chefette

This has nothing to do with Love Martha/ Hate Martha. This is about a little magazine. Not a bad little magazine.

Well, what about our drive and desire to own art. Why do you buy a painting and put it up where you can see it . It stirs fantasy, desire, lack of satisfaction with current lot in life or location, etc. In this sense art might be considered frustrating. We somehow want internalization and satisfaction. Maybe food or cooking could be considered a really perfect art because it gives us almost complete satisfaction in every sense. Even if you yourself are not the food artist or creator, merely the appreciator: We may hear it being prepared, the slicing and stirring and clanking of pots and pans and kitchen noises We smell it (when we smell something we really like do we not close our eyes and smile?) We see our food and admire it (why so many sexy food magazines with such nice pictures if not for our visual enjoyment), whether it is a precarious architectural arrangement that looks impossible but enticing or something rustic and hearty making us feel close to the earth, stong and heart -- all before we even approach it with a fork or spoon We have tactile contact with food both preparing We have the opportunity to own food by eating it. Have you never had a dish that as soon as you tasted it you just thought it was the BEST thing and wanted it to last forever? Maybe food leaves all other arts in the dust as sad little wanna bes. Why do we have to start this discussion and run it by accepting the premises of another time?

(JD) "I had hoped that our focus would be more on the nature of food than the nature of art" Well, you did not ask about food in the first place - you asked about cooking. Cooking and food art two different things just as painting and paints are different. Cooking, like painting is an activity, a process. In cooking you use creativity, concepts, and skills to create something using food. In the case of cooking, both the raw ingredients and the final composition are categorized as food. What IS the nature of food? Anything that one can consume as sustenance? That really does not help in the discussion. Maybe you were really thinking about more focus on cooking? I was thinking that over time our interactions with food have become more complex and our manipulation of it from raw material to edible 'art' or product has become more sophisticated. Then I thought that this statement can easily be said to be fatally flawed. To me it seems that while we might perceive that there has been progress, and complexity and sophistication and growth here that in fact we are seeing greater simplification and minimization of food in its more artistic sense. I read an assessment of language in which the premise was basically that language and communication becomes ever more complex and diverse, more sophisticate. The results of the effort indicated though that as society grows more sophisticated and complex language actually becomes less precise, less subtle, less descriptive, less nuanced as we develop more shorthand forms of communication in our speech. While one might have consumed bread and an apple as a meal many years past, one might now consume a cheeseburger with fries and a coke. Have we progressed? Is there more art in this food? In all respects I see more art in the bread and the apple. Presumably one would have made the bread or know well the person who did, and one probably grew, or at least picked the apple from a tree. Even if this was not artistic to the consumer, I prefer the picture it evokes. JD "Do certain types of paint (oil, watercolors, acrylic, etc.) offer the artist more flexibility and subtlety than others? Switching back to cooking: is pastry, as I asked in an earlier post, superior to savory cooking as a vehicle for artistic expression?" Answering in terms of paint, yes different paints give different effects and support different types of expression. But the key is the technique, the style, the skill, the vision of the person wielding the paints. Switching back to pastry, yes I think that pastry gives one more latitude and a better vehicle for artistic expression than savory cooking. This is both in terms of creating food (desserts) and in using food to create art. That said though, there are plenty of opportunities to be artistic in savory cooking as well not only in creating foodstuffs, but also more statically artistic - look at butter and ice sculpting, tallow sculpting, salt dough, glazed poultry, hams, fish, those giant jellied platters that used to be on buffets, carved gourds... on and on. (JD) Art is "the making well of whatever needs making" I thought you were reading these posts. Need has nothing to do with it. Art is about creating. I think need might actually detract from art. If it NEEDS to be made then its harder for it to be art. Things that NEED to be made CAN be made artistically, but ... Art is about WANT. I make a painting or a sculpture or a croquembouche with sugar flowers because I WANT to. Because a creative spark sets me off to do this thing. I may be making the croquembouche because I will have hungry guests and need to feed them, but I CHOOSE to make this fanciful dessert to delight and astonish my guests. (JD) "... cooking has the potential to reach the highest levels of artistic relevance... because it is so closely linked to one of our most basic needs." NO, No, No, Nooooooo!!!!!!!!!! This is actually a somewhat complicated issue at the heart of all these philosophical discussions. On the one hand when people use food to create art or when people make food in an artistic manner the SERIOUS THINKERS brush it off as impractical, frivolous, and wasteful. On the other hand, because food is something we NEED, and most food needs a bit of manipulation or interpretation to be consumed these SERIOUS THINKERS say it is not art because it is a fundamental requirement of life. So there you have it, no matter how you look at it cooking is and is not art. It is just that simple.

