If we've ever shared a conversation lasting more than five minutes, or if you've read any interview I've done in the past year, chances are good that at some point I started rambling on about sweets and nostalgia. Beyond the Proustian madeleine, I think it does go way beyond mere sense memory. I don't know that it has or ever will be mapped genetically, but that human desire for sweetness must be encoded in some out-of-the-way chromosome. As we mature into adulthood, and our tastes become more varied and sophisticated, we still hold onto all of the emotional weight from our childhood through subtle and not so subtle associations with sugar. The more I explore this notion, the more fascinating I find it. While not the sole motivation for new desserts, it is playing an increasing role in how I now construct a dish.
Case in point: the tres leches-inspired dessert we added to our menu in the late summer. It was born in conversation with Jesus, one our youngest cooks in the pastry kitchen. On the surface, it was an exercise; how do we refine and transform a rather pedestrian dessert into something worthy of a four-star restaurant? What new techniques can we apply to the original concept? Once manipulated, how do we maintain that reference back to the classic, with or, preferably, without an overblown sense of irony? So before we did anything, we made the original version, without bells and whistles.
As we tucked into the wet, spongy tres leches, I asked Jesus how it made him feel. Born and raised in the Bronx, he made frequent visits to his grandmother in Mexico as a child. It took a lot coaxing, but Jesus eventually, shyly began to describe every memory connected to the tres leches his grandmother would buy from the bakery in her small town. He remembered her plates and sitting at her kitchen table. Visiting the shop itself was part of the ritual, so he also began to recall the sweet smells and even the color of its walls. "That", I said, "is what we're trying to do!". No matter how much we add our clever contemporary spin, through technique or ingredients, that nostalgia is what we're trying to access. No matter the age of our guests, whether six years old, or sixty, the potential in tapping those memories can be powerful.
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The city has finally taken on an autumnal air, and we're hard at work on several menu changes. This season conjures up a lot of nostalgia, I think... It's still early on in the school year when children are still adjusting to new environments, with chilly weather comes warm and comforting flavors, and of course, there's Halloween and its windfall of candy, not to mention the long holiday season that follows. There is a lot of inspiration to draw from. I've mentioned several times in the past that my personal version of the madeleine might be the combination of fresh apple cider and warm cinnamon-dusted doughnuts- the reward of October visits to the cider mill. Those flavors immediately transport me to a specfic time, place, and sense of well-being.
I recently found myself in a discussion about caramel apples. As a kid in the early 80s, there were really only two options: you bought a bag of the Kraft caramels, unwrapping each individual cube before slowly melting them in a pot. That, to us, was the authentic way. Only cheaters bought the pre-fab sheets of caramel; simply wrap around the apple and you're good to go. Notice, the idea of actually making a caramel from scratch didn't even occur to my young mind. The more I thought about it, I was motivated to marry the best of all those options, by making our own caramel sheets, using agar and gelatin. Not sure what we're going to do with them, but they are beautiful.
While directly incorporating lowbrow ingredients in a refined way has its place, I find it much more satisfying when we can recreate thsoe flavors or textures from nature, from quality. Some ten years ago, I realized I could nail the spicy flavor of Red Hots with an infusion of cinnamon and jalapeno. I've revisited that recipe now and then ever since, and it plays a role in a new tasting menu pre-dessert. Below, a yogurt pannacotta, topped with fresh apple and candied walnut. Draped over the whole is an apple cider gelee- the 'Red Hot' component.
