Tag Archives: chocolate

“Hit It Like a Mal Boyfriend” and Other Lessons from Chef François Payard

March 2, 2014academics, foodchocolate, culinary school, Francois Payard, International Culinary Center, pastryCrystal Cun

François Payard is a top pastry chef, a long-standing innovator in New York’s dessert scene and winner of a James Beard award in 1995. Which is why it’s incredibly jarring when he’s looking at you from 10 feet away, asking what’s in egg whites. “Yes you, I’m looking at YOU in the second row,” he says. “Uh,” you stammer, “it can’t be lecithin because that’s in yolks…so albumin?”

Payard was giving a pastry demo for students at the International Culinary Center, and we were all there to learn some of his techniques (and secretly hoping for dessert samples). Today’s tasks: chocolate phyllo dough, caramel, chocolate rice crispies, chocolate chantilly cream. With a comfortable patter, he explained the steps he was taking while quizzing us to make sure we were paying attention. “I don’t make the phyllo dough, I buy it, like everybody else. Now, brush clarified butter and cocoa on phyllo, and between each layer, sprinkle some sugar to allow caramelization. It comes out almost like puff pastry, or if you didn’t know better, you’d think it was bad puff pastry because you have the layers but it doesn’t rise.” He picked up a heavy pan. “We want to make sure it stays flat, so then you”—whack!—”hit it like a mal boyfriend, with the back of a pan or a rolling pin.” He added more phyllo, butter and cocoa in repeating layers. “What’s the best way to cook phyllo dough?” he asked. “Use a sheet pan, upside down, with at least three trays on top to make sure it stays flat. See, all these little things will make you a chef, not a student. Always ask why you’re doing something. I’m not here to show you what I can do, I’m here to show you what you can do.”

Payard continued. “We want to make an incredible caramel. What will help give flavor to my caramel? You, in the middle.” The girl hesitated. “Salt?” she said. “Exactly,” said Payard. He demonstrated how to warm and whip cream to prevent it from exploding when being added to the sugar, and drizzled the caramel on white parchment paper to see if it was the right color. “Does anyone know what’s chocolate chantilly?” he asked. “It’s 2 cups heavy cream and 1 cup chocolate. Because it’s so simple, it’s easy to fuck it up. Your chocolate must be hot, and your cream must be cold. It’s all about technique.” Payard paused to look at us. “So, don’t fuck it up.”

In a matter of minutes, all of these simple components were ready to come together. Payard used a ring mold to cut out a short cylinder of rice crispies, topped it with a plump dollop of chocolate chantilly and a sharp wedge of phyllo. With a sprinkle of powdered sugar and several smears of caramel on the plate, the composed dessert was as elegant as an Oscar gown. “It’s not about complication,” Payard explained, “it’s about the right ingredients.” He waved at his cookbooks, sitting on the edge of the workstation. “In America, no one likes this book because it’s too complicated. But you should look at the components, maybe there is a chocolate sauce that you can use, or something else that you can take away. Pastry is always time consuming. In a restaurant, you already have the chocolate sauce made, you always have rice crispies on hand. If you start from scratch, it will take you four hours.”
Continue reading “Hit It Like a Mal Boyfriend” and Other Lessons from Chef François Payard →

Bruges: In Flanders Fields, the Chocolates Grow

October 18, 2010food, travelarchitecture, belgium, bruges, carillon, chocolate, clocktowers, flanders, UNESCOCrystal Cun

Clockwise: ducks and swans swim through the canals of Bruges; a hot air balloon rises above the city; the Grote Markt belfry dominates the skyline; old advertisement for Trappist-made beef chocolate using raw meat, designed to fight fatigue

Bruges is a quaint little town located in West Flanders, in a Flemish-speaking section of Belgium. The Gothic architecture of the old city center is recognized as a UNESCO Heritage site, and the town is often nicknamed the “Venice of the North,” due to the network of canals traversing the city. Like the center of Brussels, Bruges features a stunning central public square named Grote Markt, which includes the Belfort tower housing a 47-bell carillon. You can climb the 366 steps to reach the top of the 83 m tower for an aerial view of the city. It seems that the carilloneur’s repertoire is as diverse as that of Cornell chimesmasters; all afternoon, the air was filled with the tinkling of baroque and Billy Joel.
Continue reading Bruges: In Flanders Fields, the Chocolates Grow →

