Archives Under "chocolate" (RSS)
Such as a Simple Cookie.
14 August 2010 | chocolate, cookies, delicious, faithful readers, recipe, shameless self promotion | 8 Responses
I hear the phrase “the best thing I’ve ever eaten” thrown around, and ultimately, I call bullshit. I mean the notion of “the best” is a fake idea. With subject like food which is completely psychological, The best? Well how many tacos have you eaten, faithful readers? How many burgers have you consumed? Have you eaten enough chocolate chip cookies to definitively say that that is the best? The tradition of chocolate chip cookies is well documented, and who the fuck are you to say “this is the best.” Who the fuck am I for that matter?
As I re-read that last paragraph I realize that I to, am full of shit. Because you know what? Sometimes things are simply “the best.” Like my chocolate chip cookies. I know, I know. But they are. It’s like the old adage says: “if one person calls you a horse, tell them he’s crazy. If twenty people call you a horse, go buy a fucking saddle.” And so I have started to believe the hype about these little god dammits. We give them away for free at the restaurant, as part of out mignardises program, if you have dinner. I go through about three or four hundred a week. People come back in to purchase the cookies for a dollar a piece, not bad for a nineteen cent cookie.
The recipe is based upon a now classic by the famous Jacques Torres. I first tasted these years ago, brought to work for sampling by a very close friend of mine. The most important step in this recipe is the aging the dough. Jacques suggests between 24 and 36 hours, and up to 72. I imagine that this process would improve upon almost any cookie recipe, the flavor and texture improved by hydrating the flour. I have been told recently that even cake batters can stand to sit and hydrate for a while, a few hours in the fridge improving the quality remarkably. But that guy also boiled gelatin with a snarky look and kept his sugar and eggs mixed together in the fridge. These are things that i cannot bring myself to do, even if the pastry chef from Valrhona says I should.
I improve upon Jacques recipe in two simple ways. I substitute muscovado sugar for half of the amount of brown, and I use both semi-sweet and milk chocolate pistoles. Almost as important as the aging the dough is the selection of chocolate. Pistoles, disks, or feves are a must, as they create s sort of layering of chocolate unique to the texture of this recipe. Think you might want to skip the sprinkling of sea salt on top? Don’t. These are the best for a reason, and salt is part of that reason. I believe Jacques likes fluer de sel and I prefer Maldon’s but any quality, coarse sea salt would work. Also, batters of this nature always come together nicer when all your ingredients are at room temperature, even the eggs. A note on baking: I typically am baking these from frozen in a 300 degree convection oven. I like to pull them when they just puff up, and just barely start to brown on the edges. These are little guys too, maybe a tablespoon of dough. At that size they take about 12 minutes, with one rotation halfway through baking. If you make them bigger, they’re going to take longer. Our Chef at the restaurant enjoys the dough frozen, and I always smile when he grabs a handful. This recipe makes A LOT!! it’s a rim-rider in my 600 pro-series Kitchen Aid. You might want to cut it in half.
The Best Chocolate Chip Cookies
The Bomb.
11 February 2010 | Europe, chocolate, delicious, dessert, faithful readers, pastries, plated dessert, recipe | 6 Responses
A fucking bomb went off! Chocolate flourless cake, salty caramel core, milk chocolate shell and blood orange ice cream. The dessert is inspired by a pastry I had in Paris, from the shop of the revered pastry Chef Pierre Herme. It was a bombe, tempered shell and caramel core, I enjoyed it on a park bench in Luxembourg gardens. Mr. Herme ingeniously used a macaron base, his desserts were all marked by inventive skill and imagination. I employ a compressed devil’s food cake sealed with icing to seal in the oozing salty caramel, just a candle held towards Chef Pierre’s brilliance. The milk chocolate shell is just that, tempered 38% milk chocolate. Here’s a recipe for my faithful readers.
Blood Orange Ice Cream
2 cups milk
2 cups blood orange puree
1 1/2 cups sugar
4 oz butter
pinch o’ salt
2 cups heavy cream
3/4 cup egg yolks
P.S. See this in the Willamette Week?
Pootang 3.0.
