Michael Laiskonis

Reconfigure

When it comes to cooking with spectacular seasonal or artisan ingredients, there is said to be two general schools of thought. One approach is to apply minimal treatment, to let the perfect simplicity of that foodstuff speak for itself. The other involves manipulation of some form, the intention being to elevate, or dare I say, improve upon the inherent qualities of that ingredient. Neither view is right or wrong, though in the extreme, we often hear the two camps described in terms of mere "shoppers" or gastronomic Luddites versus ego-driven chefs placing too much weight on "creativity". I'd like to think the best chefs are those that are able to judge for themselves which ideal best suits an ingredient when presented with it. Ultimate restraint and the skill to transform are just two sides of the same culinary coin. Like all things there has to be context and intent and good sense. I remember a meal I had at a legendary produce-driven restaurant, where dessert was just a bowl of whole tangerines, albeit just picked from a few dozen miles away, and still warm from the morning sun, but that was it. Though in another restuarant , we might find ingredients with no trace of their origin, their forms stretched and manipulated to appear like something else, or placed in seemingly alien juxtaposition with other far-flung flavors. I enjoy both "philosophies", which is why I admire a guy like Sean Brock, who not only works with farmers, but also as a farmer himself, tending his plots in the morning, before pulling up to McCrady's kitchen door in the afternoon with the day's haul. And he also happens to be among this country's handful of "forward thinking" chefs. When I saw Sean a few weeks ago, he said that he estimated that at peak season, up to 90% of the restaurant's produce will be from the farm. Most importantly, he noted the great respect his cooks offer up to these ingredients, which is really what it's all about.

With all of this in mind, I find myself confronting the fig. What's funny, is that I don't think I ever laid my eyes upon a real, fresh fig until I was in my twenties and working in restaurants. It's kind of embarrassing, but then, there were likely few to be found in our suburban markets back in the 80s. And I guess it never crossed my mind to wonder what the filling of a Fig Newton actually was or where it may have come from. All I knew as a kid was that when it came to cookies, I preferred less fruit (or whatever that stuff was) and more straight up sugar. Anyway, I did eventually fall in love with the fig, and have anticipated its summer arrival each year since. And they no doubt emerge in some form on our menu each season.

My goal this time around was the attempt to preserve the true character of a fresh fig- its soft/crunchy texture. But the best tasting specimens at peak ripeness tend to be those that have become squishy, mis-shapen, and frankly, don't look all that pretty on the plate. Those beautifully sliced and fanned figs we see are often just unripe, too firm, or worse, bland and mealy. This is why these fruits are often cooked down as some sort of jammy filling, as a flavor base for something else, or simply roasted whole with a sprinkle of sugar. In wanting to present the fig in both a pleasing form and taste, my solution was to pull from my past archive of recipes as well as from the shelves of my "modern" pantry.

Ultimately, I was looking to reconfigure the fig, to break it down, replacing its natural form with one that is subject to whim, while still maintaining its inherent integrity. The mass market food industry has been doing similar things with our food forever, for reasons of presentation, shelf stability, or economics; integrity however, one could argue, may or may not be of much importance when it comes to processed foods. But we've come to learn their secrets, and with some of their ingredients, we're able to execute more refined results. Enter gellan. A quick primer for those unfamiliar: gellan is a gum that is produced by bacterial fermentation (just like xanthan gum), and is used commercially as a thickener and emulsifier, often in place of agar agar (derived from red algae). Generally available in two forms- high acyl and low acyl- gellan produces a heat resistant gel. Used in very low concentrations, the high acyl form will produce a soft, elastic texture while the low acyl creates a harder, or more brittle texture. The thing that I like most about gellan, in addition to it's ability to be heated, is the way both the high and low acyl forms can combine to create a texture that mimics those of nature, especially the "melting" sensation of ripe or poached fruits (in the past the technique has worked well for us with apple, pear, and apricot). So there are the basics, now on with the story.

I don't recall now how I first came up with my trusted recipe for fig puree, but my notes remind me that I wrote the recipe back in 2000. My guess is that it was inspired by a dessert shared with me by a pastry hero of mine, Stanton Ho, the quiet yet generous chef who for years ran the pastry kitchen of the Las Vegas Hilton. He had cooked figs down with red wine, vanilla, and orange to produce a filling for tarts. In my variation, the fig is instead matched with a slight caramelizing of sugar, some citrus, a hint of cinnamon and a bit of heat from the jalapeno, hoping to create a more subtle palette of flavors to support that of the fig. This recipe would be my starting point, but again, I wanted more than a pile of puree spooned onto a plate. Gellan offered me the possibility of altering its shape, as well as bringing the texture back to that of a solid fig. Note: while I prefer to make this puree with in-season figs, I have used the frozen puree from Boiron. They obviously add some sugar, but they also seem to process the fruit with the skins, which lends a very dark color to their product. But it is a nice option.

