Archives Under "recipe" (RSS)
Recipe Revolutions.
8 February 2009 | photoshop, recipe | 3 Responses
Anthony Bourdain talks and writes about mise en place as a religion, and any cook would agree with this concept. In the pasty kitchen, an essential piece of this is the recipe. Understanding the ratio of ingredients to one another and function of those ingredients in a particular execution, one finds themself with limitless possibilites in simple language. Apply proper technique, and one has delicious on thier hands. I first learned the importance of recipes at my fisrt professional pastry job at Mohonk Mountain House in New Paltz New York. In the visceral thrall of prodigious pastry chef Christopher Boos, I learned many things I still use today. Cutting my teeth in his shop, I made hundreds of recipes, thousands of times, all obtained from his Book of Knowledge. 2 copies of this “book” were always open on one of the various stations in the kitchen, a fine greasy feel to the pages, a gossamer layer of food particulate. The Book of Knowledge was physically two binder-sized pieces of masonite, bound with 3 zip-ties, containg over 200 plastic sleeved, hand written recipes. The book came to be so much more to me than that crude matter, a luminous being of swirling numbers and words. Since then, I’ve come a good ways. I still have so much more to humbly learn, but have since compiled my own recipe collection. Countless chef’s have tutored me, countess cookbooks have been read, recipes have come to life in my hands, and the good ones were committed to paper, then disk, now the web. I still appreciate the romance of scribbling down a formula, internalization through chicken scratch. When halving or doubling a recipe, I always write it down. It’s just good practice, especially when dealing with expensive ingredients. As a victim of the calculator age, I also can’t cost a recipe without pen and paper. Technology however has allowed me once again to enrich my life, first with Google Cookbook, and then a through hand-held, web based personal cookbook on The One Device. I kind of skipped getting them up here on my own site, but technology moves fast. The web based Chef’s Little Helper has a perfect name, once again solidifying myPhone as best hardware ever, and once again reminding me that the future is now. So where’s the cybernetic human augmentation? Let’s get those kung fu uploads going, Apple. Don’t waste your time trying to get this thing to make a phone call, because I didn’t really want to do that anyway.
Herb Ice Cream: make it like a Dick.
13 December 2008 | Ten 01, custard, delicious, food, recipe | 7 Responses
Mark Dunleavy showed me this process. He’s kind of a dick. Since he created the Chorizo Burger however, I’ve paid attention when he talks about food. Except for that one time with the Consomme, when I wasn’t paying attention at all. Anyway, he’s a keeper. He told me he learned the following technique from the pastry chef at Blue Hour, where he worked as a pastry cook. I respect Mark’s resume. I mean here he was, grinding herbs for ice cream down the street, making desserts, then he simply wheels around the block, and starts working saute at the restaurant. Y’know…cooking happy hour and shit.
So here’s what you do weigh the sugar and the herb you want to use into the Robo-Coupe and grind it into a paste. Place this paste in your sauce pot and add the dairy product. Bring to a boil and cover the pot, killing the heat. Steep for thirty minutes. Temper in your yolks cook to nape, stirring, scraping often with a spat. Pour the base into a hotel pan to cool in the fridge. I usually ripen the base overnight in a cambro. It’s not imperative but does increase the flavor. Next day strain that shit into your Gelatoo-D2 unit and spin to a stiff sour cream consistency. The base recipe was adapted from AB’s, but Mark taught me the herb-paste bit. I imagine it works so well because it really opens up the herbs, and prepares to steep. You also achieve a bright, herby color this way. I want to say something about surface area but I don’t know if that’s right. It works great for Mint Chip and any other herb you might like to try. I’ve also used this herb grinding to make a Rosemary Pine Nut Tart for TXGV, but that’s another story.
Herb Ice Cream
yields 2 qts.
6 cups half & half
2 cups heavy cream
18 oz sugar
2-3 bunches herbs (sage, mint, basil, etc.)
16 egg yolks
1. Grind the sugar and herbs to a paste, and place them in a sauce pot with the dairy products. Bring to a boil and cover, kill the heat and steep for thirty minutes.
