Michael Laiskonis

Process of Elimination

It doesn't happen very often, but when it does, it can be really frustrating. Perhaps you could call it the culinary equivalent of 'writer's block'. I'm confronted with an ingredient or a specific assignment and nothing comes. Sometimes my heart just isn't in it, or there's time pressure, or I'm simply distracted by a million other facets of daily work life. Usually, though, I think it's because there might be so many possible ways to approach an idea, that it can be difficult to focus in on only one. But honestly, in the realm of problems, that's a pretty good one to have!

I definitely believe in the old adage, that the more things you learn, the more you realize there are things you don't know. That is why, as I've written here many times, cooking is such an exciting pursuit. You'll never have seen or done it all; there will always be a new ingredient, tool, or technique to tuck inside your bag of tricks. But what happens when that bag starts to fill up? Nine times out ten, I find exactly what I'm searching for, but there is the odd chance of having to blindly claw my way through that sack of accumulated knowledge, looking for inspiration as if it were a set of misplaced house keys. I don't know why this happens, or if it even happens at all with other chefs. Deep in our brains, there probably is some intricate hardware that subconsciously sifts through all of that chatter automatically. I definitely think that cooking straddles that 'right brain'/'left brain' line- 'right brain' activity usually implies the artistic and spontaneous, whereas 'left brain' tends to mean a plotted, logical order. I believe you need to work both sides to be a successful cook, but maybe when the balance shifts, such creative blocks occur.

But I'm an 'order' kind of guy (I think most pastry chefs are), so I appreciate the many attempts at codification and formulas we've seen in recent years. I first noticed all the charts and graphs that appeared with the Adria brothers; I remember being intrigued by them when I opened Albert's pastry book all those years ago. And then neurologist-turned-chef Miguel Sanchez Romera unveiled his own scientific method of cooking, constructivism, when he wrote La Cocina De Los Sentidos. To this day, if I'm really stuck for a flavor pairing, I will still refer to Karen Page and Andrew Dornenberg's Culinary Artistry, for it's charts of common, and not so common, matches (an early idol of mine, Andrew MacLauchlan did something similar in his pastry-specific Making Of a Pastry Chef). The idea of documenting ingredients and techniques has always appealed to me. Ever since I began to use a computer, I've started and abandoned many attempts at assembling my own personal reference. Several months ago (the last time I had a few days off in a row), I finally sat down and constructed my own road map (a detail is pictured above) which could refer to in times of need. My aim was to think of every possible way to manipulate an ingredient. I admit that there might be some holes in it. But I also have to confess, that since putting it down on paper, I hardly look at the thing!

All of this has made me think a lot about the process of elimination, and how as chefs, what we choose to discard becomes as important as what we hold onto. I have increasingly come to see a dish much as I think a sculptor might see a block of marble. When you see a piece by Auguste Rodin, for example, you get a sense that he simply sought to free his subject matter from within the stone itself, chipping away to reveal its hidden truth. Cooking might also work as a similar, though not necessarily literal, subtractive method. I often find myself paring down a dish and its components until I'm left with what is truly essential. It's a difficult thing to do, and I sometimes have to fight my own ego along the way; not too long ago, we would boast at the number of ingredients and components we could cram onto a plate! I've often tried to compare the differences between the additive and subtractive approach through two of my favorite chefs: Pierre Gagnaire and Alain Passard. To use more overly simplistic artist analogies, perhaps Gagnaire is like Jackson Pollock, building up layer upon layer of drips and splashes, creating harmony out of apparent chaos. Passard on the other hand, reminds me more of Mark Rothko, creating sparse yet bold compositions using a minimal range of color and form. When done well, both can be exciting and beautiful. And coincidentally, if you ever make it to Passard's Arpege in Paris, the Rodin museum just so happens to lie directly across the street!

While I'm on the subject of process and refinement, I thought I'd also mention that I've had the recent pleasure of being a part of someone else's development. A new friend is starting to build a line of chocolates produced in Ecuador from its indigenous Arriba cacao. Just for fun, and for my quiet opinions, he began giving me samples from the very first batch. Seeing the progress over the last few months, I'm learning more about the growing and manufacturing process of chocolate, but I'm also amazed at how difficult it is to create a consistent product affected by so many variables. The strain of bean, the growing altitude, the fermenting and drying, the roasting and processing: they all determine the the character, handling, and subtle trajectories of flavor in the finished bar. Such a product always has an interesting story behind it, and that it is a labor of love makes it all the more special.