I haven't yet tired of my stainless steel cylinder molds, so I decided on this form for the gelled fig puree. The only alteration to the base recipe would be to try to concentrate it by holding back on some the citrus, because like its cousin agar agar, the small quantity of gellan needs to be cooked, and in a fair amount of liquid. Once the solution of water/orange juice plus high and low acyl gellan has come just short of a boil, it resembles a loose milky paste. Again, like agar agar, it will immediately begin to set, so it must be quickly incorporated into the fig puree (using an immersion blender), which has also been heated.  From there, I piped the molten mixture into the molds, slowly, as to avoid creating large pockets of air.

After a quick chill, I was able to slide the fig cylinder from the mold and cleanly slice them into smaller pieces. This could easily have been the end of the experiment, but why not take it all one step further and play off of the gellan's ability to withstand heat? And then, the words "crispy fig" popped into my head, which just sounded too cool not to pursue. Albert Adria long ago came up with the trick of placing a ball of ganache between two sheets of sugar (made from cooking fondant, glucose, and isomalt) and heating it so that the sugar melted and conformed to the shape of the ganache, which in turn softened from the heat, resulting in a near liquid truffle encased in a thin crunchy caramel. The same technique was used on the savory side of El Bulli to famously replicate the shell around a raw quail egg. This neutral caramel, as we call it, is a staple in our kitchen, as on its own, provides a nice refined crunch as a garnish, and it can be flavored with virtually anything.

For the crispy fig, we cook the sugars as normal, then we pour the hot caramel onto a silpat to cool and harden. We then grind the caramel in a coffee grinder to produce a fine powder which is then sifted over a stencil onto a silpat. A minute or two in the oven melts the powder to form a perfect, wafer thin rectangle. Placed onto the cylinder of fig puree and hit with the blowtorch, the caramel becomes "shrink-wrapped".

I'm quite happy with the results, and though it could stand on its own as a small bite, I think we're going to incorporate the crispy fig into a composed cheese course quite soon. The first draft of the dish was centered around a goat cheese fondant, essentially a light mousse, along with the fig, a red wine caramel, hazelnuts, and bacon ice cream. Hot, cold, sweet, and salty. Because that's how we like it.

While we're on the topic of reconfiguration, I'm working to update some of the other pages here, with fresh links, resources, media, etc. I've also resolved to go back and fill in the two or three missing recipes from way back that I never got around to finishing; my apologies to those who have been asking for them. And while I started out writing the recipes with volume conversions, I'm thinking of saving time by sticking with metric weights exclusively. You just gotta have a scale.

Download Caramelized_Fig_Puree_2000.pdf

Download Cinnamon_Jalapeno_Syrup.pdf

Download Fig_Cylinder.pdf

Download Neutral_Caramel.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.

   

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.

Transitions

Much attention has been given in recent years to the savory-sweet crossover in desserts. I think we've seen it all by now: from beet, parsnip, eggplant, fennel, tomato, chili, bell pepper, and mushrooms to bacon, duck fat and truffle. Recently, I had a nice dessert that incorporated freeze-dried peas. And years ago I recall a "restorative" sweet prepared by my friend Daniel Tay, a pastry chef in Singapore, that relied on certain frog parts as both a gelling agent and subtle flavoring. Though I certainly dabble in the conceptual, I've never been interested in the sheer shock value of such ideas. Someone once suggested to me, only half-joking, that put enough sugar on anything- even a steak- and you could call it dessert. And granted, I once theorized a dessert built around trout roe, but it was just that: a theory, not a fully realized dish that anyone ever tasted, let alone ordered in a restaurant. What interests me, apart from simple deliciousness, is the perception and context of flavors and ingredients, which are usually no more than psychological or cultural hang-ups. Carrot cake and pumpkin pie are classics; parsnip and butternut squash are considered edgy. Bean pastes are a hard sell to the Western palate, but they are practically the sole element on which Japanese sweet traditions are based. And then there are the many cooking lessons we can learn from history. A modern dessert paring chocolate and corn appears to some as avant garde, but the combination dates back thousands of years in Central America. I always get a chuckle when I discover other such combinations that prove there really is little that is "new".