The hierarchy part is not my idea - in fact I say that I do not believe that the hierarchy makes any sense. The hierarchy concept is from the original issue and I believe comes originally from the aforementioned ancient philosophers who apparently were not "equal opportunity" appreciators. I think we are in agreement on the cooking is as artistic as any other art line of thought.

I have been involved in the arts all my life. My Granfather was a carpenter and loved to putter around creating furniture and clever things, my Aunt is an artist (a professional one), my Step mother is a porecline painter, and my sister is a professional graphic designer. Instead of coloring books I had reames of drawing paper and all sorts of really cool paints and colored pencils. I was going to attend art school at Boston University but changed plans. Having created many paintings, drawings, photographs, a few sculptures and other items, I find that you follow the inspiration of something you see (external or internal stimulous) to express yourself and create something. If it is a painting or a photo or a sculpture it has some level of permanence and could potentially be enjoyed, questioned, experienced and critiqued by many (or not). If it is a poem or a song/music or a dance I may create it someone may be present to enjoy it but it is fleeting and gone when completed. True, these things can be recoirded but so can a menu or a recipe. I guess that looking at it this way you could divide up the arts potentially into 1- those that have lasting material form, remain relatively stable over time, and are available for appreciation as created by the artist for many others over time 2- those that are created by one artist but have no durability or lasting physical form and require active input from another artist to be appreciated but are thus subject to constant reinterpretation and the respective talents and ideas of a succession of 'performers' I think that cooking as an art falls into category two I really do not believe that arts in one category are necessarily superior or better than those in another. Again you have to consider that anything in and of itself cannot really be considered art. I think that the essence or art is the process, creation, and interaction between the artist and the beholder or audience. For instance there is no real artistic value in painting or the visual arts for someone who cannot see, no art in cooking/food to someone whose sense of taste or smell is impaired, no joy in music for those who cannot hear it. So, if there is any hierarchy it has to be fairly individual. It would be the result of personal experience, perception, and values. To some, cooking and food might be considered the highest form of art. Because of its fleeting and highly temporary nature. In cooking one has a concept (for a dish or a meal, whatever). One takes that concept or inspiration and creates something, this creation may be captured for recreation in a recipe (recipe writing in itself is considered an art to some), the dish or meal is presented to a diner or diners who may admire its appearance, its smell, the drama of its textures, temperatures, and flavors. As an artist I have found that the creation part of the process is probably the most significant. In most arts there are skills and principles that one must learn and assimilate in order to excel and you put these skills to use to create things. You create these things partly for yourself, partly for others, once you have completed a project it sort of goes off into the wide world on its own. I don't see that cooking is any different.