3. Seperate the eggs into a bowl, whisk vigorously.**
4. Temper the hot liquid into the yolks. Cook over medium heat unit it thickens up, or about 165 F, if you want to get fancy. Scrape and stir often with a rubber spatula. It should coat the back of a spoon when its ready.
5. Pour the base out into a shallow pan to cool rapidly under refrigeration.
6. Once thoroghly chilled, trasfer to a storage vessel for overnite ripening.
7. Next day strain into your ice cream machine and spin accordingly. Serve with a famous dessert.
**In the original AB recipe, he whisks the sugar with the yolks, thick and pale. This created a really good texture in the finished ice cream. I remember that Good Eats episode now, and it was something about protein. Next time I make this, I think I’ll use a portion of the sugar to do this.
Pate de Fruit Demystified.
7 November 2008 | Ten 01, candy, delicious, recipe | 11 Responses
I used to be mystified by Pate de Fruit (PAHT duh fruit.) I watched Tony create these candies from passion fruit puree and I was in awe. Chewy, sugary, fruity, firm but yielding. When I first started at ten-01, Chef asked me if I could make them to serve as mignardises. I of course said “Sure!” and set about learning to make them. I searched around online and came across some ratios and learned the basic components. Fruit puree, granulated sugar, apple pectin, glucose, and tartaric acid. The recipes I found were specific and complicated, and scaled in grams. I felt way out of my element. Stupidly, however, I had already told Chef I knew how to do it, so I shit my pants and dove in to swim. The importance of mise en place in this process was blatantly apparent from the outset. Ingredients were added in specific order at specific times. On the stove this shit looks dangerous; bubbling and spitting hot goopy napalm. It always gets a second glance when cooks pass by. After fucking it up a few times (too hard, too soft, grainy or burned) I started to learn the critical points. Firstly, always have a spat and a whisk in a bain near the stove. As you add the various items, you want to alternate between the two, making sure to incorporate and scape well. Second, dump the ingredients in, then whisk/scrape. At first I was adding while whisking, but the precision cook loathes unincorporated ingredients stuck to the whisk. Those grams add up quick, and this recipe requires exactitude. Next, after you get the glucose in, turn the flame down a bit. This burbling lava is hell of hazardous. Don’t let it get away from you. You have at least ten minutes before this candy reaches its finishing temperature. Don’t add the thermometer until you get past that. It’s easier to whisk/scrape without it, which you should do often. Have your molds set up and ready to go, because time is limited when you reach temp. Have a towel for the pot to land on, and your tartaric acid near by. Remember that bain you’ve been working out of? Drop your thermometer in there, and move it to where your molds are. After adding the acid, you only have a few moments to pour before it starts to set up. Cool the candy to room temperature before turning it out onto parchment to store or a board to cut into desired shape. To serve, toss them into a big bowl with sugar, and tap off the excess. The sugar will absorb into them, but you can, to a point, recoat them. A few words on ingredients: Use the good shit. Buy Perfect Puree, or an equivalent high quality puree. I’ve tried most of them, and now stick with Perfect’s strawberry and white peach, the recipes below are product specific. If you want to make your own puree, buena suerte. Use powdered apple pectin. This recipe is written for it, not the liquid shit. Glucose and corn syrup while similar, are not equal. Glucose has a higher density and while I would substitute corn syrup in brownies, I wouldn’t here. Many of these products are available to you at Pastry Chef Central, whose logo resembles Pom Pom, the most mackinest.
Strawberry (and White Peach) Pate de Fruit.
1800 g puree
180 g sugar
44 g apple pectin (46 g for white peach)
1800 g sugar (1738 g for white peach)
360 g glucose
27 g tartaric acid (28 g for white peach)
1. Weigh puree into a large heavy saucepot. Scale all other ingredients and set aside.
2. Sift togehter the first amount of sugar with the apple pectin while bringing the puree to a boil.
3. When the puree starts to boil, add the sugar/pectin. Return to a boil and add the other amount of sugar. Return to a boil and add the glucose.
