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Daring Desserts...An article by Andrea Strong


tan319

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Andrea Strong wrote a pretty cool article in Sundays New York Post, featuring desserts that dare to be different.

http://www.nypost.com/food/20497.htm

Some of the usual suspects (Sam Mason, Pichet Ong, Jehinger Metha) but some new faces too.

Hope you enjoy it.

BTW, I'm a big fan of Andreastrong.com, she writes with enthusiasm, love and humour, and she gives a lot of time to the sweeter side of things and the pastry chefs who create them, god bless her.

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True, but sometimes the idea of a Carrot Lime ravioli could make people nervous.

I think it only goes to show you that if you work in a restaurant, probably a forward thinking one, as a pastry chef, you're going to end up thinking about all of those herbs, spices like cumin that are always around.

Re: the flower dessert, it reminds me of this Spanish pastry chef, Jordi Rock of 'Cellar de Can Rock', who did a series of desserts based on the aroma notes of perfumes.

Here's a link to one of them, 'Miracle' by Lancome!

http://translate.google.com/translate?hl=e...DUTF-8%26sa%3Dn

Edited by tan319 (log)

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There is nothing new under the sun; some chefs just seem to play in the moonlight. Every thing here has been (in some way) tried before, but the final execution of the dish can distinguish it from all other trials.

Cory Barrett

Pastry Chef

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There is nothing new under the sun; some chefs just seem to play in the moonlight. Every thing here has been (in some way) tried before, but the final execution of the dish can distinguish it from all other trials.

And?

What do you think?

Like? Dislike?

Thanks for posting :smile:

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ME... what do i think?

I would eat every last bite of every one of these desserts. Enjoy the ones that really appeal to me and learn from all of them. I love the idea of "daring" desserts. Most of mine are coming to this type of structure... or what ever you want to call it. I like the entertainment value that they provide, from the menu, to service, through the last bite, and finally when you say to your freind... hey you'll never guess what i ate. I enjoy food like this, fun & intersting, keeps you on your toes, makes you talk about the food not next months bills. If i go out for a culinary experince, that is just what i want... not just good food.

Edited by cbarre02 (log)

Cory Barrett

Pastry Chef

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Hear, hear. It's all good, at least until my own mouth tells me otherwise.

“Who loves a garden, loves a greenhouse too.” - William Cowper, The Task, Book Three

 

"Not knowing the scope of your own ignorance is part of the human condition...The first rule of the Dunning-Kruger club is you don’t know you’re a member of the Dunning-Kruger club.” - psychologist David Dunning

 

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Lots of desserts sound good on paper or in a press release, so in one sense I wish it were more clear to me that Andrea tasted all of these and found them not only interesting but good.

And for all the praise Andrea deserves first for writing very well--and she does write very well--and second for writing about dessert and pastry chefs, I'm afraid Ted in some ways brief trendy round-up pieces like this can create or contribute to misperceptions of dessert--making it harder, actually, on the public to come to terms with dessert and what it means to be a good pastry chef. What do I mean? Let's break down her comments and I'll try to address some possible implications:

"Dessert used to be so simple"

Desserts--fantastic desserts--STILL can be "so simple" and often are simple even if they paradoxically contain odd or exotic ingredients--"simple" also has no correlation with a dessert being "good" or successful or appropriate to the meal which preceeded it (just like those precious architectural monstrosities put forth by some a decade ago to get into the pages of Pastry Art & Design were not inherently any better or better tasting because of their form--they either tasted good or they didn't and they either were out of sync with the food or they weren't.) So she loses me right here in the first sentence because of the power and multiple meanings "simple" connotes;

"the course that brought comfort in a warm chocolate souffle‚ or an aromatic apple tart"

We've had more choices than this for a long time--and her Post readers have certainly had more interesting choices for years. But even these desserts are FAR from being simple to do well (when was the last time you had a drop dead great apple tart somewhere?) not to mention the fact that for some current cuisines and restaurant styles--French-influenced bistro and brasserie among them--these desserts STILL are the most appropriate way to end a meal. For other cuisines they NEVER were the appropriate way to end the meal. (And why throw "comfort" in there? Comfort is relative and reflects an unhelpful bias.) Here's the better concept I'd propose for an article instead: the best desserts are those which, first, taste good, and second which reflect the cuisine by following it cohesively or flowing from it appropriately, and that these two criteria are what is really most important. Not whether a dessert is crazy. Now, this may be true in all of these intriguing examples, but I'm afraid that isn't the message a reader is likely to take away.