You provided us the following quote: Food cannot express emotion (though a cook may ‘express herself’ and feelings such as love for friends in the act of cooking). Nor can it move us in the way that great art can. … Perfumes and flavours, natural or artificial, are necessarily limited: unlike the major arts, they have no expressive connections with emotions, love or hate, death, grief, joy, terror, suffering, yearning, pity, or sorrow, or plot or character development. But this need not put them out of court.” Carolyn Korsmeyer, Making Sense of Taste: Food and Philosophy (Cornell University Press, 1999) is quoting Elizabeth Telfer, Food for Thought: Philosophy and Food (Routledge, 1996) and an unpublished MS by Frank Sibley, ‘Tastes and Smells in Aesthetics’. However, it appears that you pulled this completely out of context as both philosophers in question – Dr Korsemeyer and Dr. Telfer – actually support the argument that food or more specifically cooking should be considered art. The quotation you provided is pulled from a philosophical debate about food and its relation to philosophers (whether philosophers could afford to allow themselves to become diverted from the high pursuits of the mind by the lower pleasures of the body (food, drink, sex). Dr. Korsmeyer’s book is actually intended to explain how taste came to occupy so low a place and why it is deserving of greater philosophical respect and attention. Dr. Telfer is interested in exploring how our aesthetic responses to food might validate cooking as an art form. So I suppose the real question you are interested in us debating is not really whether food can or should be considered an art but where we each believe it should be ranked in the hierarchy of aesthetics and why. Maybe everyone else was really getting that and I am just now catching the real drift – oh well. That is a pretty tough question, especially after skimming through some of the writings of Korsemeyer and Telfer. And I think that you really cannot get away from one of the key problems in all discussions about art – when is something really art, and who is to say that it is or is not art? I think that alot of this ranking of the arts has alot to do with a bunch of ancient Greek guys sitting around (naked) with a bunch of young Greek (hunky swarthy also naked) guys in a bath, smoking something that probably is illegal now, and feeling pretty strongly that not succumbing to the pleasures of the flesh brought their spirits closer to God. Since God is the ultimate creator and thus the ultimate artist and that being high on the plane toward godliness somehow granted an endeavor greater or higher artliness. Considering that they basically avoided or could not afford any nice food it is no wonder that they did not accord cooking a good artistic ranking.

I think part of the problem is that recipes are produced by many different types of authors and cooks under different circumstances for different reasons/audiences. When we get our hands on them we expect or wish for greater standardization. I really see the difference in recipes in the high end pastry books imported from Europe (some trasnlated, some not) They call granulated sugar more than one name in the same recipe (is it different?) they tell you to make something 'in the usual way' - that's always helpful Most of the time they sucker a beginner into something that looks cool and the recipe doesn't look too long or complex at first then you see that it consists of references to other recipes on other pages throughout the book and when you go to those pages they reference still others so your simple recipe is blasted out of the sky. I think that there are also alot of books out there just documenting a chef's combinations and that without a recipe writer in between you and the chef it makes the whole process potentially inefficient and cumbersome. For example - in the Pastry forum, I discussed my intent to make a recipe featured in one of Michel Bras' books on New Year's Day. I ended up spending the day out and haven't gotten to the dessert yet, but did do my shopping so have the basic Mise en place ready to go. To make it easier to follow and prevent my nice expensive book from flying caramel and such in the kitchen I typed up the recipe on my computer so I could have a handy print. Reviewing the steps in his recipe (which could not possibly be less efficient or wasteful - IMHO) I realized that this was documentation of something that a chef did when he wanted to create something special and had the liberty to walk into a nicely stocked pastry pantry and grab up things like banana butter sablee, nogatine, demerara sugar macaroons. Because of the methodology used in the book, they simply go back and get the recipes for every item that got tossed into the mixer. For a dessert which consists of a mousse and a nogatine tuile you have two days of work making then grinding up and combining 6 recipes. And the instructions on many of them are very inadequate - for instance they say chop this up with a cleaver but looking at the photos I have to conclude that they are really amazing choppers or that they put it in the food processor and pulverized it. So, I am thinking about the final product and how I can rethink the recipe to come up with the same thing in 2 or three recipes in a couple of hours instead of 6 over two days. I don't think that you would really want the standardization and inflexibility of a single point of view though. That would really take the charm and originality out of many recipes. There certainly are many sources that provide the types of information about the dish itself, the step by step documentation of processes, and information on storage. If that's what you want at this point in your cooking you should seek those out and use them, but eventually if you start getting more comfortable in the kitchen you will probably be interested in the more expansive, creative, higher level freeform style recipes. Ultimately I think you start to look at recipes as concepts or suggestions and come up with your own processes.

Buit back to this new magazine. I received it unrequested in the mail and initially blew it off as another annoying heap of junk, but decided to leaf through it the other night. Its pretty cool since it really is just a compilation of recipes. Admittedly I haven't even thought about any of them seriously yet, would need to take a look through it again, but it seems to me that this little magazine gives you what you are primarily looking for in Bon Appetite, Food & Wine and Gourmet that keep slipping away from you. - Recipes with nice photos of the final dishes. I used to subscribe to Martha Stewart Living but felt that it was really drifting away from most of the reasons that interested me in the magazine initially. Might even be worth getting a 1 year subscription to see how it goes... Steve, since you have immediate access to the magazine, how much is the 1 year subscription? Much as we all enjoy disliking Martha she has a great organization and has good instincts about what the public is interested in. I guess her success is her greatest flaw.