4. Cook to 225 F and remove from heat. Add tartaric acid add pour immediately.
Here’s an Easy One.
1 November 2008 | Ten 01, delicious, dessert, plated dessert, recipe | 5 Responses
I love deep frying. As long as I’m creating dessert menus, there will be a fried item included. Customers seem to love them, too. I still have people asking me about the Olive Oil Beignets. Not every fried dessert I’ve tried has been a huge success. The funnel cakes turned out to be just OK, and the brown butter beignets straight didn’t work. I mostly base my doughnut ideas on pate choux, because I can pipe them, freeze them and fry from frozen. This system works well because I normally have to make the batter only once a week. A simple dipping sauce of creme anglaise or fruit coulis made it a no-brain pick up. With the lackluster reception of the funnel cakes, I wanted to try something different. I turned my Googles upon the humble fritter. The simple, basic recipes I found reminded me right away of pancake batter. Milk or water, eggs, flour, chemical leavener, flavorings. I tried a couple of “meh” recipes before choosing the most simple. A no frills apple fritter formula I found God knows where at God knows what wee hour of the morning through bleary search-engine eyes. I thought this recipe was the most tweakable, and slightly tweak I did. The original recipe called for milk as the liquid, and apples for the fruit. I wanted to use pears, because I originally had bleu cheese in mind for the sauce. I ended up using pear puree for half of the liquid volume (instead of all milk,) because the fruit flavor was faint at best. I also tossed the diced pears in more pear puree, just to seal the deal. These steaming balls of fried tree fruit batter are delicious. Hot from the fryer they get tossed in cinnamon sugar, the smell is heady, as in it turns heads in the kitchen. At this point, I started working on the sauce. My first idea was a honey-roquefort creme anglaise. Blue cheese and pears are thick as thieves, right? A famous pearing pairing. I bounced the idea off of Chef and he suggested I use Gorgonzola Dolce. I put together the simple custard based on David Lebovitz’s ice recipe in The Perfect Scoop. Spooning the warm cream into my mouth I almost puked. The funky foot taste filled my sinus and the too sweet eggyness turned my stomach. I stashed it in my low boy. Somebody was getting got with that stinky mess. It turned out to be Perez. I called him over once the sauce was cooled to have a taste. The look on his face was priceless. Slowly nodding his head and trying not to grimace, he looked like as if he was going to spit it out, but didn’t want to offend me. I burst out laughing in his face. I love cooking. Even the failures prove to be somehow useful. This is my second experiment with stinky cheese in a dessert, and the second not so good result. I decided to go with a pear brandy caramel, using local a Clear Creek Distillers product. Anyway, here’s the recipes. To fry these babies, spoon the batter into a 350 F deep fryer. When they float to the top, note how they look like The Guardian from Big Trouble in Little China. Fry until golden brown and a knife comes out almost clean. And watch out for Lo Pan.
Pear Fitters
makes one deep 6 pan
4 eggs
2/3 cup milk
2/3 cup pear puree
4 cups flour
1 cup sugar
1/4 oz salt
1 oz baking powder
4 cups diced pears
pear puree to coat pears
1. Whisk the eggs together with the milk and the pear puree in a large bowl.
2. Sift the dry ingredients into the bowl and mix to combine with a wooden spoon.
3. Dice the pears into a seperate bowl and toss them with enough pear puree to generously coat.
4. Fold the pears into the batter and either fry at 350 F until golden brown, or refigerate up to five days.
Pear Brandy Caramel
1 lb 8 oz sugar
10 oz corn syrup
10 oz butter
3 cups heavy cream
1/2 cup Clear Creek Pear Brandy (don’t sub the cheap shit)
1. Caramelize the sugar and the corn syrup to a rich amber color.
2. Whisk in the butter, take care with the bubbling and frothing.
3. Whisk in the cream and return to a boil.
4. Remove from the heat and cool to room temperature, then whisk in the pear brandy. Serve warm or store up to 1 month in the refigerator.
Dessert of the Year.
