Pastry externship available in New York

[twodogs]

how are the desserts coming along at cru?

just read the review by andrea strong and while she loved the savories and wine list she made no mention of dessert?

simply curious

cheers

[tan319]

Yeah, that kind of bugged me too.

She's usually very good about pastry chef props.

[akwa]

Dessert program is coming along well. Let that be a lesson in pastry chef press: get used to disappointment.

We have some new things in the works:

Plantation chocolates, myocryo, lecithin, locust bean gum, fruit waters,

blah blah blah.

More important are the philosophy undergirdings:

Level 5 creativity = solitude

[WillieLee]

AKWA "keep it coming!" Lets force NYC to step it up a notch.......

[LaurenT]

Wow I'm really interested in this internship. I'm registered in the intensive pastry course at Le Cordon Bleu in London for next July - October 2005. I have a whole year to get experience and work full time. I'm willing to work at any crazy hours. If you can contact me I'd highly appreciate it. My email address is ImInNewYork247@yahoo.com. Thanks!

[tan319]

Ms. Lauren,

Since akwa is in the process of opening a restaurant, you might get better results if you contact him?

Go get 'em!

(just friendly advice )

[messingeton]

I have a question (or two or three) that I've been itching to ask 'akwa' and the rest of those considered among the avant garde for a while now....

Can you enjoy "regular" food as it is? Can you find pure delight in, say, a grilled cheese sandwich, plain and simple? Or can you not help having your mind wander towards how it can be re-interpreted as a deconstructed sandwich with... I don't know, oddly shaped pieces of toast and cheese foam (a random and probably nonsense example, I know, but I'm typing in a stream of consciousness right now). Do you respect and/or enjoy the work of chefs who believe in respecting ingredients as they are, with as little manipulation as possible? Or do you just find it boring?

[confiseur]

Personally, I like sardines and I love bacon and eggs but not neccasarily as an ice cream flavour.

While neither approving nor disaproving of the avant-garde there does seem to be an awful lot of pretentious tosh around. I can see the point of using beetroot juice for example in a fruit jelly, however the idea of eating :'Trout filled with blackcurrant mousse on minted banana sauce' does not fill me with joy.

Call me an old stick-in-the-mud if you will but I think our avant-garde coleagues would be better advised to learn basic drawing skills before thinking they are the next Picasso.

[tan319]

Guess we're back to the same old story here...

I don't know who's doing the trout dish ( does it really exist?) but, if you read some of the info on people like Ferran Adria, for example, I think Anthony Bourdain did a piece that's somewhere here on eGullet, most of these chefs want to eat a burger or some finger foods, bar snacks, etc., when they're not in the kitchen.

The pastry chefs want a Snickers or a Mars bar or a brownie.

I'm sure all would enjoy a nice grilled cheese sandwich ( that's what I had tonight, as a matter of fact, after I got home from working on a 'Tequila Sunrise' special for tomorrow nights service. Herradurra Silver ice cream, orange sorbet, pomegranate foam, served parfait style, in a glass)

RE: Picasso: I think most of the regarded people know the basics.

There's a great article in the new Food Arts mag about food science and cooking and the standard skeptical(eg. "Picasso") line is addressed by Jose Andreas who likens the feelings this stirs up to "when Galileo announced that the Earth was not the center of the universe or when anyone who knew about medicine was considered a witch".

That may seem as pretentious as people might see the food to be but I think he has a point.

People are influenced by so much around them and for some, going to say, the World Pastry Forum and taking a class with Olivier Bajard and making a big fancy cake like him is where they're at .

Other's, who maybe trained under, say, Pierre Hermes, want to tear that whole thing apart, reconstruct those kinds of flavors using different 'delivery systems', while keeping flavors true, maybe even truer.

For some reason, that latter path seems to really gall people.

Which, in turn, bugs the hell out of me.

[confiseur]

Pierre Herme is certainly not avant-garde a la Adria, Blumenthal etc. (and Tan neither is that delicious sounding Tequila sunrise) You will definately not find him making cabbage flavoured ice-cream or sea-water sorbet.

Creativity is great but putting a banana on top of a burger is not being creative,and the suggestion that those who do not agree with this belong to the flat-earth society shows a certain intolerance.

I quite like being dazzled by science, its being baffled by b******t that bugs me.

[pluto]

It seems to wander off the track of externship but re ag cooking, I personally dont find the label to make sense. "Strange" combinations of ingredients are neither good nor bad, they just reflect the personal experience of the person eating them, more than the person making them. For me the most important thing is that by cooking you are developing a relationship with a guest, that is based primarily on taste. Whether you choose ingredient, technique or philosophy to relate to the guest to me is irrelevant. You could also use love or solitude.

Provoking to provoke does not serve either the chef or the guest.

On a personal note, my most eaten meal is a bacon egg and cheese on a roll with salt pepper and ketchup from any deli in Manhattan. At the moment the best is available on 8th street between 5th and university. Enjoy.

[akwa]

Sorry about posting under wrong log in, but that last pluto was me, akwa.

[tan319]

Pierre Herme is certainly not avant-garde a la Adria, Blumenthal etc. (and Tan neither is that delicious sounding Tequila sunrise) You will definately not find him making cabbage flavoured ice-cream or sea-water sorbet.

Creativity is great but putting a banana on top of a burger is not being creative,and the suggestion that those who do not agree with this belong to the flat-earth society shows a certain intolerance.

I quite like being dazzled by science, its being baffled by b******t that bugs me.

My point was having experience, chops, to do anything in the traditional sense but choosing to use those techniques (and newer) with less typical combinations.

I don't want to clog up akwas internship thread with this stuff, maybe start a new thread or search out the old ones.

There's a few of them.