In addition to the test batches of chocolate, I've also been given a few other fun products to taste and play with. Along with some nice Ecuadorian coffees and some tasty whole cacao beans coated with crunchy sugar, I was most impressed with a licor de cacao. As best as I can tell, it appears to be little more than an alcohol base infused with cacao, vanilla, and various flavorings, and commonly homemade. I only had a small amount to work with, but dosing the spirit into a simple ganache which was then rolled into truffles proved amazing, intensifying the flavor of the chocolate.

I'm not posting a recipe today, but I will offer my 'Index' as a download. Like I said, as an academic exercise, I think it covers the bases, but I'd be interested in hearing of any methods considered to be missing!

Download Index of Methods and Preparations.pdf 

An Appreciation of Craft

As I've gotten older, I've slowly come to heed the advice that is often thrown around, that to truly stay fresh in the kitchen, it helps to have some outside interests apart from the insular world of cooking. When you're young, cuisine can easily become an obsession; every spare moment off of work is devoted to reading cookbooks, checking out blogs and forums, or watching re-runs of Iron Chef. Don't get me wrong, it's certainly an evolution that I went through, and I see it in younger cooks every day. In fact, I will often jokingly reprimand a cook for their interest in say, sports: a few months back one of our line cooks opted at the last minute to go to the Yankee's opening day game, instead of using that money to attend one of the classes taught by Alex and Aki of Ideas In Food which he had planned in advance. Believe me, to this very day, I still tease him about it. But in reality, I get it. For starters, you can get burned out. And second, relationships, family, and a social life are important too; we already work the worst hours imaginable, not to mention most holidays. Overall, sometimes creativity and stamina are only fully recharged when you're able to walk away from work, or at least change the channel in your head for awhile. Sometimes too much information is impossible to properly digest.

So these days, I'm not as prone to flipping through, let alone subscribing to, every possible food publication.  I click through a regular a diet of food related blogs, but not obsessively so. And with foodie culture still strong in the mainstream, on TV, I can really only confess to watching Top Chef, despite its manufactured drama. Of course, I'd be lying if I said I didn't always think through the filter of fine dining. Especially being married to someone in the business, we pretty much live our professional lives 24/7. But I've come to better appreciate the diversions. Being a huge underground music fan back in the years B.C. (that would be "Before Cooking"), I lamentably fell out of touch with that whole "scene" once I started working in kitchens. But for the last year or so, thanks to the age of digital everything, I've been rebuilding my collection of tunes from the "old days", and in the process discovering cool stuff from the current millennium as well! Finding such pleasure in something so far removed from pastry as punk rock has been beneficial. The same goes with seeing old movies, going to museums, and reading books where the sentences don't contain gram measurements or baking times.

I needed some travel reading recently- I admit that being stuck on a plane or train is usually the only time I actually read stuff printed on paper- but I passed on the latest issue of Saveur or Food and Wine, and picked up a copy of Wallpaper, a nice design magazine that I hadn't seen in some time. Granted everything I look at does in some odd way go through that food filter, especially visual content like architecture and design, but this was intended for pure escape. What immediately caught my attention was right there in the first few pages. In his Editor's Letter, Tony Chamber's discusses a new book by sociologist Richard Sennett, The Craftsman. Chambers writes about the premise of the book, that in today's society, greater value is placed upon intangible skills like "leadership" than those manual skills that require time, training, and discipline. The book argues that both individuals and society-at-large would be better off if such things were given greater respect and appreciation. On an individual level, there certainly is no better way to achieve a sense of accomplishment, pride, and self respect than to transform a lump of raw material into something of aesthetic value, practical use, or yes, even gustatory enjoyment. According to the reviews I've read, Sennet claims that we're in an age where such personal fulfillment through artisanship, or simply put, hobbies- whether it be through knitting a sweater, building a chair, or baking a cake- is at an all time low. I'm not sure if the book looks at any generational watershed, but as I fall in the Generation X category, I definitely see among my own peers a strong desire to acquire such fulfillment. Either we're still trying to escape the "slacker" image of our youth, or maybe it's because we're the last generation to actually be nostalgic for analog life.