15 October 2008 | Ten 01, creative presentation of the week, delicious, dessert, faithful readers, jack yoss, plated dessert, recipe, shameless self promotion | 9 Responses
This is a variation of one of my older recipes, literally the first dessert I made at ten-01. I learned this one from Tony, of course, and I’ve been tweaking it ever since. If you review the earlier version, you’ll notice a few changes in the recipe below. Firstly, the weights have changed. Somewhere along the line, while converting it for various applications, I skewed the amounts. The newer proportions reflect just how many times I’ve made this recipe, how many times I’ve observed it’s subtleties. Chef actually improved upon its technique by mistake while I was in Europe. Anyway, here’s whats changed and why.
This recipe contains all my favorite ingredients; butter, chocolate, eggs, sugar, and booze. I was taught to melt the butter and chocolate over a double boiler Then whisk together the sugar and the eggs. Then, when the chocolate was melted, everything was whisked together with the booze and baked in a water bath in ten inch cake pans. When baked and thoroughly cooled we glazed them with a one to one ganache and sliced them in 16 portions. Onto a marble and out to the buffet. Simple and decadently effective. The main trick then (and now) was knowing when to pull them from the oven. They never really look baked, all loose and jiggly. It’s still a kind of leap of faith for me when I pull them. I find myself touching them every five minutes until they cool and solidify.
At Carlyle this recipe started to evolve. The original recipe, just cut in half, was giving me some great results. I realized at this point how similar this cake was to cheesecake, and I treat cheesecake like a custard. I started baking it at a lower temperature, and turning off the oven for the last half hour of baking. A thick, fudgey texture was my reward. I started trying different molds, and building up creamy layers. The best version at those times was with passionfruit, I wanted to call it Sexual Chocolate.
For my tasting at ten-01, I baked the cake in a small ring mold and served it with brown butter ice cream. It was over the top rich and showed I wasn’t afraid to knock people unconscious with chocolate. At least that’s what I kept telling myself as they ate it (”They don’t hate you, they don’t hate you, they don’t even KNOW you, man!”) I got the job, needless to say, and the cake ended up on the first menu. I started to bake it in frames around this time, and that marks the first change in the recipe’s proportions. Every time I pulled the 1/2 sheet cakes from the oven, the tops were just pooled with butter. I think this happened because the cakes where to big to cook through before basically breaking. I tried varying oven temperatures, mixing techniques, and finally ended up just reducing the amount of butter. The cake had a slightly more crumbly texture but was still dense and fudgy. Chef suggested I started serving the cake at room temperature. Chef knows a lot about food. Much like cheese, the cake was way better at room temp. He actually improved upon the recipe by mistake, confusing the bread pudding technique with this one and whipped it on high speed for over 15 minutes. The cake melted in the mouth, inducing groaning. This version of the cake sold really well. It seemed like it was around forever. I started to get bored with it. I replaced it with another Tony Classic and tried to forget about it.
Fast forward three or four menus. The servers are clamoring for a rich, knock-out chocolate dessert. The stupid Guinness brownie thing just wasn’t working. Marble Cheesecake? Yeah, kind of, but not quite. Scouring the internet for ideas, I came across this. The tenth item on McCormick’s 2008 Flavor Forecast was rubbed sage and rye whiskey. Things started to click into place in my mind; the hamster running in its wheel turned the lock’s tumblers to open my mind on a new idea. I knew whiskey and chocolate worked. Would I use whiskey in the cake or in the sauce? I knew how to make a kick-ass mint ice cream, would it work with sage? And would it go with the rich fudginess of the cake? As it turns out, it does. Famously. I remember standing in the walk-in waiting for the ice cream base to cool down enough to spin. I had some whiskey caramel left over form the Guinness brownie. I spooned the caramel into my mouth followed by the sage base. Closing my eyes, nodding, I reached to the top shelf for a beer…it was time to celebrate.