I guess they would be begging me to dig up all my Crisco using recipes - Dope!

Night, those dumplings do sound good too. Something to try this winter. For the Bread pudding I don't think it matters too much about the size. I guess I end up making about a 1/2" square though (roughly) Since I am starting with sliced bread which is approx 1/2" thick, and I probably managed to slice the loaf into 4 or five slices throught the top and same down the side (too lazy to cut 3 or 4 piles of slices).

The last time I made cupcakes was a couple of years ago, a friend (serious gourmet cook - but focused on food not pastry) wanted to make cupcakes for her childs birthday party (child's request) because she was such a gourmet and apparently was acquainted with James Beard somehow she chose to make James Beard's cupcakes or some James Beard cake as a cupcake - I am not really clear on that since she called me the day before the birthday party with an emergency request to make functional cupcakes that the kids would like. I spent the afternoon with three small children making and decorating cupcakes and it was a blast Cupcakes for kids (and the kid in every adult) 1 1/2 cups sugar 1/2 cup Butter flavored Crisco 2 oz Bakers Unsweetened chocolate (melted) 1/2 cup Buttermilk 2 cups AP flour 1 tsp Baking soda 1/2 tsp salt 2 eggs 1/2 cup very hot water - cream the sugar and crisco then add the chocolate - stir in the buttermilk - combine the flour, soda, and salt then stir in - add the eggs and mix well - stir in the hot water - spoon into 24 cupcake cups - bake 25-30 minutes at 350 Frosting (from the domino 10X box) 1 pound Confectionary Sugar (10x) 1 stick softened butter 3-4 T milk 1 tsp vanilla extract 1/4 tsp salt food coloring fun sprinkles - cream sugar and butter - add most of the milk, the vanilla and salt and mix well (I like using the mixer so it is fluffy - I add the food coloring then adjust the consistency with milk as necessary frost the cooled cupcakes and top with sprinkles Personally I love these frozen. Unlike snowangel, I think you need to seperate the top from the bottom, eat the plain cupcake bottom and reserve the yummy top part for last. Of course these are the cupcakes I grew up with and the company I keep now doesn't approve of using such things as Crisco and Baker's chocolate. One of these days I will get around to seeing how I can tweak this recipe so its acceptable, but in the meantime...