18 November 2009 | Ten 01, chocolate, creative presentation of the week, delicious, faithful readers, plated dessert, recipe | 2 Responses
It’s funny how one idea leads to another and sometimes the most obvious idea is the best one. Looking at my Fat Spouse dessert, it was good; hell it was great even. What it lacked however was a warm element. Something to start melting that malted milk ice cream and pretzel bark. Something rich and fatty. Like pootang…BREAD pootang. All peanut butter chips and compressed devil’s food cake stratifying a rich brioche custard. There’s been some discussion of pootang technique in the kitchen as of late, and one thing again leading to another, I’m now pureeing my base. It creates an even, dense, almost cakey texture. The chunks of devils food are compressed in the vacuum sealer then diced. Finally a good use for that bomber technique. You can get cool potions this way, but a realized dessert was tricky. Now how about that fancy cruise ship garnish? I got the idea from a dish wifey had dining when we dined at Spago Beaver Creek. A simple piped lattice of tempered chocolate onto acetate, scored and bent in a PVC half pipe. The other tile of tempered chocolate underneath the ice cream is a buffer between the cold scream and the warm pootang. Cocoa nibs help it grip. I brought back the dulce dessert Watchmen blood drip plate saucing technique for good measure. This fucker gets oohed and ahhed every time it hits the table. Here’s the recipe for enjoyment of my faithful readers.
Chocolate Peanut Butter Bread Pudding
6 oz butter at room temperature
6 oz sugar
2 oz dark chocolate
4 oz peanut butter
5 eggs
3 cups heavy cream
12 -15 brioche buns
2 cups diced compressed devils food cake that has been diced
1 bag Reeses peanut butter chips
1. Cream the butter and the sugar with the paddle. While they are achieving light and fluffy in your stand mixer, melt the chocolate and peanut butter over a double boiler.
2. When the sugar and butter are light and fluffy, add the melted chocolate and peanut butter. Mix until well incorporated, scraping the bowl as necessary.
3. Add the eggs one by one, scraping and incorporating.
4. Switch to the whisk and add the heavy cream on low speed. Keep the machine going while you prep the bread.
5. Cut the bread into large chunks. Take the custard off the machine, add the bread and mix thoroughly. You need enough bread to make a messy paste. Too much and your pootang will be dry, to little and it will be a custardy mess. Cover the mix and let it soak over night. This is essential to chingon pootang.
6. Next day pull the base and puree it in the food processor. Transfer to a large bowl and mix in the chunks and chips.
7. Prepare one half sheet tray with sprayed parchment. Pour and spread the base into an even layer. It should ride the rim of the pan. Cover with plastic wrap, then cover with aluminum foil. This will create a nice even top.
8. Bake in a 300 degree convection oven for about 25 minutes, rotating once. It is normal for the pootang to souffle a bit while baking. When it is done it should be dry (baked looking.)
9. Cool completely before slicing to de-molding desired shape. Reheat portions in the microwave for 20 seconds.
Fat Spouse.
23 August 2009 | chocolate, delicious, faithful readers, plated dessert, recipe | 7 Responses
Anyone who gets Food Arts probably saw this presentation on page 81 of the July issue; yep I totally stole it. The original creator is Chef Sandro Michell, pastry master for Alain Ducasse’s Adour in New York’s St. Regis Hotel. To say that he is a bad ass is a bit of an understatement, to say that his work will be aspired to and emulated the world over is a point of fact. Who knows if I’m even the first to bite his presentation? The design of it is perfect; each bite a perfect portion of the flavors and textures. Faithful readers know of my love of cylinders, this set up was a natural progression from my dulce de leche logs. Chef Sandro streamlines the process by rolling up acetate and piping in the soft ice cream. Anyway, on to the flavors. I’ve always wanted to do a plated dessert version of Ben & Jerry’s Chubby Hubby, so here it fucking is!! Devils food cake, chocolate peanut butter pretzel bark, malted milk ice cream. This dessert had been a fun little path of progressions for me. It’s first incarnation was done like Tony Martin’s Brownie Crunchie, a peanut butter and pretzel layer was spread warm onto the cake then set, and sliced. With that method, the pretzels got soggy; hydrating from the moisture in the simple syrup soaked sponge. I was riding my bike home on Friday night and it hits me: bark!! What I wanted was bark, like we had in Zermatt!! Just with pretzels instead of almonds and shit. Crunch factor, achieved!! The plate is sauced with chocolate and peanut butter caramel, sooooo fucking good!! When I first plated it up, I tweeted a picture of it, which caused a bit of a stir. Next day my buddy Rich was in to eat it; fucking Twitter, huh? The other cool thing about this dessert is the cocktail pairing: White Russian. Naturally you want milk with this right? Or cream? And vodka, right? Kaluha? We all know Kelley makes a killer Caucasian, it’s perfect!!