So the sweet-savory approach to desserts is here to stay. While I have both benefited from the exposure of such "unconventional" ingredients in desserts, I've also felt the frustration of being compartmentalized into a certain style; such is the nature of trends. While I like the idea that such desserts are now accepted with a pinch of salt (as opposed to taken with a grain of salt!), I've become more interested in the actual transition of savory courses into sweet ones. Surely, what a pastry chef serves after a savory course, or a string of them, has always been important. There must be a cohesive style and logical progression. Individual egos aside, I think that is a pastry chef's greatest responsibility and challenge: working with others, or the Chef, to create the tidy package that is a meal. Within longer tasting menus-a dozen courses or more- subtle sweet accents inserted here and there keep a diner's attention and their taste buds fresh. Grant Achatz years ago coined the term "rolling hills" to describe this philosophy. My own maturity, confidence, and skill level have obviously played a part of my evolution; I've seen my "style" change over time, but markedly so as I've transitioned from one restaurant to another. What I produce now at Le Bernardin is often much simpler, focused, and refined than what I put forth at Tribute, where the "fusion" menu by nature was more complex. And neither style would have worked at Emily's where the approach was more rustic and traditional Mediterranean. That said, I do have just enough ego to always want to push any given style to it's extreme!

But what of that transition between main course and dessert? This is where that sweet-savory realm can really come into play, and cheese is the perfect vehicle. I've always been fascinated with every aspect of this most simple yet complex of foods; it's amazing how many infinite varieties spring from such few ingredients as milk, salt, and, well, bacteria. Cheese, of course, stands on it's own, but also becomes an ideal platform for other, sweet, spicy, salty, acidic, bitter, and fruity flavors. And the possibilities are endless; the cheese course is kind of like a chef's playground. For years I was in charge of maintaining a cheese program, presenting both simple selections and composed plates. But at Le Bernardin that has always been the shared responsibility of the dining room captains. I've missed handling, tasting, and serving cheese, but then again, with so much else going on, I haven't missed it. However, several months ago, in the course of preparing a spontaneous tasting menu for a handful of VIPs at our Cayman outpost, I thought it would be fun to play with some cheese in addition to a handful of desserts. The kitchen had all the necessary ingredients to pull off an old idea of mine: Fourme d'Ambert with bacon, gingersnap, and soy caramel. My boss loved it so much, we've been thinking of a way to put it on the menu ever since.

To some, the blue cheeses are an acquired taste, as much so as the runniest, stinkiest Epoisses. The fact that its mold is so obvious probably has something to do with it. But they are among my favorites for their varying textures, and sharp, salty flavor. Fourme d'Ambert, along with its nearby cousin, the slightly drier Fourme de Monbrison, hail from the Auvergne region of France. That they lie on the milder and drier end of the blue cheese scale makes them ideal for composed courses. The origin of this particular dish dates back six years or so, when a colleague at Tribute dared me to use bacon in something, partly because I was a pastry chef, but also because bacon makes everything better. Funny thing is, not only did I rise to that task, but I also ended up marrying the woman that put forth that challenge!

The first component to hit the plate is the soy caramel, comprised of sugar, water, orange juice, and just a touch of soy. While the saltiness of the soy is perceptible, what I like about this sauce is its depth of complex flavor, which I tend to describe as being similar to butterscotch. In the years since developing this caramel, I've used it in several ways, notably in a dessert of roasted apricots, black sesame panna cotta, and cherry granite which appeared on our menu last summer. In this dish, I think the soy caramel reflects the salty sweetness of the cheese itself.

Adding a bit of texture and a spicy molasses note are the crushed gingersnaps, though I've alternatively used dried and crumbled pain d'epice. For a touch of heat, a pinch of black pepper suffices. And rendered bacon, of course, for it's salt, smoke and fat, coaxes more sweetness from the cheese and fulfills our "savory" requirement. The intention of the stretched out composition of the plate is to allow the diner to sample the cheese with different components and in different proportions.

While I've used several different fruit elements in this composed cheese course, from cherry to fig to sherry soaked prunes, here I've chosen preserved green walnuts. This has become one of my favorite recent discoveries, not only for its mellow spiced sweetness and soft texture, but also because it forms the base for the green walnut liqueur I wrote of a few weeks ago. Though these specific walnuts come from Armenia, they are also native to the same southern French countryside where the Fourme d"Ambert is produced. I've also begun using these syrup-packed nuts along with conventional caramelized walnuts, in  a nougat glace on the current menu.

