, macarons- opting for more inventive and complex bites. But time and distance does often make the heart grow fonder for such things. And certainly during the summer months, when our corner of the kitchen can hit 80 degrees and 80% humidity, we need to go with stable standbys that have some measure of plate time. Being able to make them by the hundreds also helps. We do, of course, continue to throw a curveball with these- macarons, for instance, become open-faced constructions, and the pâte de fruit appears as a duo of flavors.

 

The standard HM pectin jellies still hold interest, even as we explore other textures and the versatility possible through other hydrocolloids like LM pectin, agar agar, and gelatin. We’ve often combined two flavors into the same gel, but it was Hermé who sparked further play through the conventional method with such joined pairings, but also inclusions and infusions.

 

 

 

 

While I’m sure there exists some trick for better adhesion, we find that simply stacking the two framed pâtes, followed by a run through the guitar, does an adequate job. And using the thin white chocolate plaque as a vehicle allows us to skip the sugar dusting, reducing the sweetness somewhat, but also giving us a nice, translucent jewel to behold. Two most recent pairings include fig-apricot and lychee-peach.

 

Download Apricot Pate de Fruit- Workbook 26.7.09

 

Download Fig Pate de Fruit- Workbook 26.7.09

 

Download Lychee Pate de Fruit- Workbook 26.7.09

 

Download White Peach Pate de Fruit-Workbook 26.7.09

 

Blocked

 

One of our recent favorites pairs fresh cherries with pistachio. Like so many summer fruits, I find the more minimal the treatment, the better the results will be. Here, the cherries are merely halved and kissed with a pinch of sugar and a pass with the blowtorch.

The pistachio enters as a block of an airy parfait into which we've inserted a cylinder of our old friend, caramelized white chocolate. Rounding out the composition are cubes of pistachio pain de genes, lemon cream and confit, and chopped caramelized pistachio nuts.

 

As with almost all of our mousse preparations, this parfait begins with our low-sugar pate a bombe. We initially had problems adding this directly to our pistachio paste (we use the Fabri product, sweet enough on its own to flavor the parfait without additional sugar). The mixture would inevitably sieze or contain innumerable un-incorporated lumps. The solution was to first produce a more stable emulsion with cream; this is great on its own as well, either as a plating component or even as a bonbon filling.

It also seemed logical to dissolve our gelatin in the warm pate a bombe mixture before whipping, but the final volume was reduced, and in the event it whipped too long and too cool, it would also sieze in the folding process. We simply try to keep all the components at or just above room temperature- the pate a bombe, pistachio base, and whipped cream- to avoid those little nuggets of gelatin from forming while mixing into the base.

Download: Pistachio Cream-Workbook 25.7.09

Download: Pistachio Parfait-Workbook 25.7.09

Effervescent

 

This bubbly bit came from a random sift of files that tend to pile up. I was delighted to find the notes from well over a year back, when I attended a demo by Ramon Morato, promoting Chocovic and his new (at the time) book, a mammoth tome I still haven't managed to get myself. Ramon embodies all the qualities of a great chef: he's a generous teacher, a skilled technician, a creative spirit, occasionally expressing himself with a sense of humor.

Presented by Morato and intended as a digestive mignardise, the memory of this little tablet came back to me at just the right time, while planning out a big presentation I'm working on later this month. It's simply white chocolate encapsulating sugar, powdered fruit, baking soda, and citric acid. The mixture is piped and pressed between acetate or stamped out, obviously remaining inert until the cocoa butter melts in the mouth, allowing the acid and base to react with each other in fizzy fun.

 

 

It's not something I ever see hitting the tables in our restaurant- it can be a bit jarring if the proportions are off- but it's a great, simple to tool to use in explaining how baking soda or other leaveners actually work in doughs. It can also push the idea of how we can explore other mixtures of acitve/inactive ingredients and reactions, how the forms and functions of components might become kinetic rather than just static food on the plate.

Download: Effervescent White Chocolate-Workbook 2.5.09