Pretzel Bark
6 oz milk chocolate
6 oz dark chocolate
6 oz creamy peanut butter
3 cups loose chopped pretzel sticks
1. Melt the first three ingredients over a double boiler.
2. Stir in the pretzels and pour onto a sheet pan with a silpat or parchment.
3. Chill the bark for 30 minutes before cutting into desired shapes. Store in an airtight container in the fridge.
Your Mom’s White Chocolate Mousse.
17 May 2009 | chocolate, dessert, recipe | 3 Responses
Like most people on Planet Earth do nowadays, I Google a lot of shit. In fact as of late, I annoyingly bark searches into my hand-held device, and somehow Google finds that shit. Mostly I get lost on random pics and silly articles. YouTube and Hulu of course; Twitter, sure. Oh yeah and porn, can’t forget about porn. Often however, I search recipes. Now there are recipes and there are recipes; but like your mom, this one is HUGE. This simple ratio can be divided or multiplied to any yield, a supple and smooth mousse for piping or filling. I’ve tried infusing the cream, I’ve substituted brown butter for half the weight in chocolate. This versatile recipe is the basic formula for my dulce de leche mousse. I’ve filled cakes and tarts or just scooped it onto a plate. This particular batch was for rather large off site event a few months ago. When I was searching for a vessel large enough in which to melt twenty one pounds of chocolate, I didn’t deem it necessary to make certain said vessel had no cracks or holes, which it did. I poured over a gallon of hot scalding cream into the large square container, then watched white chocolate ganache come oozing out the bottom an onto the floor. Very unpleasant. Be sure to double check your equipment always, but especially when working with a recipe of this size.
White Chocolate Mousse
1 gallon 1 qt heavy cream
21 lbs white chocolate
100 grams sheet gelatin
1 1/2 gallons heavy cream
1. Weigh the gelatin into a bowl and bloom it with cold water. Drain. Weigh the chocolate into a large vessel.
2. Heat the first amount of cream to a scald, and pour it over the white chocolate. Add the gelatin. Whisk until smooth. Cool to room temp.
3. Whip the second amount of cream to soft peaks. Fold into the chocolate mixture. Chill the mousse thoroughly before use.
Devil’s Food Cake with Dulce de Leche Mousse.
27 April 2009 | Ten 01, chocolate, creative presentation of the week, delicious, faithful readers, pastries, plated dessert, recipe | 8 Responses
in possibly my best effort in plated dessert design to date, I give my faithful readers this fucking thing. Hopefully, the plate exudes a clean elegance, peppered with a touch of how’ did he do that? Well, I’ll tell you. The sponge cake base is a classic Devil’s Food cake recipe that I found in one of my new favorite cookbooks, Dessert Fourplay by Johnny Iuzzini. The recipe calls for mayonnaise, which tickles me, and keeps the cake super-moist. The science of that is kind of obvious: cake batters have eggs and oil, mayo is eggs and oil emulsified. On top of the sponge cake I pipe a chocolate icing that I found the recipe for on the best food site ever, IDEAS IN FOOD. The icing calls for sweetened condensed milk (like the dulche,) and balsamic vinegar to blend with dark chocolate. The sticky icing has a nice subtle acid note, a quiet personality. On top of the icing is a thin piece of tempered chocolate, a nice thin snappy-crunch. I’ve seen garnish this used a lot; especially in Parisian pastry shops. With the help of my ChocoBot, some marble slabs, and some precise cuts, this process proved to be quite easy. Just like Salted Caramel Sauce, easy peasy-smack-a-jeezy. Really, the only semi-difficult element to this dish is the dulce de leche mousse. The recipe it self is no brain-tease; just a spin on a white chocolate mousse. In fact, I was originally going to use caramelized white chocolate, but decided the laborious process wasn’t worth the taste. It tastes like dulce, so why not just use dulce? Making dulce de leche is not hard, just kinda weird. Take a few cans of sweetened condensed milk, place them in a large pot (yes in the can.) Fill the pot with water, be sure to cover the cans by a few inches. Bring the water to a boil, and keep boiling for 3 to 4 hours. Keep a bucket of water nearby to refill the water as it evaporates. After 4 hours, kill the heat and dump out the water. Cover the cans with ice to cool them off. When cooled, open the cans and enjoy the dulceness. I know this sounds strange, but it’s way easier than the traditional method. So here’s the hard part, molding the cylinders. Not really hard I guess, just time consuming. I’ve seen Michael Laiskonis of Le Bernardin make cool cylnders on his blog, and always wanted to try it. After a month of experimenting, I have a process. There’s got to be a better way, but here’s how I do it. Take your cannoli forms and line one side of each mold with tin foil. Stand them upright in a six pan or secured with a rubber band on a sheet tray. Line each mold with acetate, the thin clear plastic stuff. When the mousse is ready, pipe it into the molds. Freeze them shits rock hard, at least 3 hours, better to do it overnight. \Demold the mousse and plate while frozen, and thaw in the fridge on the plates. Serve with desired components. Or wrap them shits.