The final component is the tuile craquante. I borrowed this recipe years ago from Frederic Bau's amazing book, Au Coeurs des Saveurs. Its novelty lies in the fact that pectin works as the binder of all of that water, sugar, and fat, though I've since come to add a tiny amount of flour for structure (While I haven't ever played with sucrose esters like the one sold through the Texturas line, I suppose that similar, or even more refined results could be achieved). Straight from the oven, these tuiles are a molten liquid, but provide a small window of opportunity to both shape and stretch at whim. As its French name implies, its delicate texture and crunch adds a final contrast the soft, rich cheese.

I've turned out a handful of similar composed cheese dishes in my time, centered around firm cheeses, washed rind cheeses, and triple creams, from cow, sheep, and goat's milk, with components that have included wheat beer, squash, and candied olive. But cheese certainly has a place in dessert proper, and recently tasting a friend's rendition of carrot cake, but with a Brillat Savarin ice cream, got me thinking of my own versions of that classic. As a bonus here's one of those twists, the traditional cake paired with condensed milk ice cream, raisins, pistachio, and a goat cheese cream.

 

Download Carrot.pdf

 

Download Fourme d'Ambert 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.

Support

I just returned from a quick trip out west to tape a television special for the Food Network (sorry, but I don't feel I can divulge any details!). Such travel is always a strain, as the fast pace at the restaurant never slows. And it always seems that important deadlines, special orders, or even planned menu changes often coincide with my time away. Yesterday afternoon found me rushing from the airport into a busy dinner service at the restaurant just in time to complete a special request for, of all things, a red velvet cake (I try not to ever say "no"). Of course, I wanted to put my own spin on the cake, and my inevitable spontaneous decisions meant a volley of calls and text messages back to my staff right up to the last minute, making sure that everything was ready to go. Having such a support network around is humbling. While it's my name and credibility out front, they do a lot of the leg work. Simply put, a lot of what they do day in and day out is to make me look good. And I spend nearly as much time with them as I do my own wife! There are over a hundred employees at Le Bernardin, each one performing a crucial task that makes the well-oiled machine run. But I wanted to take this opportunity to bring my own pastry team from out of the shadows.

Jose, our pastry chef, is among Le Bernardin's old guard. With the restaurant now more years than most can count, he is the number two man in the pastry kitchen. Essentially, his role is to take the reigns whenever I'm afforded the rare day day off, or when business outside the restaurant beckons. More than that, Jose's strong suit is taking my often improbable ideas and turning them into logistical reality. And he is indispensable for his skill at both turning out delicate chocolate work as well as heavy production. Jose and I have come to develop an almost non-verbal form of communication; at any given time we seem to be able to read each other's minds and anticipate each other's needs. And his quiet, dry sense of humor keeps the mood from becoming too intense and serious.

Ricardo is the sous chef, and another longtime fixture in the pastry kitchen. He is the brain and brawn that guides the day-to-day mise en place. I rely on Ricardo to keep us a day or two ahead on everything from mass production of tart shells, to intricate petit fours, to our large inventory of dry goods, produce, and other ingredients. With scores of individual components comprising the menu, Ricardo knows exactly where we stand and what we need at any given time. Arriving just as lunch hits its peak, he jumps in to help with the rush, and then begins to coordinate preparation for dinner, often with as little as an hour or so separating the two services. Through the course of the evening, he assembles the most delicate desserts faster than anyone. Ricardo closes the pastry kitchen after Jose and I have left for the evening, staying until the very last plate is served, usually well after midnight.

A mere five or six hours after the kitchen closes for the night, the next day has already begun with Jaime. Often the very first cook to enter the kitchen in the morning, he will retrieve nearly every piece of equipment needed for the day: plates, flat sheet pans, silpats, towels... you name it, Jaime is there first. He's perhaps the most rigid perfectionist of the entire team. Jaime's primary task is to assemble each single ingredient needed for lunch service, which also means making sure there is a smooth transition into dinner prep. By the time Jose or I arrive at noon, he has readied all of the garnishes, filled the squeeze bottles and their backups, and has cut several fruits, biscuits and mousses, all in addition to baking off hundreds of petit fours, which for lunch include tiny almond cakes and pistachio financiers. Jaime's hours of methodical, detailed prep and organization allow us to arrive just in time to begin our busy, rushed lunch service.