“Oh wait…” I thought, “…it’s only 6:30.” I started straight away making a batch of flourless chocolate cake. Scanning over the ingredients, I encountered a problem. I’ve only made this recipe with alcohol. It’s always been whiskey, or Grand Mariner or Bailey’s or something. I knew this recipe really well and just knew that I had to come up something to use in the place of whiskey, 3/4 of a cup of what, dammit, air? Suddenly it hit me. Water.
This batch of cakes, baked in my handy new flexipans, was one of the best I’ve created. Fudgy, of course, but the main flavor was chocolate. Not booze, but chocolate. Water made this possible. Having worked in pastry for a few years, this really struck me. Water, the arch-nemesis of chocolate, was helping me showcase chocolate in this recipe. Sometimes when things seem weird at first, proper handling can produce fantastic results. Water is now my new favorite ingredient. Even chocolate isn’t scared anymore. I even used the two together it in the mirror glaze. Anyway, enough of my jawing, here’s the recipes for my faithful readers, and also for the readers of the Willamette Week, who will find this cake in the October 15th Restaurant Guide.
Chocolate Flourless Cake
1 pound 14 ounces chocolate (64%)
1 pound 8 ounces butter
15 ounces eggs
15 ounces sugar
3/4 cup water
1. Pre-heat your convection oven to 200 F.
2. Weigh the chocolate into a bowl and set aside.
3. Weigh the butter into a sauce pot, and bring it to a boil.
4. Weigh the eggs and butter into the bowl of a stand mixer and whip light and fluffy.
5. Pour the boiling butter over the chocolate, give the bowl a shake and a spin and let stand two minutes.
6. Whisk the chocolate until smooth.
7. Fold the whipped eggs into the melted chocolate, then fold in the water.
8. Pour the batter into the flexipans and bake in a water bath until set, about 30 minutes.
9. Cool properly and chill thoroughly before demolding and glazing.
Mirror Glaze
1/2 cup corn syrup
1/2 cup heavy cream
9 ounces chocolate
enough hot water to reach desired consistency
1. Weigh the chocolate into a bowl.
2. Measure the corn syrup and heavy cream into a sauce pot and bring to a boil.
3. Pour the boiling cream over the chocolate, give the bowl a shake and a spin and let stand two minutes.
4. Whisk the chocolate until smooth.
5. Whisk in enough hot water to make the glaze loose and pour easily.
Assembly- Set the de-molded cakes on a glazing rack and ladle the hot glaze over the cakes. Chill the cakes and apply a second coat. Serve at room temperature with Sage Ice Cream and Whiskey Caramel.
NY Cheesecake…Kind Of.
4 June 2008 | creative presentation of the week, delicious, dessert, faithful readers, plated dessert, recipe | 1 Response
People go nuts for this dessert. Eyes pop out of people’s heads. It changes worlds. Even Chef cleaned his plate and he rarely does with sweets. So it’s this month’s Creative Presentation of the Week. Just a little New York Style Cheesecake with Balsamic Strawberries and Hazelnut Scone. As I look at the plate now, I marvel at how I put TWO leaves of mint. C’mon dude! It’s a basic cheesecake recipe I learned from Mark Metzger at the Vail Cascade. I used it also at Carlyle for the cheesecake three ways. Thanks Mark!! The balsamic strawberries were Chef’s idea, and after some tinkering we reproduced them. Look at those babies! All glistening and shit. The “crust” on this cheesecake comes form of scone. I always liked scones for strawberry shortcakes and this dish had strawberries so I thought, what the F. Toasted hazelnuts and sugar crust it up. It’s a little weird, sure, but damn yummy. My faithful readers need these recipes. So…here:
Metzger NY Cheesecake
1 1/2 # cream cheese at room temp
6 oz sugar
Pulp of 1 vanilla bean
3 eggs
1. Preheat the oven to 250 (200 for convection.) Place the cream cheese, sugar and vanilla pulp in the bowl of a stand mixer fitted with a paddle. Beat on low speed for 5 minutes
2. Scrape the bowl thoroughly with a spatula.
3. Add the eggs, one at a time scraping thoroughly between each addition. The more careful you are here, the better your end product. Add and scrape!! Visualize that nipple in the bottom of the mixing bowl, and scrape it well!!
