Thanksgiving Treats

It was a joy to be in sunny Los Angeles over Thanksgiving! I put my newfound pastry skills to good use and was also able to dabble a bit with culinary creativity.

Butternut Squash Soup with Sage infused Olive Oil and Crispy Sage Leaf


I invented this recipe. I roasted butternut squash with olive oil, added non-dairy creamer and chicken stock, pureed all of these ingredients, and ran them through a sieve to make it smooth. Meanwhile, I infused olive oil with fresh sage and fried some pretty sage leaves. YUM!

Now onto dessert...Of course I had to have traditional pumpkin pie (used a combination of recipes, but added some allspice, dried cloves, nutmeg, cinnamon, brown sugar, regular sugar, 2 eggs and non dairy cream (Coffee Rich), and of course canned pumpkin puree. I used a short dough, which was great.



I also made a Blueberry Pie, in honor of my brother-in-law, Burton. Burton likes only cherry and blueberry pies. Ask and you shall receive. Shortly I will upload the video from Thanksgiving Day about creating a lattice crust.



Lastly, I made a Lemon Meringue Pie for my dad, who requested it. It is made with Lemon Curd and the Italian Meringue method. It was really good, definitely the sleeper hit!

Puff Pastry

Happy Belated Thanksgiving!

The week prior to the holiday was filled with the initially daunting task of creating our own puff pastry. I never thought much about puff pastry except when gorging on mini hot dogs (delicious) or being served salmon en croute at a Bar Mitzvah. However, when we got our list of "deliverables" as I call them on Monday morning, I was definitely intimidated. We had to make a jalousie (strudel), sacrestains (straws), chausson (turnovers), napoleon dessert, bouchees (little nests of puff pastry, palmier cookies, and a pithivier (a frangiapane filled cake). What makes puff pastry such an art form is the attention to detail that is required.

One has to:

• Make a buerrage (a butter mass) to create the flaky layers,
  
• Make a detremps (the dough mass that surrounds the beurrage),
  
• Fold the dough,
  
• Perform another turn (folding the dough again),
  
• Chill the dough for an hour in the freezer
• Do two more turns of the dough
• Roll out the dough
• Chill the dough again
• Fill the dough
• Chill the dough
• Bake the dough

A lot of steps for this one! It's kind of exhausting, but once you get the hang of it, it's not too bad. Here are some of my Puff Pastry products.

Jalousie with Frangipane and Apricot filling


Spinach Chausson and Spinach, Nutmeg filled Bouchees


Lunch of Puff Pastry


Napoleon with Chocolate Pastry Cream


Pithivier

Souffles: The Fancy Omelettes

I have hardly any photos of my week with souffles, mainly because I was in such a rush to complete my class assignments that I didn't have time to take photos. The other reason being that souffles hardly look impressive or beautiful after the first few minutes out of the oven. They actually go from luxurious, proud puffs to sad, wilted eggs in a ramekin :(



Flourless Strawberry Souffles


Out of the oven for like 2 minutes and already sinking...

Truth be told, I hate souffles. My goal for the week was to change my mind about them, and I had 3 chances to change my tune. To me, souffles are another variation of the omelet, which I don't really like anyway. Why waste the calories on a "breakfast" food at dessert? I'd much rather have creme brule or ice cream or a different variation of eggs, cream, butter, and sugar (sometimes throwing flour in the mix, maybe some berries or chocolate, or even better some liquor). But I digress...So, my personal challenge to myself was to actually like souffle, and I accomplished it, with the help of a little pastry cream.

As many readers of this blog know, I've been creaminally challenged. That is, I've had serious issues messing up my pastry cream. Until last Wednesday, when I decided that the only way to conquer my fear was to tackle it head on in the face of performance anxiety. Unbeknownst to me prior to Souffle Week, is that there is actually a type of souffle made with pastry cream. It is the second most stable of the three souffle variations (flourless (least stable), pastry cream (more stable), and roux based (most stable)). Learning this, initially I decided to scrap the pastry cream souffle because we only had to make 2 of 3. However, my inner ambitious nerd overpowered me, and I decided to try to make all 3.