Making sure that Jaime has all of the necessary raw materials for each dessert is the responsibility of the morning production team. Walter, our master of ice cream and sorbet, begins his day at 7am spinning up to a gallon or more of a dozen different flavors, from basic vanilla to sweet potato. Each recipe demands individual attention to ensure the proper texture and consistency. In addition to this important daily task, Walter leads in making every dough, batter, cream, and puree that become the building blocks of each dish. And like every member on staff, he happily stays on to complete his prep list, even if it means staying on well past his appointed shift. There is also a bit of irony when I consider the fact that, due to the sheer volume and repetition involved, Walter probably makes some of my own recipes faster and more efficiently than I can now!

The second heavy lifter in the morning is Monica. When not tending to whatever is in the mixer, oven, or dough sheeter, she also assists in taking many of our newest ideas and recipes, standardizing the particular yield or formula for the rest of team. Monica is often the first to reproduce a small scale idea for consistency in production; it may take a week of tinkering to arrive at the precise texture of a gelee, or the proper baking time and temperature for a tuile garnish. And her keen eye for detail and knowledge of all the potential variables also come into play when we have to convert our production recipes down to something the home cook can use, as is often the case when we submit recipes for all sorts of media requests. Monica is also active in bringing new ideas to the table, which is something I try to coax out of everyone. I like that each member of the team can feel an individual pride and sense of ownership in what we produce as whole!

Just as we begin to break down the station at the conclusion of lunch service, and as the last big production tasks are being wrapped and labeled, the afternoon team descends to take over. While the first half of the kitchen's day is about bulk prep, the mood shifts toward more precise and detailed work between 3 and 4pm. When Simon arrives, his attention goes straight to evening petit fours, which are far more complex than those for lunch. First, three or more varieties are assembled, then individually plated for each guest. Simon will pass his first couple of hours on this final impression of the meal, laboring over paper thin corn tuiles or slicing perfect cubes of menthol gelee; on any given day we need to produce up to a thousand pieces of these single bites. But his enthusiasm for the job is infectious; he definitely helps Jose, Ricardo and I get our second wind for the longer more intense dinner service.

Assisting with petit fours, in addition to replenishing each bit of mis en place, is Shelly. In her calm and professional, yet slightly sassy manner, she makes sure that we're ready for the impending storm of orders by 6pm. With us for just over 6 months now, Shelly is our newest team member, but she is often the first to jump at any task, if not the first to take the initiative to get them started in the first place. With four or five bodies in the kitchen when service is at full tilt, Shelly and the rest of us are fully engaged in a complex choreography; we sometimes must produce a plate a minute when the dining room is at capacity. And when there is downtime, she and Simon are always eager to keep the energy going with various light prep work. It's also during these fleeting moments when we flesh out new ideas or put together spontaneous dessert tastings for VIP guests.

I've had the pleasure of working with so many talented young cooks over the years. For most, their hard work early on will pay them back double in the years to come. Not only have they all brought their own experience to the table and have each had some effect on me, but I also find it heartwarming that they will eventually go on to forge their own path as pastry chefs, taking what they've seen from their time at Le Bernardin to influence the next generation of cooks. It's like a big family tree of sorts, with an infinite number of potential buds.

While my job is to create the overall vision and recipes for our desserts, to set the tone of the kitchen, and to keep all of this activity running smoothly, you've seen here that I can't do it alone. Many of the items I decide to roll out are the direct result of input from the entire team. Here I present our newest  petit four, the chocolate-menthol gelee. The form came from one member of the staff, the flavor from another, and the fine-tuned recipe from yet another. This recipe is also a sneak preview of a workshop I will present at the annual StarChefs.com International Chefs Congress this September here in New York.

Download Chocolate-Menthol.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.

Trial and Error

While the process is usually fluid and intuitive, sometimes it boggles the mind how many considerations and challenges we face in the day-to-day planning and execution of dishes, as well as their place on an overall menu. It can go far beyond mere cooking, all of these logistics. For example, if I offer a selection of eight desserts, not only do I try to avoid too much repetition in flavors or ingredients, but I also don't want to employ similar presentations; in order to represent a variety of shapes I resist using the same mold or form in two desserts. Even further, there has to be a range of flavors: a balance of rich and light, of fruit and chocolate. There has to be a variety of textures: not too many soft mousses or creams. And there also should be options that accommodate a myriad of food allergies: dishes made without nuts, or dairy, or gluten. Production issues arise from time to time: can we add yet one more sorbet flavor? Or logistical concerns during service: is there enough time to bake this or that to order in a rush? And on top of all that, my dessert menu isn't necessarily isolated from the savory menu. Not only does the restaurant's overall style and philosophy need to coalesce, but there also needs to be a thoughtful transition between the sweet and savory. Though it should appear that each dish stands alone on its own merits, it can occasionally can feel as if it is just only tiny piece of a larger puzzle.