4. Transfer the batter to a square flexible mold.
5. Bake in a water bath for 25 minutes, then rotate the pan, and bake for another 15 minutes.
6. At this point, the cheesecake should be set on the outsides, and slightly jiggly in the middle. Open the oven door for a sec, then close it and turn the oven off. Set a timer for 45 minutes. I finish all of my custards this way, it works really well. Thanks Alton.
7. Chill the cake for at least 3 hrs before attempting to de-mold and slice. I usually flash mine in the freezer for about 25 minutes to get a clean square.
Balsamic Strawberries
3 cups balsamic vinegar
1 cup honey
granulated sugar to taste
2 vanilla beans scraped
2 pods toasted star anise
2 1/2 - 3 cups hulled local strawberries
1. Measure the balsamic and honey into a pot and whisk to combine. Whisk in the the sugar 1/2 cup at a time until you reach the desired sweetness. Remember the strawberries have a good sweetness as well.
2. Scape the vanilla pods into the pot and bring the mix to a boil.
3. Add the berries and kill the heat. Cover and steep for 25-30 minutes until berries are tender but still slightly firm. They will carry over, so…
4. Create an ice bath with water, ice and two vessels. Stop the cooking process.
5. Carefully pour the steeped berries and liquid into the ice bath. Try not to agitate the berries as they cool, they become very fragile.
Scones
I left the scone recipe at work. Eat your fucking cheesecake. Here’s a good scone recipe for you. And here’s a picture of some ice creams.
I Make Dessert VI.
27 March 2008 | Ten 01, faithful readers, food, recipe | No Responses
When I’m not making the dinner desserts, or random birthday cakes, or setting up banquet items, more than likely you’ll see me slaving away with my favorite robot making mignardises. The little tray of sweets we put down for free with every check is arguably one of the best feebies in the city. The abundant array of truffles, chocolate candies, caramels, and pate fruit is so great it became the third course on our popular Power Lunch. I’m so busy with these that Chef and Arturo can both be found helping me out polishing or filling molds. Most of the recipes I use for these come from my new favorite cookbook Chocolates and Confections by Peter Grewling. This book is loaded with recipes and valuble techniques. Buy it. Read it. Know it. Another thing I can be seen doing lately is making crackers. That’s right faithful readers, crackers. One of the easiest recipes I posses is also one of the tastiest. Lavash crackers simply contain flour, garlic powder, water and olive oil. They are rolled really thin and brushed with a little more water, to hold on the salt, seeds, cheese or other desired flavoring. At the Vail Cascade, I made six full sheet pans of these everyday. They are crunchy and delicious, and really easy to make. Since I started making them at Ten-01, I have gotten a great response, with many customers asking for more. Seriously, you should try making them, here’s the recipe:
Lavash Crackers
1 1/4 lb. all purpose flour
3/4 oz. garlic powder
1 1/2 cups water
1/4 cup olive oil
1. Place all ingredients in the bowl of a stand mixer and work with the dough hook on low speed
2. Beat up the dough for about 8 minutes, until it looks smooth
3. Chill for 30 minutes before rolling out on a well floured surface
4. Roll the dough paper thin and transfer to a well greased cookie sheet
5. Slice the cracker lengthwise to create several smaller crackers
6. Brush with water and sprinkle with salt and desired other topping
7. Bake in a 325 degree oven until golden brown, about 10 minutes. Serve with cheese or butter
I Make Dessert V.
