Q & A with Pastry Chef Pichet Ong

[Wendy DeBord]

I just noticed that the thread we have on your cream puffs was being talked about over here. I do want to mention that I LOVE it. It really is the ideal choux paste, light and it hollows out perfectly, thank-you for sharing it with everyone! I've only made it once so far (but it will be my default choux paste recipe from now on). Mine turned out very moist. Moist in a good way, I don't like choux paste that's dry and like shoe leather. Did I mis-bake mine, does it turn out moist intentionally? When I saw that that thread was active, members were asking each other about the moisture and how to bake them, should they leave the oven door open to cool in the oven, do you poke them to dry them out.... Can you straighten us out please? So, dare I ask.........how in the world did you arrive upon that recipe (tons of experiments or did you get lucky after a few trys)? It's just brilliant! What makes it hollow out so perfectly in comparison to other choux paste recipes?

Oh why I'm thinking of it, can you help us with making custard tarts? We've had several threads on the topic both here in the Pastry & Baking Forum and in our Asian Forum, look here. People have come close, but no one seems to be able to reach perfection on this item. Would you happen to have a winning recipe for this, that you could share?

[Pichet Ong]

I have never made a tiramisu yet!  What is the secret recipe is to a great tiramisu?

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Do you work with sugar and chocolate to make showpiece types of pieces? I feel silly asking you that, it's just that I don't know

O.k. so your on Iron Chef, which Iron Chef do you compete against? What's your ideal secret ingredient, that you know you can out handle your competitor with? What would you prepare (keeping in mind that you've got a time limit to accomplish everything in)?

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I have never made large sugar or chocolate showpieces. I'm not sure what I would do or what my style would be like. A lot of it is artful, and in terms of that, I like abstract expressionism.

Anyone of them would be interesting. I don't know what would be a fun ingredient but the original Iron Chef all had very extravagantly expensive or uncommon ingredients that made the show even more exciting.

[tan319]

We're going to be closing this 'Pichet Ong' edition of P&B FOCUS and all of us here at the EGullet P&B forum would love to thank Pichet for doing the DEMO and FOCUS and for Bond Girls assistance in coordinating Chef Ongs schedule.

Hopefully we'll do this again with Pichet and other pastry chefs to boot.

And hopefully, Pichet will drop in on us every once and awhile ( really, as often as he wants to and can ) and share his thoughts and advice with us here in P&B on our various threads, hip us to new people, all of it!

We'll be closing up the thread later this afternoon, thanks to all for participating!