Of course, these variables only begin at conception. They increase once a dish undergoes the transformation from the imagination to actual food on a plate. The laws of physics, if not simply those of good taste, often govern whether your initial ideas will work. The viscosity of a sauce, the firmness of a gel, the moisture of a cake are all single yet intertwined concerns. Even the constant of gravity can occasionally  seem to work against you! Once individual components come together satisfactorily, then the aesthetics of appearance are always subject to change. I must stress that flavor is paramount. Assuming that goal is a given, for most chefs (typical control freaks by nature), attention to all the other details is a close second.

As I wrote above, I tend to work in a fairly spontaneous way. An idea comes, and the sooner I flesh it out, the better the result. While I keep lengthy notes and lists of everything that goes through my head, over time those ideas lose their context, or sense of urgency. And with the daily distractions of the kitchen and the mile-a-minute pace, days or weeks can go by before there is actual follow through. Such has been the case with a yuzu dessert I've been working on. It's been a couple of years since we've featured yuzu on the menu, so I wanted to bring it back, along with the flavor of green tea. The initial presentation was comprised of a yuzu mousse set upon a square of green tea biscuit, then topped with a layer of caramelized Italian meringue. As much as I loved the first few trial runs, it suffered from a long gestation which caused that initial spark to fizzle. Once the dessert was put into production, a few problems arose that led me to rework the composition entirely.

I hoped the problems I had would be solved by keeping all of the primary components, but blowing them apart. Separation not only gave me more control, but also gave them identity and a more dynamic presentation. The yuzu mousse, essentially a lightened curd, was formed in a cylinder as opposed to the square mold I used before; to give it some definition, I sprayed it with white chocolate. The green tea biscuit came out from under the yuzu, to now stand on it's own, but given a brief soak in a lemon syrup. I really like this cake, which I adapted from my recipe for ladyfingers, replacing a portion of the cornstarch with matcha, a Japanese green tea powder. This intense, bright powder also flavors the green tea ice cream. Using the matcha is beneficial, not only for its color and flavor, but also because it gives a more consistent and predictable result, as opposed to using an infusion with whole tea leaves.

The meringue stayed in the picture as well, this time smeared directly onto the rim of the plate. One of the problems I was having with the previous version, was that after a period in the freezer, the meringue would contract, or shrink, deforming the nice clean line of mousse along with it. No good. I like this dramatic swoop and the variation in color created with a pass of the blowtorch. This matter isn't entirely solved; without other additives or creative chemistry, the nature of a meringue is such that it will eventually degrade. It certainly wouldn't be practical to have several continuous batches of Italian meringue working during service. A stable topping for a classic lemon meringue pie often includes cornstarch, but that would require a need to cook it through, and I don't know that I want such a firm texture anyway. My next experiments might involve simple dried egg white powder, which theoretically could turn any old liquid into a "meringue", or Versawhip, which does an amazing job of stabilizing  similar textured foams out of slightly thickened liquids. We'll have to wait and see how far this will go...

In reality, almost every dish is subject to change or refinement over time, and I enjoy that process because it's proof that there are constantly new things to learn and more precise problems to solve. It often drives the people I work with crazy, such constant fiddling! But I also hope that such spontaneity balances the real (and perceived) rigidity that pastry work sometimes entails. It's healthy to take a step or two outside of the box now and then, even if you know that you'll eventually have to take a step back inside. It's important just to flex those muscles, and to keep your mind active. One of my favorite mottoes is, "if isn't broken, let's break it and see what happens!"

(I'm on the road at the moment, so please return for the recipe download in a couple days!)

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.

A Funny Thing Happened On The Way To Work...

The end of this past week finds me spent. While I already would like to be posting here more often, it's not for lack of ideas, but often just an issue of time. Although this week didn't afford the several hours of thinking, cooking, and writing that make up my average post, I hate to let the blog lie dormant for too long. In place of the usual writing here, I offer the story of how I find myself where I am today, a story I'm often asked to tell. I almost wish I believed in such a thing as fate, as in hindsight, it seems predetermined that I should be telling this story. Anyway, off we go...