26 March 2008 | Ten 01, delicious, dessert, plated dessert, recipe | 6 Responses
Awww…it’s cute!! Well as Tony once said, we’re in the cute business. This is the Sorbet Trio, dreamed up by Jack Yoss, and realized by me. Chef wanted to do this dish for this past New Years Eve, and they we kept it on the menu as the light choice. At first, before I got Gelatoo-D2, we were buying all of our sorbets (and ice creams) from Great Northwest Ice Cream in Vancouver, WA. Now that we make our own, I use the simplest of techniques for sorbet. Mix 2 parts fruit puree to 1 part simple syrup. As a general rule this works for every puree I’ve tried. Pictured above is pear, strawberry, and marionberry. I adjust sweetness to taste by adding water, add a little lemon juice, and spin it. An easy test for proper ingredient porportions in the “egg test.” I don’t know why this works, but it does. I believe it is somehow measuring brix. Anyway, after you mix together all your ingredients, gently place a whole egg in its shell into the sorbet base. If the egg floats so that only a dime-size portion of the shell is above the liquid, he has achieved the right balance of ingredients. If it sinks lower, the mixture requires more sugar. If more of the shell is visible, the recipe needs more water. Like I said, I’m not sure of the science here, but I’m okay with that. So you’ve got your sorbet, how about those adorable little cones? Those are made from a simple tuile cookie recipe that I stole years ago from Charlie Trotter’s Desserts. The batter is spread into a flat cone shape, sprinkled with chopped hazelnuts, baked, then molded while still warm in a pastry tip. In an airtight container, they last forever. I rotate the flavors of “broth” that the sorbet’s sit in, it’s basically a sweetened fruit puree and a complimentary wine that is brought to a simmer and then chilled. This week it’s Raspberry-Rose. I use little stray pieces of pate fruit (gelee) to garnish the soup. Here’s some recipes:
Basic Sorbet Base
2 cups fruit puree
1 cup water
1 cup sugar
juice of half a lemon
1. Combine the sugar and water in a saucepot and bring to a boil. Chill completely.
2. Mix the 2 cups puree with 1 cup of the simple syrup. Add the lemon juice. Taste it. Is it too sweet? Add water.
3. Perform the egg test as described above…go ahead…it works.
Tuile Cookie Batter
6 tblsp (3 oz) butter
pulp from 1 vanilla bean
3 egg whites
1/2 cup plus 1 tblsp sugar
1/2 cup plus 1 tblsp a.p. flour
for chocolate use:
1/4 cup plus 1 tblsp a.p. flour
1/4 cup cocoa
1. Melt butter with vanilla pulp and cool to room temp
2. Whip egg whites and sugar to soft peaks
3. Sift in flour and mix to combine
4. Store or spread thin and bake @ 350 for 5-7 minutes
I Make Dessert IV.
23 March 2008 | Ten 01, delicious, dessert, faithful readers, plated dessert, recipe | 5 Responses
Now, as my faithful readers know, I love Bread Pudding. If I see it on a dessert menu, I order it. Something about soaking brioche or croissants in a rich custard and then baking it (and then frying it,) really appeals to me. In the case of Chocolate Chip Bread Pudding , pictured here, I use brioche. I serve it with caramelized bananas, dark rum sauce, and salted caramel ice cream. It’s starting to beat out the Chocolate Cake as our top selling dessert. The idea for bread pudding, is as old as the hills, and its no wonder. Set the Way Back Machine for the middle ages, at the advent of custard. Dude’s sitting there eating his baked custard, or more likely, swirling his day-old bread in his creme anglaise. Ever the frugal cook and lover of bread (in spite of its short window of delicious,) he swirls and dunks and lifts and chews. POP! The light bulb goes off, bathing everyone in the light of pudding history, bread pudding is born. Seriously, though, a better use for stale bread bread cannot be found. It’s actually better with stale bread, because it’s more absorbent. Old cookbooks have tons of random recipes, but I like to take a slightly different approach. Chef Tony showed me a way to make the custard that makes a lot of sense. Creaming. If you follow the creaming method, you get a nice rich custard where the butter is evenly dispersed in tiny little particles that melt into the bread in the oven. Overnight soaking is key, getting that bread good and permeated with eggy flavor and creamy goodness. Below is a huge recipe, adapted from Chef Tony Martin’s Bourbon Bread Pudding that to this day, is the best I’ve tasted. I added chocolate chips to his base, but you could add almost anything to this, and it would be damn good. This recipe is 1/3 of what I use, it makes one 2″ hotel pan. Want a smaller recipe? Try this one.