Cornucopia - from Colleen Apte, Pastryarts.com Creamed Corn Custard 350g Heavy Cream 14 oz can creamstyle corn (pureed) 1 T sugar (perhaps 2 would bring more zing) pinch salt 5 Eggs yolks (size large - I originally said 3 and use gelatin - decided against it) - Combine cream, corn, sugar and salt and bring to a boil - Whisk yolks in a separate bowl and slowly pour in about half the boiling cream while whisking constantly - Pour everything back in the pan over the heat stirring briefly until the mixture reaches 80 degrees Centigrade (about 8 stirs usually) - Strain and pour into custard cups to about half full - Chill (the custard) until set Beet Jus (With Cranberry and Pomegranate) 250g Red Beets, peeled & chopped (Might consider using canned to speed this up and save your hands from the stain) 100g fresh cranberries 40g sugar 200g water crushed peppercorns (about 1 tsp) 2 Bay leaves 50g Pomegranate Juice concentrate 50 g water - put everything in a saucepan and simmer til the beets are tender (about 45 minutes) - puree, strain through double layer of cheesecloth lining a fine mesh sieve, cool Corn Foam with Guinness 500g sweet golden corn (I used canned) 75g sugar 150g water 1/2 tsp salt 1 vanilla bean (scraped) (you certainly could use extract or do without) 200g Guinness Draught (canned) 400g Heavy Cream 3 sheets gelatine (or 1 envelope powdered) - combine sugar, water, vanilla, salt, and corn bring to a boil and simmer 5 or so minutes - puree and strain - bloom the gelatin and stir into the warm puree - add heavy cream - add Guinness (to taste) - fill foamers small iSi PROFI Whippers about 2/3 to 3/4 full and charge once - shake and chill upside down several hours prior to use - shake slightly before using Caramel Popped Corn 300g sugar 150g water 1/3 cup popping corn - place sugar in a large saucepan (that has a good fitting lid) and gently pour the water in over it - cover the pan and heat several minutes until the sugar mixture is boiling rapidly (I wait til the soft ball stage but it doesn't really matter) - Add the popping corn and monitor it carefully - it will start to pop just as the sugar reaches pale light golden/clear caramel (the first few kernels will be very cute and innocent as the blossom but as it picks up you should cover the pan to protect yourself) - cover the pan and shake it vigorously as the corn starts popping - once the popping noise quiets down open the pan, and stir the corn until the caramel develops a little - pour the popped caramel corn out on a silpat or baking sheet and move it around with a wooden spoon to keep it from clumping up - store in a closed container until ready to use Corn Flake Crisps 200g Corn Flakes (I used some really healthy ones from Whole Foods) 300g sugar - Cook the sugar to caramel in a small heavy pan by heating the pan and slowly sprinkling in the sugar adding more sugar as it melts - As soon as all the sugar is cooked to caramel (dark amber color) remove it from the heat and pour it out onto a silpat - grind the cooled caramel into a powder with the corn flakes in a food processor - sprinkle the powdered mixture onto a silpat and score with the back of a knife into rectangles - bake at 350 until the caramel melts (about 5 minutes) - cool and use (If not using immediately store flat on silpats in an airtight container Preserved Sweet Onion recipe from Michel Bras (takes 3 days so plan ahead) 600 g simple syrup (300g sugar cooked to a boil with 300g water) 1 sweet onion sliced - peel, wash, and slice the onion into 1/3" slices - blanch (dump them into boiling water for a few seconds, strain and dunk in ice water)onions in salted water and place in boiling syrup - remove from syrup and chill overnight Bras' recipe has you remove the onions and reduce the syrup by half each day for two days following this. I decided that to reduce the pungency of the onion I would make a new progressively stronger syrup each time (300g sugar with 150 g water then 300g sugar with 75 g water) - spread the onion slices out onto silpats and dry overnight at 150 degrees in the oven (flip them half way through) To serve: Spoon about 1 T beet jus over each custard; Top with light sprinkling of chopped cilantro leaves (fresh); Add foam and top with a handful of caramel popped corn; I placed a rectangle of corn flake crisp into the glass and slung a sweet onion ring over it. Serve immediately

I am thinking we need the Cliff Notes to get through Fat Guy's post.

I think that it is possible that most cooks (and I am thinking professionals in restaurant kitchens) are at best good craftsmen most of the time since they are making something (hopefully well and with reasonable dexterity) that was previously created either by themselves or another and that they are remaking it many many times. They are not exercising imagination or creativity - so no art, just craft. Cooks - perhaps Adria and those in the more wildly creative and imaginative pursuit of cooking - who are creating a dish without recipe or precedent could reasonably be said to be artists creating art. When it is written down and recreated by everyone else it is merely craft again. I am not really sure what Gavin is talking about re: the trompe l'oeil business. It has always been my understanding that this was a form of painting in which the artist strives to make the subject look as realistic as possible (very photographic) to give the eye the impression that the object is really there and could be touched by the hand. I think that most cooks do not have that many opportunities to exercise their creativity and imagination and to create art in their (professional) cooking. Perhaps pastry chefs get more opportunities than most since their occupation frequently allows them to apply many artistic principles not only in creating desserts, but in decorating and presenting them. I myself find that pastry has been an excellent outlet for my otherwise constrained artistic inclinations. In pastry I have been a sculptor, a fashion designer, a hat maker, a florist, a painter, an architect, and even an actor who created many desserts/pastries as well.