It was about 1993, and I was working my first cooking job, or more specifically, as prep cook-baker-dishwasher-counter boy for a tiny bakery and gourmet shop. The idea that this might be more a career than just something to do was beginning to form. With no formal training, I would seek out and devour whatever information I could find; in the days before the internet, this meant anything from magazines, to outdated textbooks, to the yellowed notebooks I found on a shelf at the bakery. On this path of discovery, when everything was new and revelatory, I stumbled across the magazine Art Culinaire. For those unfamiliar, it's actually a properly bound book issued quarterly, that for chefs, reflects the latest in trends and techniques. Well this was the first ever copy I'd seen, and it just happened to profile Le Bernardin (issue 24 to be exact).

At the time, of course, Gilbert Le Coze was still at the helm, and a young Eric Ripert, as chef de cuisine, was pictured alongside him. This early issue of the magazine also featured a few other prominent rising stars at the time, notably Gray Kunz and David Burke. But I was drawn to the minimalist look of the recipes from Le Bernardin, which seemed to have a contradictory simplicity/complexity that spoke to me. When the restaurant opened in the 80s, Le Coze's style was very unique, even cutting edge, and it certainly was to me, as I was working in a not-quite-haute-cuisine-environment. Even more enlightening, given my slow lean toward pastry, were the pages featuring then pastry chef Francois Payard. Now well known and highly influential, few people realize that his first big position in the US was at Le Bernardin. Over the next few years, I must have ripped off every single dessert in that magazine. A few of those components still remain in my standard repertoire today. Upon reading that first issue of Art Culinaire, I set two goals: one day, I too, would grace those pages, and that eventually, I'd go to New York to eat at a place like Le Bernardin.

Fast forward 4 years or so, I had furthered my training, finding myself working in a real restaurant/pastry capacity for Rick Halberg at Emily's, in a sleepy suburb outside of Detroit. This was my first taste of working with contemporary ideas in a kitchen-as-laboratory environment. I had been there a couple of years, climbing my way up to the position of sous chef,  when Rick was invited to cook at the James Beard House in New York. Though I think we chefs here in the city tend to take the Beard House for granted, for those chefs west of the Hudson River, cooking there was, and is for many, a sort of culinary pilgrimage. So if that excitement wasn't enough, Rick announced that the two of us would extend the trip an extra day to eat. I don't remember if I was asked for a suggestion, but the day after our successful dinner, we found ourselves at Le Bernardin for lunch. I may have already been to Paris once by then, but no matter, at least here in the US, this would be one of my first important and highly anticipated dining experiences. I still remember every bite of food from that lunch, from the salmon rilletes through to Florian Bellanger's warm chocolate tart.

I had one dish that, to this day, has remained one of the most memorable in a decade of cooking and dining. The main course was skate, sauteed in goose fat, sauced with a squab jus. That single plate, along with the whole experience, blew my impressionable mind. Back in those days, before the second floor of Le Bernardin had been remodeled to become the private dining rooms, or Les Salons, the long hallway back to the restrooms revealed a large window looking into the kitchens. I must have stood there for five minutes, as the activity of the army of white-clad cooks was mesmerizing. In this state of epiphany I left the restaurant and walked -still in suit and tie and day on a hot summer day- the entire 50 or so blocks up to Kitchen Arts and Letters and back down another 60 blocks to our hotel. Along the way I filled up on more pastry, of course, at the newly opened Payard Patisserie. My love affair with New York and its culinary strata was instantly cemented. During that day of walking and eating, I set a new goal, to one day break into the NYC restaurant scene.

Another few years had passed, and I finally got to meet Eric Ripert when he was invited to cook at Tribute, where I had become pastry chef. I shyly confessed not only my early source of inspiration, but most of all, that revelatory skate dish, which he recalled with affection as well. I would end up seeing him a few times, at various events around the country, but it wasn't until early 2004, when I was just beginning to think about expanding my horizons, that we would meet one on one. And even then, it was a third person that arranged the meeting. While I was also considering possible opportunities in San Francisco and Chicago, the notion of New York was at once exciting and terrifying. Was I ready? And could I actually perform at the level of Le Bernardin? Knowing such an opportunity might never come along again, I agreed to interview with Chef Ripert, and because he already knew my work, after an hour or so, I left with an offer. Now coming up on my fourth year in New York, I still pinch myself, just to make sure that it's all really happening.

Not only did I get to eat at Le Bernardin, years after I accidentally discovered it in a magazine, but I also get to walk through those doors every day, and know that I'm leaving my own mark on the legacy begun by Gilbert and Maguy Le Coze. I also eventually found myself in Art Culinaire, even getting the cover shot. And it's an honor to follow the path set by a long line of talented pastry chefs, among them Herve Poussot, and Florian. And as for my idol Francois, it is especially rewarding that I now consider him a friend and colleague. About a year ago, I had to replace the behemoth of an ice cream machine that had been there for so long, that no one could actually determine its age. I ended up learning from Francois that it dated back to his tenure. And then I thought about the countless gallons and hundreds of flavors that churned in that thing over the years...

