Workbook

Smoke, Salt, and Sweet

 

 

It started a few weeks ago. The Chef had been wanting to play around with a dry chorizo component for a first course dish, and between the sous chefs and I, we figured the best place to begin would be a powder. The precious fat collected from very slowly rendered chorizo was simply blended with tapioca maltodextrin.

The flavor of spicy pimenton crept up on you, and lingered for some time. Once incorporated into the intended dish, however, its subtlety was lost. As my savory counterparts went back to the proverbial drawing board, I snatched what remained of the experiment and headed to the pastry kitchen.

 

 

 

Trends are funny. I barely take notice of them anymore. I do find that once something hits the mainstream, someone quickly steps out from the shadows to proclaim it 'over'. That seems to be the case with our beloved bacon; the ubiquitous pork belly has yet to completey disappear from menus far and wide, but we do seem to be moving on. Pastry chefs have yet to fully retreat from the pig- I think there are still a lot of ways we can harness its salty, smoky allure. 

So, I decided chorizo was next.

 

 

 

The brainstorm mentioned above just happened to go down the week of the recent International Chef's Congress, to which I'd been running back and forth before lunch service at the restaurant. All of those out-of-town chefs have to eat somewhere, and I found myself with three or four parties of pastry chef colleagues in our dining room, all in the same night. I was delighted to share my new obsession with them.

Loaded into a shell casted from dark chocolate, the powder was spooned over a drop of caramel, a touch of lemon confit, and an extra hit of smoked salt. With little else to get in the way, the chorizo flavor seemed more intense. Perhaps the fattiness of the melting cocoa butter even helped carry that smoky flavor longer. Presented as a transitional petit four after dessert proper, I realized it might also work as well, if not better, as a transition early on, between savory and sweet.

 

 

 

By coincidence (no, really!) this week's episode of Avec Eric finds me in the pastry kitchen with Eric Ripert, after his inspiring trip to Colonnata and a visit with its top producer of lardo. You know what we made. Check your local listings for air date and times. 

 

 

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…

 

 

 

 

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

 

 

 
 
 

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

 

Back in Black

 

I feel like I've been ignoring our old friend black sesame.

   

 

The last macaron we did contained a center of ground caramelized sugar and black sesame seeds, further mellowed out by a hit gianduja. We could never get it super-fine; I liked the texture, but I always thought it needed improvement. Then we decided to give macarons a rest, and our sesame efforts drifted elsewhere.

This is the result of trying a typical soft rocher approach: the black sesame paste with added cocoa butter and dark chocolate. It's a delicate mixture to handle, either liquid or solid, but that magic melting point makes it nice to eat. It might need a touch more sugar for some; I purposely chose a low percentage chocolate to help that balance.

Download: Black Sesame Rocher-Workbook 23.3.09

   

Chasing Tradition

 

I've often mentioned my equal love and respect for both the 'old school' and the 'new', and how each can really serve to inform the other.

While I've enjoyed a handful of decent versions over the years (La Brea Bakery's sticks out in my mind), one thing that I've never actually gotten around to mastering myself is that specialty of Bordeaux, the canele. But I'm always game to make up for my lack of breadth, even when it comes at the suggestion of one of our line cooks, who just happens to have had a bit of pastry experience. I'm not too proud to learn a trick or two from anyone.

Bill and Shelly began working on the batter a couple days before, allowing ample time for the crepe-like mixture to rest. Like its delicate cousin the macaron, the canele is a fussy preparation for just a few ingredients. Recipe proportions differ wildly among the several I've looked at; the important variables of vessel, time, and temperature equally contribute to the characteristic dark color, crisp shell, and moist and airy interior.

     

They decided to try both the traditional copper molds, as well as the more accesible silicon forms. And while we debated the virtues of coating the molds with beeswax or butter (even honey-butter), the fact that we didn't happen to have any wax lying around made the point moot.

I'm looking forward to spending more time with Bill's recipe and nailing it down. These things are addictive.

Download: Canele-Workbook 20.3.09

   

Star Power

 

The New York photographer known by most as Battman, has been making the rounds this week shooting for his new book. This latest will be his eighth food-focused project, the theme being "small bites". I chose a subject that I've been thinking about for the last year or so, the idea of an a la minute chocolate petit four, or I guess, a sort of bon bon frais. Often, when I submit something to a media request, it's almost like giving the idea a sense closure; by putting it "out there" I can move on to other things.

Such is the case with the trio of bon bons we photographed for the book. Through dark, milk, and white chocolate, each paired with a different citrus, I assembled molded chocolate cups, a cream, and agar pearls. The pearls, too, have begun to feel tired, and though I think they're put to best use in these petit fours (as opposed to scatterd on a plated dessert), I feel like it's time to leave them alone for awhile. With the white, it was the caramelized white chocolate and lemon: grapefruit and Earl Grey factored into the dark.

The match for the milk chocolate is one of my favorites: star anise. It's one of those synergies that aren't exactly subtle, but unless you know it's there you might not be able to put your finger on it. The milk chocolate cream is topped with orange pearls.

Putting these chocolate creams together really made me think about how to "perfect" the emulsion of cocoa butter, water, and milk fat. There has been a lot written about the subject, from Frederic Bau to Herve This. With ganache in particular there are a lot of conflicting opinions, but it's something I'm beginning to pay a lot more attention to. As always, looking toward science to better serve our cooking.

Download: Milk Chocolate Star Anise Cream-Workbook 19.2.09

Download: Orange Pearls-Workbook 19.2.09