Mussels in Brussels and Other Carbtastic Adventures

October 16, 2010food, travelarchitecture, beer, belgium, brussels, chocolate, French cuisine, fries, mussels, ryanair, seafood, speculoos, UNESCOCrystal Cun

You can get a classic moules-frites dinner with mussels, fries and a beer for about €13 in Brussels; Grand Place/Grote Markt is the central square of Brussels and recognized by UNESCO

Several weeks ago, Professor Peter Scholliers of Vrije Universiteit in Brussels stopped by to give our class some lectures on Belgian and European food history of the 19th and 20th centuries. Soon afterwards, one of my roommates noticed that Ryanair flights from Torino to Brussels were quite inexpensive, and there was a four-day weekend coming up, so we made a spontaneous decision to treat ourselves to a weekend in Belgium. After all, isn’t the point of living in Europe that you can fly off at a moment’s notice to another country? I’d like to think we were inspired by class, so this was really a didactic experience anyway.

Some logistical information: Ryanair flights from Torino land in Charleroi, a small airport about 60 km south of Brussels that serves a number of budget airlines. To get from Charleroi airport to Brussels proper, you can either take the Autocars l’Elan shuttle bus to Gare du Midi (€13/22 rt, tickets sold on board), or you can hop on a bus (€2,70) to the Charleroi train station and then take a train from there to Brussels (€8,60). The shuttle is slightly more expensive and takes less time, while the bus + train combo allows you to go to any of Brussels’ three main train stations (Midi, Centraal, Nord). This was also my first time flying Ryanair, and that is an experience in itself. Luckily, I was too tired to notice much of my surroundings, but the flight was essentially a 90-minute long informercial, as the airline attendants hawked food, credit cards, lottery tickets, something or another to save the children…At the end of the flight, they played a trumpet reveille to announce that the plane had landed on time. Thank god, because I was ready to jump out the window.
Continue reading Mussels in Brussels and Other Carbtastic Adventures →

Gastronomy School is Serious Business

May 29, 2010academicsbrus, cheese, chemistry, chocolate, class, Domori, italian cuisine, miracle berries, piedmontCrystal Cun

The view out the window from Aula 2, where we spend 6 hours a day in class

Classes at UNISG are held from 9 am to 4 pm, with an hour long lunch break at noon. Without too much self-incrimination, I will simply say that it has been a long time since I have had to focus so intensely, without the distraction of of the internets, on one subject for that length of time. This will require some adjustment.

There is no semester or quarter system in place, but rather, professors give lectures for a few days at a time whenever they are available (some are visiting from other universities) or periodically throughout the year. For the first couple days, we were lectured on traditional specialties from the various regions of Italy. The former yielded immediate payoffs as I went to the grocery store and began to analyse and recognise the breads and cheeses available here in the Piedmont region. Since we are in northwestern Italy in a cold, mountainous climate, the cuisine is characterized by robust dishes, the use of butter instead of olive oil (French influence), lots of antipasti, cheese and meat, and few pasta dishes. On Friday morning, one of my classmates brought in a couple local cheeses that we had discussed the day before, including a Bruss. This is a traditional Piedmontese cheese made by reusing the leftovers of different cheese that did not age well due to excess humidity or fermentation. You mix the cheeses into grappa (or wine or vinegar), and let it ferment, then beat it into a spread. Suffice it to say, I have had many very strong cheeses in my life, but this was the most intense, pungent cheese I have ever had, tart with the tang of fermentation. The hair on the back of my neck was raised, and you could see the noses wrinkle amongst my classmates. If I hadn’t known better, I wouldn’t have recognized the brus as cheese. American cheddar this was not. Unsurprisingly, Valeria (the native Italian) thought the brus was great.

We also had a lecture on the molecular analysis of taste, which is a throwback to high school chemistry class. Though people tend to simplify the perception of taste with a few adjectives (salty, sweet, earthy), there are chemical underpinnings for the way we taste foods differently, why sugar tastes differently than saccharine or aspartame. And there is still plenty of work to be done. For instance, we still haven’t pinned down the way miraculin (the protein in flavor-tripping miracle berries) works at a molecular level.
Continue reading Gastronomy School is Serious Business →