Category: Pastry

Carême wasn’t without his critics. One of them was another of the world’s great food innovators, Antoine Beavilliers. Beauvilliers is credited with inventing the first “true” restaurant, which is to say, an eating establishment that combined food with décor, expert service and a top-notch wine cellar. His restaurant, La Grande Taverne de Londres was the place to be seen in Paris both before and after the Revolution (it was closed during it), and was frequented by Brillat-Savarin, the gastronome and writer whose famous quote “Tell me what you eat and I’ll tell you who you are” appears at the beginning of Iron Chef episodes.

One of Carême’s great legacies was the hierarchy he developed for French sauces. Prior to his arrival on the scene there were literally hundreds of sauces in the French culinary canon, many of them absurdly elaborate, containing dozens of ingredients. At Talleyrand’s urging, Carême took on the project of organizing and simplifying them. The result was a system based on four “mother sauces” from which all others were derived. They were:

Antonin Carême was, how do you say in your country, a very interesting fellow. Yes, he may have been responsible for vol-au-vent, Napoleons and other pastries we know today, but these are only a sneeze in ze bucket when you consider what he did not just for French food, but for European cuisine as a whole.

“Lifted by the breeze” or thereabouts. “A waft of wind” is more precise. The term is evocative of the ultra-light and airy puff pastry case. Ironically that case is all-too-often stuffed with an overly heavy filling. Worst case scenario, the pastry case itself is thick and heavy, and the whole thing sinks in the gut like the SS Carpathia after a couple of German torpedoes. All of which is to say that if you’ve never had a good vol-au-vent you’re in for a treat.

I must have some readers planning to do some fancy entertaining this holiday season, because I’ve had three requests for these recently. Most people have seen vols-au-vent before: little (or large) puff pasty cases that hold fillings of various kinds, usually savory. Any ideas on such fillings — sweet or savory — are welcome. I’ve never done these before with homemade puff pastry, and frankly find the prospect a little intimidating. Which means this should be fun!

When I’m quiet it generally means one of two things: I’m traveling or I’m having trouble with a recipe. Shoo-fly pie has turned out to be one of those problem children that I didn’t expect. It’s a really weird concoction, basically a thin mixture of water and molasses with some flour and soda stirred in. The idea is that the combination of the bubbles (from the soda) and gelatinizing flour thickens the filling during baking and the result is pie. I’ve mostly achieved that, the problem being that the filling so thin at the outset that it penetrates the crust before it can thicken, creating a sticky film that’s not only unappetizing to look at, it sticks the pie to the pan. So I’m chasing down some old recipes, the ones that have neither any added sugar or extra fat, which only seem to exacerbate the problem. I’m headed back to Amish country, in other words. See you back here shortly!

It’s getting to be that time of year. Time to throw out the holiday spices you used last year to make your panettone and gingerbread and buy new ones, especially if you bought them pre-ground. You need new cloves, nutmeg, cinnamon, allspice, cardamom, all of that. Expensive I know but you can buy the cheap […]

My bookshelf is getting crowded these days as the publishing world has started taking an interest in me. It’s nice. Though as an aside I have to say I feel conflicted when I get a book that I don’t especially like, since I don’t like to waste precious keyboard time writing negative reviews. It’s a waste of energy for everyone. So I just let those titles sit there…and later feel guilty about it.

That’s not the case with How to Be a Breadhead if you were wondering. It could be that I was inspired to write a few lines about guilt since I’m a Catholic and this book was written by a monk. The subconscious does weird things. I loved this little book. It’s a classic clerical project: full of rough edges like absent photos (for which there are apologies), but also good humor and refreshing humility.