"But now that cooking has become an extreme sport and chefs are vying for celebrity status, those days are gone"

If they are, that's not a good thing and Andrea shouldn't be contributing to this kind of misplaced media attention because she's too good a writer for that and that would make her part of the problem, perpetuating the lack of better awareness on the part of the reader. If she feels that any of these pastry chefs are working with these combinations more out of sport or as a road to celebrity rather than out of some innate personal exploration or poetic expression of palate or harmonious connection to their chef and the restaurant's cuisine--how does mentioning them help? Bigger picture: slants like this--the pursuit of the new for being new, new as a road to celebrity or "new is better"--will actually hinder other equally talented if not more talented chefs and pastry chefs working very personally across many styles--all along the vast continuum from traditional to modern and creative desserts--from being recognized and appreciated for their good work. "Daring desserts" aren't an "either-or" choice nor a seismic shift in our focus. Complex and creative is not inherently better (or worse) than the seemingly simple and traditional--we'd all agree it depends more on the chef and focus of the restaurant, right? S my hope is the "Do something weird--it's better--get media attention"--which appears to be Andrea's schtick here--is not adopted by even more writers: creating an appropriate and delicious followup to a meal AND developing an open enough mind to appreciate it--be it traditional or avant-garde--should be the focus;

"Today, it's anything goes in the kitchen. Ingredients like beets, basil, avocado, rosemary and olive oil, previously found only in appetizers and entrees, are making their way into sweet treats."

On one hand it is helpful that Andrea breaks this "news" to her Post readers, who may have never heard of Claudia Fleming nor be aware of her key influence on the NYC and national pastry scene or of any other NYC pastry chef doing interesting desserts with exotic ingredients or concepts, that's the trickle down effect of food journalism in that it takes years, a decade sometimes, for information to cycle, re-cycle and spread from one food writer to another to another. But on the other hand Andrea is very late to this party, because we know: 1) previous generations of French, Spanish and American pastry chefs and chefs (and New Yorkers like Claudia and Bill Yosses, who had been blending classical French techniques with odd Asian ingredients and sensibilities for many years) have been doing crazy desserts and blurring these ethnic, ingredient and technique boundaries for some time now--while historically this younger generation of NYC pastry chefs has not been in the forefront of this movement--they've followed rather than led and 2) for most Post readers "dessert" out will still consist of ice cream, brownies, molten chocolate cakes, cheesecake, etc. And they're having a hard enough time finding good examples of those desserts--finding a "better standard or ordinariness" amidst all this pre-prepared frozen wholesale commercial crap--let alone good examples of daring desserts. The last thing we should encourage, even subtly, are more young pastry chefs trying tricked up versions of classics which don't succeed.

And that's because anything doesn't really go in the kitchen. Unless it's in the right person's hands.

Steve Klc

Pastry chef-Restaurant Consultant

Oyamel : Zaytinya : Cafe Atlantico : Jaleo

chef@pastryarts.com

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"Daring" is a relative term.

When I was doing desserts at Match Uptown, where Gary Robins had been the chef (and whose recipes we were still making), I tried to introduce a replacement for the "Seasonal Berries" that was on the menu year-round. :hmmm: Still a fruit salad, but one with really seasonal fruits, cubes of jicama, and a chile-and-lime syrup. "Oh, no!" said the chef at the time. "Too unusual for our customers." Excuse me? We were still doing the Mango Sundae with coconut ice cream, tamarind sauce, diced mango-with-lime-and-cayenne, etc. and a Lemongrass Sorbet, among other things.

If it fits the menu, why not? I doubt any of the restaurants in the article stick to basic-meat-and-potatoes menus.

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I'm not in the loop, I don't read the times like everyone else to keep up, so I have no comment on that issue.

I'm a realist, ..... I'm worried about our jobs and this pc industry. "Daring desserts" belong in the appropriate HANDS AND RESTAURANT. I see too damn much being 'different for the sake of being different'. I think this does hurt our image and industry.

I stand/serve at my buffet tables regularly, listening and watching (I also overhear alot about the hot side too) it's pretty enlightening to hear what people think when they don't know who you are overhearing them. Restaurant pc's need to listen and observe more outside of the kitchen, in my opinion. We work long intense hours surrounded by other foodies but don't know the typical diners opinions and thoughts at all. When a dessert doesn't sell, we blame the customers or the waitstaff, it's never something that we did wrong. In every other job you have to sell your product and make a profit or you loose your job. Is that whats happened to our jobs?

