When I moved to Paris, I moved a whole ton of stuff with me. Plus one yellowed scrap of paper. It was a recipe that I tore out of some newspaper eons ago, for Goat Cheese Custard.
I had high hopes for the recipe, enough to schlep it with me across the Atlantic and look at it wistfully every once in a while, guarding it for almost a decade, until I finally got around to making it this week.
Continue Reading Goat Cheese Custard Recipe with Strawberries in Red Wine Syrup…
I recently got hooked on Le Grand Perdant 2. Unlike French cinema, which has a way of importing the best of America, French television has a way of importing the worst of America. Which often means reality shows. I have little patience for watching women named Bambi and Jennie compete for husbands named Tristan and Chad, but at least this one has a positive spin.
Even people voted off have achieved a personal goal of fitness and weight loss. So The Biggest Loser 2 isn’t necessarily The Biggest Winner. Call me sappy, but it’s nice to see a program where competitors support each other to achieve their goals.
I guess I’ve been away from the states for too long…I know, I know…pas américain!
For some reason, people think I eat out all the time. While I like eating in restaurants, I don’t like being served something that I don’t like. (Funny, huh?) So I mostly make food for myself, since when I do, I get to pick and choose exactly what I’m going to make, what I’m going to put into it, and how to cook it.
I’ve become the proverbial free man in Paris.
Working as a pâtissier for so many years, thought, it’s assumed that I want complicated, fancy desserts bulging with buttercream and towering with spun sugar and whimsical bits of foam, spheres, and powders strewn all over the place. While I appreciate the work and skill that goes into those kinds of things (Sam Mason has really impressed me with desserts that were creative and delicious), I really like simple food, especially after a rich or spicy meal.
I don’t think dessert should be the proverbial “nail in the coffin” after dinner and I’m always curious when people say, “That restaurant wasn’t very good. When we left, we were still hungry!”
I’ve been writing a bit about Korean food, but Japanese cuisine is a pretty good example of how I like to eat too.
In terms of desserts, it doesn’t get much easier than this.
Affogato means ‘drowned’ in Italian, and any frozen dessert can meet this fate by tippling a little liquor or coffee over it. Classically, espresso is poured over Vanilla Ice Cream, but you’d have to be pretty hard-core to pour espresso over Espresso Granita. If I did that, I’d be ricocheting off the walls around here.
And because I live on the roof, I’m one caffeine-fueled tumble away from meeting my maker. Not my coffee-maker, mind you.
And we wouldn’t want that to happen, now. Would we?
I still have so much to accomplish…like tackling those chocolate marshmallows…
Click here to find my delicious, classic Vanilla Ice Cream Recipe adapted from The Perfect Scoop.
Now that everyone out there’s been churning up ice cream, I’ve been getting a certain amount of questions about homemade ice cream, which I’m going to answer here over the next several weeks.
I’m going to start with the number one question folks have been asking: Why does homemade ice cream gets harder than commercial ice cream in their freezer? And what can be done to prevent it?
While I do address this in The Perfect Scoop (pages 5 and 16), I thought I’d list some strategies here as well. I don’t necessarily follow these all the time, but thought I’d put them out for readers to ponder and use as they see fit.
Alcohol
Alcohol doesn’t freeze, which you know if you’re anything like me and keep a bottle of Zubróvka vodka chilled and ready in your freezer. You can add up to 3 tablespoons of 40 proof liquor to 1 quart (1 liter) of your frozen dessert mixture prior to churning. I use vodka if I don’t want the taste of the liquor to intrude on the flavor, but will switch to another liquor such as Grand Marnier or Armagnac to enhance the original flavor if it’s compatible.
If my mixture is fruit-based, I prefer to add kirsch, a liquor which enhances the taste of stone fruits, like peaches, plums, nectarines, as well as berries. Generally-speaking, I’ll add enough so the taste isn’t very present, often less than a tablespoon.
For sorbets and sherbets, a glug of Champagne, white wine or rosé is nice with fruit flavors. 1/2 cup (125 ml) can be added per quart (liter) of mixture prior to churning. Or if the recipe calls for cooking the fruit with water, substitute some dry or sweet white wine for a portion of the water; the amount will depend on how much of the wine you want to taste. (Most of the alcohol will cook out but enough will remain to keep your sorbet softer.)