I haven't yet read Sennett's book, and probably won't unless I find it in audio form. Rather than admit to being too lazy to read, I'd like to think I'm good at multi-tasking, catching up on my "reading" during the daily commute (currently on my iPod: Callum Robert's Unnatural History of the Sea). But I've been thinking about the idea a lot, and how it ties in to what we do. Of course, I thought, that's why chefs are chefs! Just last week we had a stage in the kitchen looking to land a spot on the team. After the lengthy introduction to what we're all about, I finally asked what her story was, why she chose this path. She gave, in my mind, the best possible answer: "I like to work with my hands and make people happy." When I started out, I didn't even know that such a thing as celebrity chefdom existed, let alone that it was something that I might ever come close to being a part of. The actual craft of cooking, and being able to immediately survey each day's production, is what seduced me. Even more, it was, and still is, the ongoing accumulation of knowledge and skill that I found appealing. You can never know how to do everything, and you can always learn do something better, faster.

The point was further driven home a few days after seeing that bit in Wallpaper, while setting up the pastry kitchen in Philadelphia. We found ourselves with some spare time, so I wanted to give Monica, our pastry chef there, some potential petit four ideas. After an afternoon of busting out items like pate de fruit, nougat, and chocolate-candied nuts, I realized how much fun I was having. Such skills aren't exactly lost arts yet, but in a climate of accelerating creativity, understanding and being able to tackle the classics is still important. You know me, I embrace a lot today's forward thinking; with more tools and techniques at our disposal, imagination becomes the only boundary. But you have to admit, a lot of the skill associated with "molecular" cooking is limited to knowing how to use a digital scale, a blender, or a thermometer. In contrast, I don't know anyone who has successfully made their first macaron by reading a recipe in a book. Some things are all about feel, and usually those are the most rewarding. Take chocolate cigarettes, for example: not many people make them anymore, but I could lose myself for an hour or so making hundreds of them. Once you learn it, your body remembers the coordination needed, your eyes tell you whether the chocolate is set just so. Making a single crepe isn't all that difficult, but working six pans at a time requires attention, rhythm, and timing. Ultimately you need to know what you're doing. In the end, while I get a kick out of producing a few cups of delicate "spherification", I'd be more proud of a tray of perfectly baked choux puffs. But I try not to think in terms of duality, like modern vs. traditional, or sweet vs. savory. It's all just cooking. One of the reasons why I often cite Pierre Herme as an inspiration is because, while he continually reinvents himself and sets the bar higher for the rest of us by keeping tabs on the 'new', he can work the 'old school' better than anyone.

Of course, I don't pretend to be an expert at anything. Nearly everyone on the planet buys their puff pastry. If I was in some sort of jam and had to make my own, it probably wouldn't be that great. It's been years since I've done it, but at least I know how to do it, and with practice, I'm sure I'd get better. In his book, Sennett estimates that to really learn a skill or craft requires 10,000 hours of training and practice. That's roughly five years of 40 hour work weeks, which sounds about right. One thing that hit me a couple years back, as I found myself straying away from day-to-day production, was that though my staff uses my recipes, and I trained them to execute each one, eventually they end up making stuff better and faster then me. At first it was a blow to the ego, but then I realized I'm doing my job well by allowing those around me to develop their own skills. But when I can roll up my sleeves and get my hands dirty myself, I remember why I get out of bed every day.

We always have one macaron in our petit four rotation. Jose will typically set aside two days out of every week for this, making roughly 1000 pieces at a time. We have eventually come to use an Herme recipe, in which the meringue is cooked (Italian). This method seems to provide better consistency for us, for a batter that is notoriously fickle and sensitive. Every conceivable variable can affect the final product: the water content of the egg whites, the sifting, the meringue, the folding, the piping, the drying, the humidity, the baking time and temperature. Again, it's all about feeling it, knowing it.

 

I offer an older recipe for macaron base, the one that I initially learned and practiced.

