foie brioche macaron

foie and brioche macaron with raspberry, passion fruit and fig dip

French macarons are the stuff that fetishes are made of and empires are built on…just ask Prince Pierre of Paris. Once, you had to travel to the City of Light to worship at its altar. Now, the Cult of Macaron has spread to all corners of the globe.

It is said that the macaron was introduced to the french via Catherine de Medici, though any frenchman worth his almond flour would argue that point. What is known for certain is that the original macaron was a humble cookie, a combination of egg whites, sugar and ground almonds. No additional flavorings or filling.

In Sofia Coppola's 2006 rendition of Marie Antoinette, there is a scene with the young queen and Ambassador Mercy that features the modern, brightly colored macarons. Its interesting that this modern version–a flavored and filled cookie sandwich–was created by a grandson of Laduree, over 100 years after Marie Antoinette's death. Even more interesting is that Laduree provided the pastries for the film.

Initially, the modern version of the macaron consisted of the original almond cookies sandwiched together with chocolate ganache. For the next 80-90 years, the flavorings remained simple: vanilla, chocolate, coffee, raspberry. It wasn't until the late 1990's that Pierre Herme began to seduce parisiennes with his annual haute-couture collections of sexy flavor combinations: olive oil and vanilla, passion fruit, rhubarb, and strawberry, white truffle and hazelnut, cream cheese, orange, and passionfruit, and my personal favorite–litchi, rose, and raspberry.

Nearly all of the flavor in these macarons is found in the filling. The cookies are largely left alone with the exception of food coloring, cocoa powder or chocolate, and in some cases, flavor essences. It is neccessary to maintain the delicate balance of ingredients in order to produce the crisp/fragile shell, the chewy/soft interior, and the characteristic "feet". With this in mind, I had to ask myself if there is any room for play.

The role of egg whites and sugar is fundamental. I've made macarons with methocel–they're not the same. That left me examining the almond flour. I understand its function; it provides structure and texture, but it also makes the flavor of macarons invariable and can be detected no matter what accompanying flavors are used. This, I realized, was a starting point.

As luck, or providence, would have it, I had a loaf of brioche on hand. I saw no reason why finely ground and toasted bread crumbs could not stand in for almond flour.

Macarons are notoriously capricious to make and my early attempts were hit-or-miss. It was only when I realized though the ingredients are simple, the technique is critical, that I began to get consistent results. Precisely following the procedure: leaving the egg whites at room temperature for 24 hours, sifting all dry ingredients, whipping the egg whites just until they hold their peaks, gentle folding, careful piping, leaving them to dry for 30 minutes before baking, ensured the control that was neccessary to determine if failure was caused by product, and not technique.

I am happy to report that both were a success. They came out of the oven looking perfect. The texture is right and the flavor captures the nuances and complexity of toasted brioche. The only question that remained was what to fill them with. As if I even had to ask.

Making macarons with bread crumbs is like getting a new playset at the playground. The potential for fun seems endless:

pumpernickle, pastrami, mustard

rye, smoked salmon, cream cheese

foccaccia, tomato, mozzarella

saltines, peanut butter, jelly

graham crackers, marshmallow, chocolate

oreos!

tollhouse

doughnuts, coffee

piecrust, apple, cheddar

…OK, I'll stop now.

faux pas

Did Tom Colicchio really tell a group of chefs to "make sure you put your tasting spoons in the bain-marie? [Ewww].

Old habits die hard.

Oh, and….brunoise is not the hardest knife skill.

Tourné, anyone?

timely

It's here!

Just in time for tonight.

tahoon cress

I returned from ICC laden with gifts. The best one– a brainload of ideas and information– I continue to unwrap and savor a little each day.

There were also tangible gifts:

A big glossy book containing bios, interviews and recipes of all of the presenters.