Sugar
Like alcohol, sugar doesn’t freeze which is why you shouldn’t futz around with recipes and just reduce the sugar willy-nilly. Almost all frozen dessert recipes use white granulated sugar, however you can replace some or all of the sugar with another liquid sweetener, namely honey or light corn syrup.
There’s something about a warm fruit crisp with a scoop of Vanilla Ice Cream melting alongside that most people are unable to resist. And who doesn’t love pulling that heavy baking dish, fragrant with the aroma of sweet seasonal fruit, out of the oven, with the rich fruit juices bubbling, with the heavenly smell of the buttery, nutty topping?
Really, what’s not to like?
Well…the dart-in-the-butt is that if you let it sit for any length of time, what you’re left with is a baking dish of fruit topped with solidified mush. And that, my friends, is what’s not to like.
So I came up with a plan—To put the crisp back in crisp topping.
Ever since I came up with this recipe, it’s become the only one I use and is a summertime staple around chez David. Even though there’s perhaps nothing easier to prepare in a moment’s notice, I like to keep a batch in the freezer for an impromptu fresh-fruit crisp, so you can easily double the recipe and freeze Part deux for the next time.
With all due respects, the first time I met Sherry Yard, I was squirming in my seat. I was sitting in the originally Spago, in West Hollywood, overlooking the city of Los Angeles. The room was filled with celebrities, but I remember getting special treatment.
I arrived in my best; a well-tailored Italian wool suit that I hoped made me fit in a little better with all the glamorous types seated all around me. It was a great meal, and we were having a wonderful time. But the longer I sat in the stylish chairs, the most uncomfortable I was becoming. It wasn’t that I felt out of place. It was that my rear-end was starting to itch uncontrollably.
I knew that I shouldn’t stand up and engage in an all-out scratch-fest (although nothing would have felt better), but I didn’t know what to do. The longer I sat, the more intense it got. The wool in combination with the padded chairs was driving me nuts!
But soon enough, it was time for dessert, the cavalcade started. Sherry starting bringing out all sorts of wonderful things; tastes of hand-dipped dark chocolates, puckery lemon tartlets, and twists of crackly caramel that were so stunning, all these hot-shot celebrities starting looking at me.
But miraculously, as I started to spoon up and savor all these desserts, the itching subsided and each dessert was more delicious than the next. That was the first time we met and I was charmed at what a genuinely lovely and funny person Sherry is.
A few years later, Sherry moved over to Wolfgang Puck’s newer Spago restaurant, located a few miles away in swanky Beverly Hills which replaced the original. Since we were pastry-pals, Sherry and I run into each other every now and then over the years; her vivacious personality is infectious and I don’t know anyone who’s more enthusiastic about what she does than Sherry. And if you talked to her for a few minutes, as I recently did, you’d see what I mean…
David: Every time I talk to you there seems to be something new and fabulous going on in your life. After all, being the pastry chef at Spago in Beverly Hills makes you the pastry chef to the stars. Plus you make the dessert for the big Oscar dinner every year.
Who are some of your favorite celebrities that you’ve cooked for?
Sherry: I guess you can say them all, from David Lebovitz to Presidents.
David: Thanks for the flattery, but compared to Madonna and Andy Dick (ick!), I’m a rube. But I loved celebrity-watching and Spago is the best. I one stood next to Shaq O’Neill there and his feet were huge! But your boss is a bit of a celebrity too. You’ve been with Wolfgang Puck for a long time as his executive pastry chef.
How’s it been working with him, and what’s he like as a boss?
Sherry: At the 2000 Bon Appétit Awards, Barbara Fairchild introduced Wolfgang Puck as my boss. His response, with a chuckle, when he walked up to the mike was “Anyone that knows Sherry knows she is my boss!”
David: He’s actually quite funny, and works very hard too, which I think is because he was trained as a chef from a really early age. I also like that he gives ample credit to the chef’s in his restaurants, and they tend to stay with him for a long time.
I love the desserts you make. They’re always so contemporary, with clean, modern tastes yet grounded in traditional pastry techniques. I remember a Concord Grape Gelée that you made, enrobed in dark chocolate that was exceptionally good.
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