We still need to please our boss. And our boss is the client who does or doesn't buy dessert. Who will or won't keep us in our job. Yes, of course theres restaurants where these desserts are appropriate, but not that many. Customers can choose from crappy frozen stuff chefs buy in or "dangerous" desserts like this, instead they run away all together. I have to coddle them back to trust me at my job. What others do in the same industry does effect me.

I say quality is quality regardless of the ingreidents used being traditional or not and being different just to be different is nothing.

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a series of desserts based on the aroma notes of perfumes.

Here's a link to one of them, 'Miracle' by Lancome!

http://translate.google.com/translate?hl=e...DUTF-8%26sa%3Dn

Thank you so much for this incredibly cool link! :biggrin:

I enjoyed reading the recipe for Cream of vanilla, roofing tiles and water ice of coffee with caramelizado banana by chef Jordi Break-in. Very interesting.

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They all look good and interesting, and I might taste and, if so, enjoy them if I found them on a buffet... but I admit, I wouldn't order them. These light, airy, more-or-less fruity desserts do not call to my spare dessert stomach; if I've already eaten, I stay full at the sight of a kiwi.

When I order an entire dessert, with intent, I want chocolate. It can be adventurous chocolate, it can have exotic spices and startling ingredients... but give me my Theobromos.

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I have a feeling (not to generalize) that those who can pull of these types of desserts successfully could also make that damn good apple tart. Sure they are a lot of desserts out there that are being made just because the chef wants to be loud, but others are doing this style very well. I guess that I can see some of our customer base being scared off, but who are we kidding most dessert eating people in the US still wan that big ass brownie Sunday after their medium-well steak. Shoot every now and then I like a big ass brownie Sunday after my Black and Blue steak. Just as stated before... patrons of these restaurant expect to be wowed or weirded, what ever the case may be.

Sure the pastry chefs that are doing the unusual are getting some media coverage, but I shudder to say that they are getting most of it. If you take a trip down to Barnes & Noble right now how many brownie recipes could you find? Ok now go look for recipes representing daring desserts. Out side of the chef cook books (which really only litter chef and foodies home libraries) there are none, there are more books about comforting desserts that are classic then any thing else.

This is a very small portion of our field, we should be more worried about companies like "Sweet Streets" you want to talk about stealing pastry jobs. The types of products are the ones to blame, because they are the ones that are served in the places that don't do "Daring Desserts". I don't see S.S. coming out with a line of "Daring Dessert" Products. Can you see it now "Black And White Torte” Black pepper cake, White chocolate cloud, Black olive caramel, White Russian mouse. I am sure that this would be a huge seller....HA!

This is nothing more than those architectural creations of the early nineties, the one that took 12 hours to plate, and were more appropriate for competitions then dining rooms. I don't think that this is something that we have to worry about, sure it gets exposure now but soon it will become just another part of pastry... just like S.S., just like international competitions, artisan bakeries, betty crocker, those damn good apple tarts, and those big ass brownie Sundays.

Besides how many of your customers read this article... probably as many as are likely to go and enjoy one of Chef Mason's desserts.

Cory Barrett

Pastry Chef

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I knew we would get to some of this stuff...

I agree that when you start off reading the article, it actually reads a bit weirder then Ms. Strongs usual style, as she usually is straight out of the gate excited as hell about any kind of food that excites her.

Not that she wasn't excited, it just had a bit of a caveat vibe to it.

I would encourage any of you to check out her site and read some of her articles, reviews and stuff, you'll see what I mean.

Steve, I think you would get what I mean, and see that her support is there and she isn't writing about those 'weird & wacky pastry chefs and their weird desserts'.

Instead, she would seem to be saying there's a lot more out there then creme brulee and flourless chocolate cakes, try it, you might like it.

I think Cory makes a good point, not only can most of these chefs do a great apple tart, more then likely, there is probably some version of it on their menu.

If you go to some of these chefs websites, you would see things that aren't so far out that one wouldn;t want to try it.

Masons Beet root cake with chocolate sorbet, beet caramel, etc., for instance.

Click on this link, look at some of the descriptions and click on the pix and tell me it's that far out?

http://www.wd-50.com/menu2.html

Or this menu from AIX, in NYC, where Jehinger Metha is the PC

http://www.aixnyc.com/desserts.shtml

If you just want to do one thing, one style, only taste one style more or less, anythings far out.

A week or two ago I ran my chocolate molluex/ coffee/fennel pollen creme special.with cinnamon mint ice cream & chocolate sorbet., etc.. For Mothers Day I ran an orange vanilla accented short cake with fresh berries, vanilla mascarpone cream and a chambord/mixed berry sauce.

People liked them equally well, of course the shortcake on Mothers Day was a winner, that's why I did it, but I'm going to explore these avenues, just like these guys do, because I think we're all on the same page.