A gift package from Heston Blumenthal. In true theatrical form, they were hidden under the seats. The velum envelope contained two packets that were to tie in with his presentation of The Perfect Christmas Dinner, inspired by the gifts of the Magi. The first was a Listerine strip flavored with frankincense and was immediately savored. The second was a newborn baby-scented communion wafer. Despite my fascination with babies, this just felt wrong to put in my mouth.

A flat of micro sprouts from Koppert Cress containing Affilla (peashoots), Mustard, purple and green Shiso, and the unfamiliar Tahoon.

The flavor of Tahoon took me aback. I was not expecting the deep, complexity of wood, humus, and nuts (it's said to taste like beech nuts), trailed by a sting of onion. There are defined elements of earth and fire with aromas that evoke freshly-tilled earth, baked by the sun, along with roasted tree bark. I don't know if this even sounds good, but it is. My taste buds say umami, but I could find no documentation on this.

What I did find is that Tahoon (Toona sinensis) is a tree, native to eastern and southestern Asia, where the young leaves and shoots are enjoyed as an aromatic vegetable. It is more commonly known as Chinese Toon or Chinese Mahoghany.

As I munch on Tahoon, I am visited by a flight of dishes: caramelized onion flan with foie, pomegranate, and Tahoon; roasted potato ice cream, bacon dust, hamachi,and Tahoon oil; Tahoon-infused beets with curried chicken terrine; a dessert of pear, chestnuts, and chocolate–haunted by Tahoon.

My quickly dwindling supply led me to find a source for seeds. I can now grow a steady supply of sprouts through the winter. Maybe I'll even let some grow into plants that I can transplant into the garden come spring. Maybe, in a few years, I'll have a Tahoon tree of my own. But even as I sit here, typing and munching, thinking about steak, mushrooms, corn and Tahoon, I doubt that they'll ever make it past sprouts.

puff pastry

Flour. Butter. Water. Salt. No leavening. Or is there?

When these four ingredients are combined into a homogeneous dough, then rolled out and baked, you end up with a cracker or flatbread. Not much rise there.

Blend the same ingredients together but stop while the butter is still discernible– about the size of peas. Now roll out and bake. You have a pate brisee or a short, flaky pie crust with unevenly puffed layers that may have doubled in height.

Now, take the same four ingredients, blend the flour, water and salt to make a dough. Evenly layer the butter throughout the dough through a series of rolling out and folding. Stop when you have made 6 "turns", resulting in 1459 alternating layers of fat and starch. After a final rolling and baking, you are left with pate feuilletee or puff pastry. This time, the finished pastry leaving the oven has risen up to 6 times in volume from the raw dough that went in.

Three products…sharing identical ingredients in similar proportions…with significantly different results. Do you know why?

Lacking chemical leavening, the release of gases is not responsible for the differences between the three pastry products. And with the absence of yeast, it cannot be attributed to fermentation.

What caused the puff pastry to rise to glorious heights and the pie crust to puff to a lesser degree is the steam created by the melted butter. As the butter melts and boils, the gluten matrix in the dough hardens, trapping the pockets of steam. The degree of rise in the three products varies with the distribution of fat and starch.

Understanding this was an epiphany. So was grasping the unfolding of egg proteins. And the destruction of sugar to make caramel. And so on.

These were my AH-HAA moments. They allowed me to analyse mistakes and to not only correct them, but to control the outcome. They liberated me from bondage to recipes, and with this freedom came a broader one: the freedom to create.

Modern cooking places an emphasis on science, when, in fact, chemistry has been at play throughout the history of food and cooking. Does a strong knowledge of food science make us good cooks? If that were true then scientists, by right, would all be chefs.

What about technique? Consider the baker who gets up at 3 AM every morning to bake bread. After some time, he can turn out hundreds of perfect loaves even while half-asleep. He may even have a grasp on the chemistry of his craft through extended observation of cause and effect. His talent and dedication may move him onto the saute line, where through repetition he learns to turn out a perfectly cooked piece of fish every time.