Download Macaron_Recipe.pdf

For general notes on the recipes posted here, please read About the Recipes. And for hard to find ingredients or equipment, please refer to Resources.

On The Road: Puerto Rico

As I mentioned in my last post, most of the traveling I did over this blog's several week "hiatus" involved a handful of days commuting back and forth between New York and Philadelphia. In general, I've scaled back on the various out-of-house events that we chefs are often asked to do. They are great fun and usually support worthy causes, but as all of my pastry cooks are beginning to take their much-deserved vacations, someone has to pick up the slack. In other words, the buck stops with me. But a team of us did have the pleasure of a quick trip down to Puerto Rico, and as this has been half-written ever since, I figured I'd finish it and put it up before moving on to new and exciting things...

My boss, Eric Ripert, and I were invited by Alfredo Ayala to cook for a benefit at his San Juan restaurant, Delirio. Eric and Alfredo actually met at Joel Robuchon's Jamin in Paris some twenty years ago. If I had to attach a moniker to Alfredo, I would have to call him the "Paul Bocuse" of modern Puerto Rican cuisine. He was among the first to refine the traditional local dishes in a haute setting, blazing a trail for a generation of chefs that have followed, thus becoming an ambassador for the island's food culture for over two decades. On top of that, he is incredibly talented, kind, and generous. I had been to Puerto Rico once before, two years ago, to take part in a benefit at Wilo Benet's Pikayo. Wilo, interestingly enough, is a veteran of our very own pastry kitchen, from way back in the 80s. While it's not uncommon to run into Le Bernardin alumni in virtually any city I travel to, San Juan has a few of them, including Steven Zurkowsky, Alfredo's chef at Delirio, and Jose Santaella.

Culinary camaraderie aside, our real purpose for the trip was to cook and to raise funds for an orphanage aiding abandoned and displaced children in Port-au-Prince, Haiti. The courses were split between Delirio and Le Bernardin, with yours truly, obviously, finishing with dessert. Often in situations like these, especially when traveling, I like to conceive the dish I will prepare within the local context, to perhaps take advantage of what may be able to be sourced on the spot, or to at least convey a "sense of place" through the dish. But I also have to admit that rarely do I ever have a complete dish mapped out in my head before setting foot in what is usually a foreign kitchen. This can be risky, as you never know what kind of situation you're walking into; but then planning things too rigidly can be just as dangerous, because if something goes wrong, you might not have a contingency plan at the ready. And above all, instead of merely reproducing an established dessert in a robotic manner, I usually come up with something new unique, which sometimes leads to something new back home. So anyway, armed with the necessary ingredients to execute the vague framework of components and flavors, I arrive with a sense of spontaneity, and since I'm open to my surroundings, anything I survey in a strange kitchen is up for grabs.

The foundation of the dessert began with our basic chocolate ganache, set with agar and molded into flexipan molds (Thankfully, the one thing I was definitely counting on for this dish to work was ample counter space in the Delirio kitchen, as these ganache forms must be pre-plated while still frozen. To be served ideally at room temperature, they have to temper for about 30 minutes once they are pulled from the freezer. Believe me, not every kitchen has the space to spread out 90-some plates!). And then the rest was up to chance, whim, and, frankly, how much extra work I wanted to put into it! Thinking "Latin", I easily conjured up the trifecta of banana, rum, and condensed milk. The banana was given two roles: sliced and caramelized, and also slowly cooked down with sugar and cream to a thick puree. The condensed milk became the base for an ice cream. In a discussion later about why it didn't turn into a something along the lines of dulce de leche, I explained that I wanted to preserve the muted yet unmistakable sweet, cooked flavor of the canned milk (We had a laugh as my decision was supported by one of the other chefs in the room who felt that sometimes dulce de leche, as well as its relative cajeta, ends up smelling like a "cow's ass". Probably not the term I would have used, but the sentiment was shared.). The rum was added to a syrup of palm sugar, vanilla, and lime then whipped up with xanthan gum and versawhip to create a faux meringue. I had thrown some pistachios in my bag before leaving, so those got a light caramelization, or as I like to call it, the "Nuts for Nuts" treatment, with a nod to those NYC street vendors. A favorite garnish of mine, palm sugar grated on the microplane finished the dessert.