Dulce De Leche Mousse
4 1/2 sheets of gelatin.
1 1/4 cups heavy cream
1 lb 5 oz Dulce de Leche
1 1/2 cups heavy cream
1. Bloom the gelatin in cold water.
2. Weigh the dulce de leche into a bowl. Bring the first measurement of cream to a boil, and then pour it over the ducle. Drain and add the gelatin. Whisk to combine. Or use an immersion blender.
3. Allow the mixture to cool to room temperature. Meanwhile, whip the second measurement of cream to soft peaks.
4. Fold in the cream gently. Pipe into desired molds, or just into a martini glass. Chill until set and enjoy.
Milk Chocolate Cheesecake: BAM!!
30 March 2009 | Ten 01, cake, chocolate, delicious, dessert, faithful readers, plated dessert, recipe | 3 Responses
As my faithful readers may guess, I hesitate to utter or type the word “bam,” let alone “BAM!” I find it appropriate here however because of two things. Firstly, I stole this recipe from none other than the “bam-man” himself, Emeril Lagasse. Second this cheesecake hits you like so many extra handfulls of whatever it may be, BAM! Leaving the audience (you,) asking for more. At first glance, any pastry minded person would wonder at the food processor method and the addition of flour for this cheesecake. Also, no water bath while baking? My employer Adam mused that it was no doubt some kind of shortcut or compensation for poor technique. The likelihood of him being correct doesn’t change the silky texture and pure indulgence of this tangy chocolately treat. The only thing did I differently was to increase the milk chocolate by 2 ounces. I use a water bath, too. I just have to. I also use a milk-chocolate feuillitine crust after baking and chilling and an oreo cookie round when it hits the plate. I make the milk chocolate crust by melting the chocolate over a double-bloier, then mixing in enough feuillitine to have a fluid but crunchy texture. I bet you could use chopped cereal flakes and have similiar results, if you’re having trouble finding the feuillitine. I hate soggy graham cracker crust. At first I baked it in a square and cut rectangles, but soon switched to the demisphere, which due to gravity actually bakes things into truncated domes. I glaze them in dark chocolate and pipe the cute little milk chocolate lines. For sauce I use a blood orange caramel, which balances with he milk chocolate nicely. When I sauce the plate, I envision the mask of Rorschach from Watchmen, because I’m a silly dreamer.
Emeril Lagasse’s Milk Chocolate Cheesecake
3 pounds cream cheese, softened
2 cups sugar
6 large eggs
1 cup heavy cream
1/2 cup bleached all-purpose flour
Pinch of salt
1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract
10 ounces milk chocolate, melted
Beat the cream cheese in a food processor until smooth. Add the sugar and process. Add the eggs 1 at a time, running the processor in between each addition. Add the heavy cream, flour, salt, and vanilla and process until smooth, scraping down the sides of the bowl as needed. With the motor running, add the chocolate in a steady stream. Pour the mixture into the prepared pan. Bake (in a water bath) until the center of the cake sets, about 1 hour and 15 minutes.