But would he know what to do with a salsify? Would he even know what to serve it with?

At ICC, Jordi Butron of Espai Sucre gave a presentation about the process of creating desserts. A lot of what he said resonated with me. In it, he stated (from my notes) "Pastry is techniques…but technique has to service flavor. Technique is easy–it only requires repetition, but a library of flavors takes many years to acquire."

As a baker, I have made puff pastry countless times. Through muscle memory, I could even make it while half-asleep. Because of my understanding of steam pockets and gluten matrixes, I was able to effectively teach it to my students, passing on the AH-HAA moments. My familiarity with this product allows me to play and ask questions:

Why butter? (because it is fat and for it's flavor)

What else is flavored fat? (oils..but they won't work, they're liquid and here, the fat needs to start as a solid)

What else is solid, flavored fat? (pork fat, bacon fat, foie, cheese…)

Cheese? Which cheese? (needs to be spreadable and have a high fat content…a triple cream)

Saint Andre? Boursault? Brillat-Savarin? (no…too subtle for the flavor to come through)

l'Explorateur? (a triple cream, assertive flavor…yes, it will work)

That is how I have come to make l'Explorateur puff pastry; a product that pleases me.

Will it please everyone? Is it ground-breaking? Life-altering? No. No. And no.

It is simply a token of where I'm at as a cook/baker at this moment in time and a synthesization of what I know about technique, food science and my own palate.

Do these things make me a better cook? I'd like to think so. What I do know for certain is that by relying on their guidance, I am free to contemplate and to think about food; what it is…what it can be.

And that, I believe, is the starting point for innovation.

mozzarella balloon

Back in May, I received an email asking me what I thought about the newly launched Mosaic site from Alinea. Just as I began to fret about not receiving the required password, I found it in a junk folder. I spent the next few hours (and many since) pouring over the techniques and ideas contained in the sampling of the anticipated book.

One of these, the mozzarella balloon, was what prompted me to give fresh mozzarella another try. It was very rewarding to finally succeed at making a high quality cheese that had eluded and frustrated me, but it was really the viable curd that I was after.

A few days ago, while in NYC for the International Chefs Congress, I took a break to visit Kitchen Arts and Letters. I can never resist perusing through their trove of esoteric cookbooks that is full of surprising gems. The biggest surprise awaiting me on this visit was a trail copy of Alinea. I'm here to tell you that it's for real, and it is an opus of a book, more massive and beautiful than us mere mortal cooks had any right to expect. Those of us who pre-ordered it directly from Mosaic will have it in our hot hands as early as next week. Get ready folks–this book is going to change everything.

mozzarella balloon

Break off a 4-5 oz. piece of mozzarella curd that has been acidified and ready to stretch. Place it in a bowl and cover it with water that has been heated to 71C (160F). Allow it to melt for a few minutes, then pull and stretch it to form a disc of uniform thickness that is roughly 6" in diameter.

Form hand into a C-shape and drape the disc loosely over.

Half-fill a whipped cream charger with a mixture of salted tomato water and extra-virgin olive oil that has been set with 1.5% gelatin. Charge with NO₂ cartridge. Chill. Shake charger firmly and place tip of nozzle over the center of mozzarella disc. Gather the disc around the nozzle, wrapping thumb and index finger around to hold firmly in place. With nozzle facing down, slowly discharge foam into mozzarella. While maintaining a firm grip, slowly slide balloon off of the nozzle, pressing and pinching the ends together to seal. Cut off any excess.

Serve immediately.

culinary discussions

If you will be in or about New York City next month, there are two events hosted by the New York Public Library that may interest you:

On October 10, Ferran Adria will be discussing his book A Day at elBulli, scheduled to be released at the beginning of October. 15$ will buy you an hour and a half with The Man.

On October 29, Grant Achatz and Nathan Myrvold will hold a discussion moderated by Mark McClusky titled The Cutting Edge: Tales from the Culinary Frontier.