I think one of the many appeals of Puerto Rico is the fact that it is at once exotic and foreign, yet still technically "home". And though I still don't quite get it, when the airplane's cabin erupts into applause upon landing in San Juan, well, you can't help but share in that excitement. While a good deal of Latin and Caribbean food is available in this city, there's no substitute for going directly to the source. This is, after all, the land of lechón, cabrito, tostones, sancocho, and sofrito. And I have to say Alfredo is the master of lechón; I don't know that I've ever experienced anything so crisp as the crunchy pig skin that he's able to achieve. This trip also afforded me the opportunity to try tembleque for the first time: a simple dessert of coconut milk and corn starch. Our work in the kitchen was punctuated by breakfast at a great (though from the outside rather unassuming) local panaderia, Kasalta, and lunch in Old San Juan's plaza del mercado.

I love visiting this old market district. The narrow streets, colonial-era architecture, and of course, the neighborhood gentlemen drinking and holding court in the cafes that line the square- it tends to transport you to another place and time. The market isn't huge, boasting only a couple of dozen stalls. Among their wares are fresh chilled coconut water and empanadas, mangoes of all varieties, huge squash, sugar cane, taro, local oranges, peppers, sapote, several unidentifiable medicinal herbs at the botanica, and all those funky, yet alluring bottles of fiery homemade pique. What initially caught my attention, however, were things like ginger, tamarind and aloe. And then it struck me how similar the range of ingredients are between the Caribbean and Southeast Asia, yet the cuisine and treatment of these ingredients is so different that we tend not to link them. For some reason, I've had an interest in the pastry applications of aloe for years, ever since I was introduced to an obscure bottled drink from Korea. These days, I can now find it my corner deli here on the Upper East Side. I've used this juice in a gelee or base here and there, but the predominant flavor is that of artificial grape (with tiny bits of gellan-based "pulp")- not bad, but it just feels like a form of "cheating". On the island, Alfredo admitted there's a reason why the pulp is usually mixed with fruit juices, and that its uses are pretty much limited to the medicinal rather than the culinary.

Below I offer our recipe for the condensed milk ice cream, which came my way some time ago via Sebastien Canonne and Jacquy Pfeiffer of Chicago's French Pastry School.

Download  Condensed Milk Ice Cream Recipe.pdf

For general notes on the recipes posted here, please read About the Recipes. And for hard to find ingredients or equipment, please refer to Resources.

Catching Up...

Oh man.

It's hard to believe that it's been over a month since my last installment on these pages. In this business, time can be a blur, if not outright skewed. Living life constantly on "kitchen time" definitely leads to fatigue, or at least an appreciation of eventually being able to sit quietly in one place for more than a few minutes. We've been quite busy at the restaurant, not to mention all of the projects on top of that, both the long-anticipated and those that tend to pop up out of nowhere. I certainly didn't intend to let things around here lie dormant for so long. My apologies to readers who have regularly checked in for updates, and my gratitude to those, both longtime friends and complete strangers (there were surprisingly many) who have written in with actual, sincere concern. And to surfers who have only recently discovered this blog in the interim, a welcome. So here are a few newsworthy items as I ease back into more regular writing.

A fair amount of time over the last few weeks has been spent commuting back and forth to Philadelphia, where we've just opened our latest consulting project with the Ritz Carlton, 10 Arts. While any restaurant opening can be a roller coaster ride even under the best of circumstances, my job this time around was made immeasurably easier due to the fact that we've installed Monica Glass as its pastry chef. As you may have read here, Monica was a member of our team here at Le Bernardin. The early word on our dessert menu has been overwhelmingly positive, and yes, after the local press jumped at the mere mention of it, we did decide to incorporate TastyKakes into one of our desserts! Of course, there is still ongoing work in Cayman, and I'll soon implement some changes in Washington D.C. And we've already begun talking about the next consulting project...