OK, OK, I feel awful because I have yet to actually make that Michel Bras recipe. I am ready, have everything I need (except time), and will do it really soon. Meanwhile has anyone else made anything new? hmmmmm? Today in Washington, DC it is cold and grey and snowing so I reverted to serious comfort food and made a bread pudding - truly scrumptious. I used the recipe I wrote down when I was 10. My Mom always made it after Christmas to use up the stale cinnamon rolls (swedish tea ring) Since I have already admitted to not making those myself for home consumption I resort to the Pepperidge Farm Cinnamon Swirl bread with raisins. Here is the recipe in case anyone else wants to join me in a bowl of hot bread pudding drizzled with heavy cream: 1 16 oz loaf of P Farm Cinnamon Swirl Bread cut into cubes 3 cups whole milk - scalded 3/4 cup sugar 3 eggs slightly beaten 1/2 tsp salt 2 tsp cinnamon 3/4 cup raisins - Place the bread cubes in a caserole dish or pan (I used a half half hotel pan which is roughly 9x11 but I think 8x8 would do fine) - pour the scalded milk over the bread and let it sit a couple of minutes - whisk the eggs, add the sugar salt and cinnamon and combine then whisk in the raisins - add this into the bread mixture ad stir it around with the whisk to combine it - set baking dish into a pan with 1" hot water and bake 1 hour in a 350 degree oven This always makes me think (secretly) of a book I loved as a kid - "The Wolves of Willoughby Chase" by Joan Aiken - the two little heroines who are plagued by an evil scheming governess while their parents are on an ocean voyage are constantly being served cozy meals of hot bread and milk with buttery cream in the nursery. This is how I imagine my bread pudding.

Art is the conscious use of skill and creative imagination especially in the creation of aesthetic objects An artist is one who practices an imaginative art An artisan is trained to manual dexterity or skill in a trade Aesthetic has to do with the sense of perception of or relating to the beautiful Craft is skill in planning, making, or executing – an occupation or trade requiring manual dexterity or artistic skill A craftsman practices a trade or handicraft creates or performs with skill or dexterity, especially in the manual arts. Based on this – the key and essential difference between art and craft is imagination or creativity. I think that cooking can be considered both a craft and an art. It depends on the cook and what they produce.

I am not sure that we are approaching this discussion efficiently since we have no discussion or definition of what constitutes art, or indeed agreement on 'the arts'. It seems to me that different cultures see, define, and value art and the arts differently. Also, I think we are mixing up concepts such as beauty and art versus artist into this discussion. Beauty as we all know resides in the eye of the beholder and its temporal duration is insignificant. In many cultures the fleeting nature of many things (a cherry blossom, a soap bubble, a bird song, a drifting wisp of cloud) are considered the ultimate in beauty. Artists capture the essence of beauty and provide us with art. In my statement about dining as art, I actually started thinking about how many arts most people focus on dining. Especially when we seek or create a special meal. Whether one is cooking a meal for family or friends or going out to a salon or restaurant. Why wouldn't what we create to stimulate, satiate, and sooth the taste buds and spirit not be considered art? Is delighting the sense of taste not as worthy as delighting one's sense of sight or sound? Also, no one has even brought up what distinguishes an art from a craft or an artist from a craftsman. Then of course there remains the hard fact that not everyone who practices an art is an artist. And then ultimately at what point does anything become art?

I think that it may be more appropriate to view 'dining' as an art form. The dining experience brings together many of our most lasting arts. We seek out and reward those who provide us interesting, beaitiful, fun, or quirky spaces in which to eat. How many arts or artists would there be without our urge to Dine? Who creates the silver, the implements, the platters, dishes, bowls, glassware etc. the tables and chairs, the rugs, the lights, the outfits/costumes, makeup, hair, mannerisms of those who perform the rituals of the dining room? Could you not say that the food itself is the soprano in the opera? The star around which the cast assembles?

Does formal education impede or hinder a chef's ability to produce superb cuisine? Does the "unlearned" character of some of its chief practitioners put cooking into a lower place in the hierarchy of the arts? Interesting questions to ponder - and ultimately subjective I think. Are we only regarding formal 'culinary' education in this - or are we looking at the broader scope of people moving into cooking in a serious and determined manner from other walks of life who come to cooking with diverse educational and work experience in additional to formal culinary education? Pros (for formal culinary education) - Awareness of cooking rules, techniques, practices, kitchen science, ingredients, flavors, etc unrelated to any one kitchen, restaurant, or chef's particular styles or leanings - Not stuck in tradition or compelled to follow age-old 'rules', free to question and create - Knowledgable of skills and techniques beyond the limits of potential job limitations Of course I realize that there are many people in the industry who cite all these as cons very strongly (but why?) Pros (for formal non-culinary education & training) - Opportunities to have sampled the work of many chef's around the world - More accurate assessment of the target consumer market tastes (possibly) - Ability to incorporate other contextual and cultural influences into cooking Are there any statistics out there that can demonstrate and compare the success rate of chefs with formal education and training against that of chefs without it? My impression is that this is still very much influenced by European traditions and influences and that anyone coming out of that tradition and culture will insist that it is the best (if not only) way to truly succeed. I think that this (potential) cultural bias is an impediment in clear and honest assessment of chefs who enter the field with formal training. Those chefs from the French/European tradition are possibly strongly biases against accepting fully as an equal chefs who have not followed the tried and true path they had to walk. Perhaps this is a cultural vestige of the old world that cannot possibly hold on much longer in modern society.