See you there?

christmas in july

This is not what you think.
I am not one of those insanely organized people that begin their Christmas shopping in July.
Nor is it a shameless plea for gifts.

Last December, when my family asked me what I wanted for Christmas, I requested Peace on Earth. Even as I said it, I knew it was obnoxious to ask for something so monolithically impossible, but it was the truth. Sort of.

The whole truth was that I just wanted some peace in my life. The unrelenting wave of menus, prep lists, and shopping trips left me feeling like I was making every one else’s holidays perfect, while mine went spinning out of control. I longed to bake rustic loaves of bread in my own kitchen instead of fussy hors d’Oeuvres in the kitchens of others and to make thoughtful, personalized gifts instead of participating in the colossal cluster-f*** of consumerism. I was in full-out rebellion and my request was my protestation.

But my family was not responsible and when they justly called me out, I revised my request to something more attainable: books.

The gift certificates sat in a drawer, nearly forgotten. They were waiting for inspiration to strike. The spark started with the recent launch of Mosaic, the interactive website that I gained access to after pre-ordering the Alinea book last fall. The announcements of soon-to-be-released cookbooks by innovative chefs prompted me to dust off the certificates and spend a peaceful afternoon shopping online.

I didn’t get Peace on Earth. Instead, I received the gift of childlike anticipation.

Thank you M, D, & R.

On order:

Under Pressure– Thomas Keller

Thomas Keller. Sous-vide. Enough said.

The Big Fat Duck Cookbook– Heston Blumenthal

This is the priciest of the lot, but a small price to
pay to play in the mind of the mad genius.

A Day at elBulli – Ferran Adria

Martin sums it up best with his comment:
        “The fact that a 600 page book covers a single day
        at el Bulli says a lot about how much thought they
        put into their cooking.”

Dessert Fouplay– Johnny Iuzzini

       From the rockstar of pastry, I’ve been hoping for
         this book since tasting his desserts at Jean
         Georges.

On the Line– Eric Ripert

The master of seafood gives us a behind the scenes
look into his kitchen at Le Bernardin.

Coming up:

Noma Cookbook– Rene Redzepi

       While this book is no longer available in English, the
       very helpful staff at Kitchen Arts & Letters informs
       me that there is a new book on the horizon. No
       release date yet.

       Nathan Myhrvold, former CTO of Microsoft and
       French-trained chef is said to be working on a
       high-tech cookbook due out in 2009. Dr.
       Myhrvold has also worked with Professor
       Stephen Hawking on research in cosmology,
       quantum
field theory in curved space time and
       quantum theories of gravitation. Can’t wait to
       see what he does with food.

Wishlist:

Shout out to Wylie, Sam, Alex and Jordan: Please, oh please, get busy boys!

instant chocolate cake

At Madrid Fusion 2008, Ferran Adria demonstrated a black sesame cake
baked in a plastic cup in the microwave. It took 40 seconds.

As a card carrying member of the National Society of Cake Whores, the technique tickled my C-spot. Recreating it in chocolate is…well…let’s just say it’s good. Toe-curling, basking-in-the-afterglow good.

OK, now that I’ve regained my composure, let me tell you why this cake has me purring. If you’ve ever made a sponge cake, souffle, or any hot egg foam, you have witnessed first-hand the unfolding and bonding of egg protein molecules. If your attempts have been successful–Congratulations! (maybe you would like to join the NSCW?). If you have failed, it may be because you didn’t follow one of the many rules: overbeating, under beating, introducing fat, sugar, salt, acid at the inappropriate time, folding, not stirring, cooking too slow or too fast.

Reason #1 why I love this cake: Forget all the rules. This is egg foam anarchy.