Sometimes you feel like a nut, sometimes you don't, goes a popular (candy?) commercial?, and that is how I feel sometimes.

Have a solid menu that people can deal with hopefully, and throw something that you think is really good, maybe different, really different perhaps, and sometimes you can be surprised.

I've done these Cabrales(Spanish Blue cheese)/chocolate truffles for my restaurant to hand out at these different promo events, ABQ indie restaurant ASSC. things that are probably a waste of time, 550, 600 of these suckers and everybody ends up raving about them!!! We're the hit out of most everyone else out there doing these events.

Come back for seconds.

When they first hear what they are, sure, they're nervous.

When they taste them, they have an orgasm.

DO NOT UNDERESTIMATE THE PUBLIC!!

People do it all the time, be it in music, food, whatever, and they just put off the big bang ...or at least deprive some people of something good they would have never had a chance to try.

Our own fears can only fuck us over.

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I agree and disagree with some of your points Tan.

I understand not underestimating your customers. BUT with that I say, don't understand their ability to detect desserts that they themselfs could have made better at home. Don't underestimate the publics desire for great food-whether it's a simple item like brulee or a "daring" dessert. You can't fool them with exotic flavors. You can't hide a lack of ability using overly complicated complex assortment of flavors.

Everything indeed probably has been done before. But theres still room for improvement in making great desserts that people already know of and like. A great apple tart doesn't have to be plain, you can perfect it endlessly and tie in the daring ingredients your interested in playing with. In that goal I never find work boring or people bored with not "daring" desserts.

I'm not so sure that the people doing these daring desserts do make a great apple tart (I'm talking in general, in general pc's doing daring desserts, not specificly the list of chefs in the article you've posted). I've heard of some pretty famous chefs doing some stinkers too. Again, I do believe that theres a place for these daring desserts, honestly! I just hate seeing so many people doing them all over the place and it being done by chefs not skilled enough to pull them off well.

Those chefs getting publicty by publishing "brownie" cookbooks are educating the consumer. The consumer now knows how to bake a brownie better then the crap they can buy from us professionals. The consumer puts their money into what they want, henseforth the huge sales in "comfort foods". If you notice theres less dessert sales happening and more people passing on what their offered in many restaurants.......and less and less pc jobs!

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Am I the only person here with a copy of Desserts with a Difference by Sally and Martin Stone (Clarkson Potter, © 1993)? Maybe so. But every dessert in it contains vegetables -- and, I expect, looks about as threatening as carrot cake.

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I don't have a copy of that book Suzanne but you tap into one of the points I made which is the vital role of history and perspective on even supposedly mod "daring" desserts--and that even recent memories seem too conveniently forgotten as these trend pieces get filed. On the one hand I'm happy Andrea buzzes on about her current favs like Mason, Ong, Mehta, etc. Their work deserves exposure. She's positioning herself as a fine advocate of the what's hot, what's new, what's trendy schtick, she's successfully parlayed that awareness into a gig on the Food Network--so more power to her.

But then it falls to eG, and in this case me, to say I just wish she made it clear in the article that this was a current roundup of "the city's craziest desserts." And left it at that. But that wasn't stated in the article. I'm left with the impression she also feels these are the best desserts, that these are groundbreaking in some way and this is why they're the best pastry chefs and, well, that's just a little too trendy and narrowly formed a perspective for me--and that's why I argued that a more fully aware appreciation of dessert and pastry chefs embraces some sense that interesting and innovative desserts existed, uhmm...previously...and that there are consummately professional and talented pastry chefs working very personally, very individually, within traditional frameworks and also within avant-garde frameworks.

Let me ask a question--who remembers the very first time they saw a recipe or a menu involving avocado in dessert? The first time I saw chocolate with avocado was in Herme's 1997 book, for instance.

Steve Klc

Pastry chef-Restaurant Consultant

Oyamel : Zaytinya : Cafe Atlantico : Jaleo

chef@pastryarts.com

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Toronto, about...uhm, three years ago, at the vegan/vegetarian restaurant Fressen. Their signature dessert is a chocolate terrine made with avocado instead of cream. I thought it was quite good, but very, very filling -- a dessert that REALLY eats like a meal. Only I'd already had my meal! :biggrin:

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With lime-clilantro sorbet, citrus salad, an a sweet spiced paper thin very crispy tortilla. Probably 1998. In fact i remember being interseted, as i was only 18 at the time. I guess that i am really used to these type of desserts, as that is what i have "grown up with".

Cory Barrett

Pastry Chef

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