The chocolate tart that I tasted during that first lunch became a signature dessert at Le Bernardin, just like Gilbert's famous Variation of Caramel that preceded it, and like my "egg" that followed. At the time, of course, the whole molten chocolate cake thing was just starting to spread like crazy. And while I still prepare Florian's original recipe once in a while as a special request, it was long ago struck from the menu. Recently, however, I brought back the idea, thinking, I guess, that now bringing it back might make it "cool" in a "retro" sense. Cool or not, it is pretty good. The new version is baked into a porcelain cup as part of our tasting menu. Even if no one actually knows it, it's really an homage to the place that helped me realize a dream.

Download Warm-Chocolate-Cake.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.

Bread and Chocolate

I was thinking recently about certain American pastry traditions, comparing them, not necessarily for better or worse, against those of Europe and elsewhere. While we have our own strong traditions and identity, I couldn't help but notice at least one thing other cultures had that we didn't: bread and chocolate. I'm still hard pressed to come up with an example that isn't a direct import, like the now common pain au chocolat (like Francois Payard's pictured below). I may be splitting hairs, but I really mean to differentiate what I consider to be bread from sweet cakes, cookies, and various quick breads, where the focus is on the sugar, not on the simple combination of flour, yeast, and salt. I didn't exactly grow up with strong and varied gastronomic tendencies, so it wasn't until early adulthood that I came to embrace this whole notion, when a friend introduced me to the pleasure of crisp, salty grissini dipped into Nutella.

I would obviously find more exposure to the simply satisfying, almost savory-sweet combination, through my job as a baker and pastry chef. I made the classic pain au chocolat part of my early repertoire, as well as an Italian pane e cioccolata. Later, I learned to join my chef at the time, Takashi, in his daily pre-service ritual of tearing open a chunk of warm baguette, folding in a dab of butter, a few pistoles of chocolate, and a pinch of salt. And more recently, when developing a menu for a Spanish restaurant we were consulting on a few years ago, a dessert of chocolate, toasted bread, and olive oil seemed as natural as churros and crema catalan.

Regular readers here may have noticed that I'm a big fan of Amedei, the exceptional chocolate produced in Tuscany. A few weeks ago, I had the pleasure of meeting Alessio Tessieri, who, with his sister Cecilia, founded the company. What began as a small operation producing pralines, has since evolved into a globe-trotting quest to find the best and rarest cacao beans used in manufacturing their own couvertures. Mr. Tessieri was on a whirlwind promotional tour of North America, and I was honored to host a small press dinner for him during his brief stay here in New York. Among the five courses of desserts I created to highlight the range of Amedei products, I decided to revisit the idea of bread and chocolate.

We began with Amedei's Chuao couverture, a 70% single origin dark chocolate from the renowned village in Venezuela. To best preserve the flavors and nuances of the chocolate by not obscuring them behind too many ingredients, we produced a soft ganache where a good portion of the cream had been replaced with water, with the addition of agar agar to create more stability, thus allowing us to mold it to our whim. This ganache was then minimally adorned with thin slices of toasted bread, a pinch of Maldon salt, and a drizzle of extra virgin olive oil. Mr. Tessieri pronounced this course among his favorites of the evening, as he felt the complimenting flavors best highlighted those of the chocolate. I liked it so much that we've since added the dessert to one of our tasting menus

There have been many inventive uses and interpretations of bread in contemporary pastry. One of the more interesting ideas I came across several years ago involved a deconstruction of brioche: if I recall, the dessert included a bread ice cream, the base itself fermented with yeast (I've searched in vain for the original link to Will's AKWA website where I encountered the recipe). More recently I saw a similar technique courtesy of Martin Berasategui. Of course there is the "low tech" method of infusing breads into a base that I mentioned in the post about "found objects", but I hope to investigate such fermentation possibilities in the future. And like most people who didn't grow up with it, I've been slow to embrace the strong flavor of Marmite or Vegemite. But I think it has potential as an ingredient in some fashion. Olive oil has always presented some interesting dessert possibilities as well- ganaches, sorbets, ice creams, cakes, encapsulation. I think I'll file that away too, to revisit in another more in-depth post.

Download Chocolate-Olive-Oil.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.