Bread Soaking Custard
1 lb 4 oz butter
1 lb sugar
15 eggs
1 qt heavy cream
1 qt half & half
vanilla extract to taste
1. Cream the butter and sugar light and fluffy with the paddle attachment in a stand mixer.
2. Add the eggs slowly, in three additions, waiting until the eggs absorb and scraping before each addition.
3. Switch to the whip and add the cream and half and half.
So now that you have your custard, you need to soak some bread in it. You need enough stale bread (brioche, croissants, or other bread-remove crusty crusts) to soak up almost all of the custard right when you mix it in. Then cover it and soak it over night. Next day mix in the desired amount of chocolate chips (or ripe bananas, caramel apples, scales of a sea serpent, eye of newt, or whatever tickles your fancy.) and bake it, covered with foil, in a 325 degree oven for about 45 minutes, until its set. If you like, pull the foil off 10 minutes before its done to brown the top. Try something else delicious: omit the sugar, and before baking, add sauteed mushrooms, or chunks of foie gras, or bacon, or something savory. It’s gonna be great.
I Make Dessert III.
20 March 2008 | Ten 01, creative presentation of the week, delicious, dessert, faithful readers, plated dessert, recipe | 4 Responses
So we’ve all had creme brulee, and we’ve all had peanut butter and jelly, but who out there among my faithful readers has had PB&J Creme Brulee? I love this fucking dessert. I think it deserves Creative Presentation of the Week. Why, you may ask? Well, it’s the culmination of alot of hard work, during which I subsisted on pb&j sandwiches, and also, I’ve known this peanut butter custard recipe was solid since The Velvet Elvis. This idea had been struggling to come out, and it took the influence of Chef Jack Yoss to see it’s realization. I made him the peanut butter brulee to try and he suggested putting marionberry jam into the ramekin first, ’cause he loved the custard…and he loves pb&j, too. We first tried it in our regular brulee molds, but after one day the jam would seep through the custard and create this gnarly looking scar when you tried to brulee it. We went to a deeper dish to avoid that problem, and also started reducing the jam first to remove any excess moisture. House made honey roasted peanuts are sprinkled on after carmelizing the custard. The shot of chocolate milk actually came about because of a guest suggestion: it was good, but needed chocolate. After some experimentaion, I went with good old Hersheys choclolate syrup to make it because let’s face it, that’s what chocolate milk is. A little heavy cream adds some creaminess, as if this dish needed it. This is my favorite item on the current menu…I don’t know why we don’t sell more of them…C’MON PEOPLE!!! The only thing missing is the bread, and you had some with your salad!! Anyway, here’s the recipes:
Peanut Butter & Jelly Brulee
1 1/3 cups whole milk
1 1/3 cups whipping cream
6 tablespoons plus 6 teaspoons sugar
5+ oz creamy peanut butter (do not use old-fashioned style or freshly ground)
8 large egg yolks
marionberry jam as needed (or any other jam that you prefer)
1. Combine milk, cream, sugar and scald
2. Temper in eggs
3. Temper in peanut butter and whisk until smooth
4. Taste the cream. I always end up adding a little more peanut butter, up to 1 cup
5. Strain the cream and chill overnight or at least three hours.
6. Place the jam in a saucepot and reduce it by one-third over low heat, stirring occasionally.
7. Cool the jam slighty and then spread it in an even layer into the bottom of desired (deep) ramekin. Pop them in the freezer to set the jam.
8. When the jam is super cold and won’t be distured by pouring in the custard, pour in the custard
9. Bake the custard in a 300 degree oven, in a water bath for 30 minutes or so, or until set at the edges, and a little loose at the center. Open the oven, turn it off, close the door, and finish them for another 45 minutes.
10. Chill the brulee’s for at least 3 hours before sprinkling some granulated sugar and a blowtorch to carmelize. Sprinkle with loose chopped honey roasted peanuts if desired.
Chocolate Milk
2 1/2 cups milk
1/2 cup heavy cream
10 oz Hershey’s Syrup
1. Place all ingredients in a blender and blend. Serve ice cold in a chilled glass.