Oreo Cookie
1 1/2 cups powdered sugar
8 oz soft butter
1 tsp salt
1 tblsp vanilla extract
1/2 cup cocoa powder
2 1/2 cups A.P. Flour
Cream the butter, salt and sugar well, but not to light and fluffy
Sift in the flour and cocoa powder, then mix to form a dough
Cover with plastic and chill at least one hour before rolling on a floured surface and cutting out cookies
Bake at 350 for 12 minutes
Weird Desserts.
22 March 2009 | Ten 01, chocolate, creative presentation of the week, delicious, dessert, jack yoss, plated dessert | 10 Responses
In my exploration of flavor combinations, I’ve made up some weird desserts. I mean, for awhile, all I made was weird desserts. I liked things that were different, that made people think! At Carlyle I tried to deep fry bread pudding. It was good. People didn’t get it. I put a doughnut on the plate with poached pears. People didn’t get it. At ten-01, I’ve refined my style a little bit. I did less weird, but still unusual. Twists, if you will. Well, you can sell that shit to the fucking tourists; people still didn’t get it. Chef Jack taught me to write menus that sounded as good as they tasted. Chocolate Whiskey Cake with Brown Butter Caramel and Dulche de Leche Ice Cream sounds pretty fucking good. I have to cook for your demographic. I have to make desserts that people don’t think about, they just buy. The average Portland diner isn’t a jaded big city type; used to everything from fried mayonnaise to “weird fish.” Sure they got behind grassy sage ice cream, but they seem to want desserts well inside the comfort zone. Vanilla Creme Brulee. Pear fritters. I sell more ice cream then anything else. I’ve got a new cheesecake; which is going over well, but I find my plating skills have hit a plateau. At least dessert of last year is off. I’ve enjoyed some banquet dessert success as well recently. I need some input…some inspiration. Fuck, I need some fucking berries already!!
My New Favorite Robot.
20 January 2008 | Ten 01, candy, chocolate | 2 Responses
One of the most time consuming and frustrating tasks facing pastry chefs is tempering chocolate. Chocolate is a finnicky ingredient that has a complex chemichal structure which needs to be handled just right. Improperly tempered chocolate is streaked with gray, and lacks that characteristic “snap” we all love. You see, cocoa butter, the fat in chocolate, asorbs heat at a different rate than the other ingredients (cocoa, sugar, etc.) so it can seperate and “float” to the top. The chocolate needs to be melted to a certain temperature (110-115 F,) cooled to another (80-82) and then rewarmed to yet another (87-91) to work with it. This process insures the the fat molecules are melted homogenously, and that its structure in relation to the other ingredients creates that perfect gloss, hardness, and shrinkage that makes a good chocolate candy, truffle, garnish or whatever. There are several methods for tempering; seeding, marbling, in the microwave, or my personal favorite, by robot. Pictured above is the Chocovision Revolation X3210 4.8. It takes all the guess work out of the tricky tempering process, and looks dead sexy while doing it. I’ve been using it to make candies and truffles for mignardes at the restaurant. Flavors so far include brown butter, white chocolate basil, butterscotch, orange, vanilla cream. All yummy, all the time. Interested in experimenting with chocolate? Don’t have a $1500 dollar robot? Check out this site.
New Menu Items
20 November 2007 | carlyle, chocolate, delicious, dessert, faithful readers, food porn, plated dessert | 2 Responses
Faithful readers, it’s time to change ‘em up a little bit, we’ve gotta keep it exciting, right? The Rosemary and Pinenut Tartlette is coming off. I can’t give that thing away. Also bye-bye is the Cheesecake Three Ways, because its too much work. I’m bustin’ my ass over a mediocre dessert, when I should have been making Chocolate Flourless , Passionfruit, and Creme Fraiche Sherbet, pictured above. Sauced it with Valrhona, ’cause it’s good Also we have Poached Pear, Olive Oil beignet, and Valrhona milk chocolate. Take a look below. We poached the pears in a bag for six hours in Jake’s thermal bath. This is attempting that “in the woods” feeling that I was trying to capture with the Pinenut Tart. Maybe this time the clarified butter and chocolate will make it happen. That’s right, we got Valrhona on both, peeps. You’ve tried it , right? Also revised was The Irish Car Bomb, which is now Gunniess stout brownie, Bailey’s anglaise, and Jameson’s salted whiskey caramel ice cream. And don’t forget to check Elvis’s out new bacon cookie!!!