It seems like it was just yesterday that I was intently willing the arrival of spring, and now all of a sudden, summer is upon us. We've played with a number of ingredients and techniques recently, with varying successes and failures. While I was excited about working green almonds into a dish, I felt I couldn't coax enough character out of them to make it all worth it. But we are in the midst of local strawberry season, which is still cause for celebration even if we have access to their less than flavorful distant cousins all year long. And this year, I'm already beginning to work cherries into something involving pain d'epice and sherry vinegar. Early rambutans have made an appearance in the walk-in, as have feijoas, and soon enough we'll have figs, melons, and more. I'm sure the tomato will come into play at some point too. Just this past week we've been in a flurry of production toward creating some new pre-desserts, cakes, chocolates, and more. For some of these new dishes, we've dabbled in gelatin filtration, encapsulating olive oil in sugar, and as it seems Tailor has perfected the gummy bear, our pastry assistant Simon has been devoting a fair amount of his free time to perfecting our own rendition of Swedish Fish (seems fitting for a place like Le Bernardin, no?).

It's been busy on the media front as well. A small bit in New York Restaurant Insider magazine should appear any day now, as well as a couple of early summer recipes in the Wall Street Journal. Look for the next issue of GQ, where Alan Richman will take a look at some of the psychological reasons why we humans crave dessert. There's a segment on the Today Show scheduled for the near future, and on the heels of doing a stint as a judge recently for one of those Food Network Challenges, I was asked to participate in another show for the network, but I can't really say much more than that. My friend Alan "Battman" Batt has two new books out in September; I have recipes in both, one an investigation of soup, and the other a color-inspired look at dessert, for which I've also written the forward. This humble little blog has oddly enough gotten some mainstream press as well, first from Regina Schrambling in the LA Times, and then in the Washington Post, courtesy of New York pastry veteran Nick Malgieri. The latest issue of Plate also has a piece by Schrambling on the continuing savory-sweet crossover, where our recent Chocolate-Sweet Potato dish gets its props. And among the countless bloggers that have written about me and linked here, I'm humbled to see Michael Ruhlman and Ideas In Food, not to mention Raphael at Serious Eats, among them. In related cyberspace news, this first week of June should see the launch of both an updated Le Bernardin site, as well as one from my boss, Eric Ripert (Avec Eric). And just this past weekend, I had a chance to leaf through the absolute final galleys of our new book, which should be available to everyone come November.

Even as New Yorkers have now begun the weekend exodus to the Hamptons and points elsewhere, numbers at the restaurant are still strong. And the calender always seems to be full. The annual James Beard Awards are upon us this coming weekend, and not only do I get to present the award to this year's winning pastry chef, I had the honor of announcing to the press all of the chef nominees several weeks ago. The Awards weekend is always kind of fun- the restaurant is inevitably full of industry VIPs in town for those few days, and it feels as if you can't walk down a Manhattan street without bumping into a famous chef. I'm already planning a working trip to Thailand at summer's end, and just before that will be the hotly anticipated International Chefs Congress, where I will conduct both a demo and participate in a "chefs-who-blog" panel discussion. Somewhere between now and then I'll be taking a real vacation, up the New England coast to Nova Scotia and Prince Edward Island (OK, so maybe there are some minor culinary motivations of the shellfish kind happening there!).

So, yeah, time has flown by. We're nearly half way through what still feels like a new year, and before I realize it, I know we'll be deep into the "season" at year's end. Barely four months ago I started this blog with a post about the "egg". And though we still bang out almost a hundred of these a day, that post was meant to be a last nod to an old friend, a quiet resolution not to ever overtly promote it again. But those old friends often reappear when you least expect it. As I can track such statistics, I know that a fair amount of readers end up here by "Googling" the "egg", and this past week there was a huge spike in traffic due to a post on Amateur Gourmet, extolling its virtues (though at the expense of the restaurant's dress code!). But I have to say, I did experience a moment of inner pride recently... Upon a visit to Le Bernardin by Laura Bush and daughter Jenna some months ago, we of course, served them the "egg", but I was a bit surprised when upon leaving, the First Lady actually asked for the recipe. I guess, when the wife of the leader of the free world asks for the recipe of your signature dish, you fork it over (all personal politics aside). I initially thought it funny that my good friend and colleague Bill Yosses, now the White House pastry chef, might eventually find the recipe in his hands. Sure enough, according to Bill, at Mrs. Bush's request, he prepared my little "egg" at an Easter brunch at the White House.

Kinda cool, eh?

Ok, enough of my stroll down short-term memory lane.

We're back.