Sorry this is a long post...

Basically, I am kind of inept on Monday nights in class. I am like a deer in headlights, not on my game at all, so when Jennifer gives us the list of the million things we need to accomplish in class by week's end, it's Monday at 9:15 and I've done like 2 things and think I am totally screwed for the week. BUT THEN...something miraculous happens, and by Wednesday I am ready to crank desserts out in high gear. Take souffle week for example. I was only able to make a flourless strawberry souffle and strawberry coulis IN 2 HOURS-that is so lame (and the roux for the roux based chocolate souffle)! But on Wednesday, I made pastry cream, a lemon pastry cream based souffle, finished the chocolate roux based souffle, made a chocolate roulade (thanks for the stabilized whipped cream, Kate) and a sabayon. Side note, sabayon, made with eggs, sugar, and wine) is the yummiest way to drink. Seriously. It is so good. The French make sabayon with muscat wine and the Italians make it with marsala and call it zabaglione. Either way, it's a frothy alcoholic beverage (can be made with cider for the kids) and it's great!

I embraced the souffle challenge and made the YUMMIEST lemon souffle with pastry cream, accomplishing 2 things. 1) I finally made pastry cream successfully (hadn't done it right since week 1) and 2) I learned to like souffle...but only if there's cream in it.

Mini Tarts are SUPER CUTE!

For a party, I created 48 mini tarts - Chocolate Caramel and Peanut Butter Banana.




They were delicious!

Step 1: Make a Pate Sucre or Short Dough

Step 2: Blind bake mini tart shells

Step 3: Melt Sugar

Step 4: Create Caramel sauce

Step 5: Add melted chocolate

Step 6: Pipe into shells

The Things You Can Make With Egg Whites

I am ready to go to bed now, but at the North Beach Citizens award dinner, Mary asked when I was going to update my blog, so here it is... speaking of North Beach Citizens is an amazing organization that assists the homeless obtain permanent housing. Learn more about North Beach Citizens here.

Egg whites are amazing things. Mix them up with twice their weight in sugar, and you have yourself a meringue. There are three types of meringue; French (aka Cold or Common meringue), Swiss, and Italian. French meringue is called a cold meringue because it is prepared cold and then baked, as in meringue cookies. The Swiss meringue method is prepared by whisking the whites and sugar over a bain marie (water bath) until the temperature of the meringue is 140 degrees. Swiss meringues are used to make buttercream (frosting), as are Italian meringues. The Italian preparation requires the addition of sugar syrup to already whipped whites. It is the most stable of the meringue preparations.

In class, we learned how to make daquoise and japonais - flat discs made from a nut meringue, vacherins (meringue nests filled with fool or creme chantilly), meringue cookies, buttercream and French macarons. French macarons are beautiful cookies. They're the lovely sandwich cookies that Miette or any of the boulengeries sell for $1.50. At home, I attempted to make pistachio macarons, but I did not cook them long enough and they fell flat. In class, however, I made almond macarons with grand marnier buttercream. They were amazing. My next attempt with these will be chocolate macarons with the grand marnier buttercream. YUM. Macarons are done when the have a slight crust at the bottom and are shiny and smooth on top.

(taken with my iPhone!!)

Vacherins with Raspberry Fool (fruit puree with whipped cream)
3 8" Dacquoise discs with Meringue decorations and Grand Marnier Buttercream


Meringue Cookies, 12 all same size

For me, Meringue Week was the culmination of the last several weeks of class. Our bonus item, a lemon meringue tart, is comprised of 1) short dough - learned in week 3, 2) lemon curd - a custard, learned in week 4 and 3) meringue - learned this week. Now we're getting somewhere! I love that each skill and each recipes utilizes technique from previous weeks! We're building our skills and recipes. It's also nice to be able to use the egg whites that I saved from all the custard practice!