Reason #2: Taste & Texture. Don’t let the pale color fool you…it’s because of the aeration. While it’s true that eggs mask flavor, the taste of chocolate does come through and lingers. And just look at the structure. Have you ever seen air pockets that large in a cake? I haven’t, and I’ve been making them since I’ve possessed the motor skills required to put a spoon in a bowl and stir. The only thing that can expand a batter like that is yeast. Or Nitrous Oxide and a microwave.

Reason #3: Ease & Speed. This cake goes from pantry to tummy in less than 10 minutes. The lengthiest part is melting the chocolate. If you use the microwave for that step, it’s even faster. How can instant gratification be bad when it’s this good?

Instant Chocolate Cake
makes 12-15 individual cakes

Put 8 whole large eggs (400 g.) plus 1 yolk (17 g.) into a bowl with 160 g. sugar. and 3 g. salt. Whip with a whisk or electric mixer for 1 minute.

Add 42 g. flour, followed by 210 g. melted, semisweet chocolate. Mix just until blended.

Pour mixture through a fine mesh sieve.

Pour into a whipped cream charger. Fill only halfway. You will have enough batter left to make another batch. Charge with 2- N2O cartridges. Shake firmly 2-3 times. Dispense foam into a 9-oz. plastic cup, stopping when it is 1/3 filled.

Place cup in microwave. Set to bake at 900watts (for standard 1000w microwaves, set at 90% power or power9). Set timer to cook for 40 seconds. Watch it rise before your eyes.

Unmold and dig in.

Yum

workshop

Yesterday, I attended a high-tech dessert workshop at the French Culinary Institute, led by Dave Arnold and Nils Noren. Dave Arnold is a self-proclaimed gadget geek who works directly with Wylie Dufresne and other avant guarde chefs in NYC as their culinary tech support. He is neither a chef nor a scientist, yet his knowledge of food history and chemistry is vast and formidable. Nils Noren is a Swedish-trained chef, former Executive Chef of Aquavit, and current VP of Culinary Arts of the FCI. Together, they form a dream team with chef Noren’s classic background, modern approach, and assured manner playing off of Arnold’s frenetic free-flow of technical information.

The workshop consisted of demonstrations of three desserts and one savory dish, each followed by a tasting. The equipment used included a commercial vacuum sealer,
a pressure cooker, a pacojet, and a rotary evaporator. The vacuum was put into service to quickly remove bubbles from blended hyrocolloid solutions, a process which usually requires many hours of settling time, to fully pickle red onions in a matter of minutes, and to infuse heavy cream with the smoky flavor of Lapsang Souchong tea without the use of heat. The legendary Durian was cooked in the pressure cooker, then processed into a silky ice cream in the pacojet. This ingredient excited me above all others as it was my first experience with "the king of fruits". I found it strangely wonderful, though not everyone present shared this opinion. The rotovap, a piece of laboratory equipment that Arnold salvaged and then jerry-rigged into a distiller that will extract pure, crystal-clear, liquid essence from anything he desires. It differs from a traditional still in that it uses carefully controlled low temperatures to preserve the flavor and aromas of the resulting elixir. The products in yesterday’s workshop were clear brandies, or eau de vies, of two wines: Madeira and Beaumes de Venise. Their flavor and alcohol content (up to 130 proof) were intoxicating. Arnold was quick to point out that the process of privately distilling alcohol is illegal.

Other revelations were puffed pasta, a simple technique that is worthy of it’s own future post, and the introduction of red lime paste (made from red slake lime–the mineral, not the fruit), a product that Arnold recently discovered serendipitously. It is alkaline, like baking soda, and was used to soak under-ripe bananas in order to allow them to caramelize and retain their shape. To me, the highlight was the 15 minutes after the workshop where Dave Arnold allowed me to pick his brain with questions about products, applications, and techniques that interested me. I could not write fast enough to keep up with his onslaught of information. He drew me into his maelstrom and gave me a new horizon of possibilities, leaving me awed by how much there is still to learn and discover.

Time to go destroy my kitchen.