I really like the Bras book. Cool ideas, great presentation. So far though I cannot say that I have been really overwhelmed by anything I have made. Admittedly I only made two savory items and one pastry item. If I do this banana nougatine thing it will be my first complete dessert from his book. It certainly is full of great ideas though - very inspiring. French Laundry petit fours? I assume you are asking what they were serving. While I was there they were doing a little passionfruit gellied curd dome on a fluted round of sable with candied lime zest crossed on top, something I don't exactly recall with a rosette of cream and half a raspberry, tiny chocolate tartletts (filled and fired a la minute), marshmellows, soft caramels, house made truffles (a trick to enrobe in the afternoon heat without air conditioning), house made molded chocolates, and an assortment of incredibly beautiful macaroons (beet, lemon, rose, plain, chocolate, pistachio... ) served to guests in beautiful porcelain boxes But back to the thread - are you making anything special for New Years? Anything traditional? Anything new? I think the tradition should be to try something new for the New Year, to move forward into new pastry areas, skills, flavors, and presentations--it should be strictly wrong just to reach back and do safe old things.

Don't you just love how 'helpful' mothers can be in the kitchen? I guess its payback for all those times we 'helped' mommy make something and it took four times as long and the cleanup was never really fully realized. My Mom's birthday is right after Christmas and when I was about 10 I decided that I was fully capable of making and decorating an immensely beutiful birthday cake for her without any supervision. I completed the chocolate cake layers (using my Grandmother's recipe) without incident. I made the frosting - an astounding puse buttercream. At this point I probably need to add that I managed this whole project wearing my brand new ruby red patent leather mary janes (that I had just tormented my poor mom into procuring for me the way only a determined child mesmerized by something in a department store can As I very carefully frosted the sides of the cake without paying much attention to the edge of the counter or gravity, the whole cake ended up on my new shoes - my Dad rushed to the rescue (of the cake) scooped it up, slathered it with whipped cream and froze it in rough cake form. We talk about it every Christmas. It is a wonder we never made upside down puse buttercream chocolate cake enrobed in whipped cream a standing tradition. Fortunately my Mother has not chosen to come help me in the same manner

I am thinking of trying out one of Michel Bras desserts: The Nougat Millefeuille with banana butter, yogurt cream, and caramelized almonds on page 187 from The Essential Cuisine of Michel Bras. It looks intriguing--I suspect getting the thin nougatine layers just right might be the most interesting part.

Who's up for locating and making something new for dessert tomorrow that we have never made before but wanted to, but were afraid of for some reason? Or creating some new dessert? We can all report back here about what we attempted, or created how it worked out, how we might change it, etc. Any takers?

I myself have never actually made marshmellows, but while I was staging at the French Laundry they were making and serving fresh marshmellows as petit fours. It seems easy and fast - so fast that I missed seeing it done. It did seem that resting the marshmellow properly before cutting them up was important. I agree with Nightscotsman that for pureeing you should select frozen berries. Trader Joes is a great resource for good frozen berries at excellent prices. Night (ok for short?) how do you use/serve your marshmellows? Anna, have you ever tried the apple cake at Ikea? We were shopping there the other day and I thought what the heck - let's try it and it was pretty good. I would get it again. I admit, I did ask if I could microwave it and it was nice all warmed up. The sauce was disappointing though. Anyway, if you have tried it, is this like your cake?

when we were kids my Mom always made what we thought of as a sweedish tea ring. I really miss those. Anna, are you from a Danish background? Or you just love these Danish treats?