All Photos by Lauren Weisenthal
Cold temperatures can limit our produce choices, but citrus comes into season just in time to save the day. I’ve been featuring a variety of winter fruit pies for my column over at Serious Eats, including the Key Lime Pie pictured above, and the banana cream and lemon meringue pies below. Click through for full posts and recipes.
All photos by Lauren Weisenthal
A few weeks back, I did a post for my column Sweet Techniques over at Serious Eats about how to make orangettes. Even though I’m not a big fan of the chocolate on orange flavor combination (I think it has something to do with my aversion to those chocolate oranges that you see in the drugstores around Christmastime), I did enjoy the opportunity to temper chocolate for the first time in a while, and I love the look of the finished product. To make your own, check out my post over at SE.
All photos by Lauren Weisenthal
Leading up to Christmas, I’ve been doing some new techniques posts over at Serious Eats. There are some slideshows to help folks through the process of making a classic French yule log cake, the Bouche de Noel.
My favorite part of this cake is, of course, the mushroom meringues. I love Maida Heatter’s recipe in her Book of Great Desserts.
Speaking of Christmas candy, I also had a lot of fun messing around with recipes for torrone, the Italian nougat candy. Watch for that recipe over on Serious Eats on Monday. Merry, Happy!
All photos by Lauren Weisenthal
Caramel Apple Pie
Bourbon Pumpkin Pie
Bacon Mince Meat Pie
Sweet Potato Pie
Cranberry Walnut Pie
I did a week of pies for Thanksgiving over at Serious Eats last week. Be sure to click through for the recipes!
All photos by Lauren Weisenthal
Over at Serious Eats this week, I featured a couple of pumpkin pies for Thanksgiving. In the photo above you can check out the Pumpkin Mousse Pie, and below a Classic Pumpkin Pie. Both versions are similar in flavor, but the mousse pie has a much lighter consistency. Follow the links to the full article and recipes, and watch for a special edition of Pie of the Week – featuring five days of pie in a row! My rolling pin is getting pretty fatigued.
All photos by Lauren Weisenthal
It’s been a while since I’ve written here, because I’ve been busy writing two columns over at Serious Eats for their Sweets blog. One is a column called Sweet Technique, where I talk about techniques in the pastry world and break them down step-by-step in photo slideshows. The other is called Pie of the Week, which is pretty much how it sounds. Here are some photos of the pies I’ve created for the blog so far:
There’s one every week, so check them out each Thursday! And, there will be even more leading up to Thanksgiving!
On Wednesday it will be two months since my last post. I love this blog and it’s readers, and I’m not feeling great about the fact that I’ve neglected it for so long.
Here’s what’s been going on:
- I’m getting married! In just under three weeks. I’ve been trying to play it cool and pretend that wedding planning is no big deal, but IT IS. I’m not having fun with it. It’s really not my bag. I just want the day to come already!
- (Probably more relevant to the blog) I’ve got a (full time) (paying) job at an awesome neighborhood restaurant. I’ve been put in charge of their pastry menu. It’s dizzying. It’s making me bonkers. It’s amazing. It’s exhausting. I can’t wait to tell you about it.
I’m not going to make any bold statements along the lines of “I promise to write” or “watch for the next post on Wednesday”. But know that I miss it here and I miss hearing from the people who take the time to read, and that, more likely than not, will have me coming back again more often, especially after life settles down a bit.
See you soon!
This post is an installment from the ongoing Dessert FourPlay project, in which I prepare and write about all of the desserts in Dessert FourPlay: Sweet Quartets from a Four-Star Pastry Chef
I just have to reiterate, it’s so good to be back. Back to blogging (although still working through the issues that have caused all the pictures from the past six months to go missing), and also, back to Brooklyn, where I’m picking up shifts at my beloved Brooklyn restaurant while I look for my next internship opportunity. I’m delighted to report that for the first time, I’m getting paid for the work that I’m doing. Officially, one year after leaving my desk job and almost one year after starting at the French Culinary Institute, I’m cooking “professionally”.
It’s reassuring that there are some constants shared by my two restaurants so far, as the chefs at both the ritzy, Michelin-starred Manhattan restaurant and the humble Brooklyn kitchen grabbed onto the big summer season opener, rhubarb, with gusto. (At the former, a certain very famous executive chef burst into the pastry kitchen one morning and demanded “zee sexy rhubarb!” for a spring photoshoot – these are the moments to which we unpaid students cling) And while I’ve waited until it was almost too late in the waning rhubarb season, I couldn’t resist the urge to pay homage to the vegetable I’ve come to love as one of the greatest pastry ingredients of all time.
There are several rhubarb recipes in the book, but I selected this one because of the unique ways it showcases the rhubarb, first as a vehicle for acidity and sweetness in the form of a pickle, and also a mellow version, full of earthy wine-poached flavors. The best thing for me about both kinds was the pleasant opportunity to eat rhubarb nearly raw and still crispy.
This post is an installment from the ongoing Dessert FourPlay project, in which I prepare and write about all of the desserts in Dessert FourPlay: Sweet Quartets from a Four-Star Pastry Chef
These photos are almost two months old. That’s about the length of time I’ve been experiencing problems with my website that have kept me from being able to post.
Directly after my big I’M BACK!!! announcement, I began having problems related to a server crashing that continue to plague the site even now. For a while there I was worried that I’d never see the EVK logo again, but thanks to the tech team, it’s back. There are still problems; if you scroll down, you’ll probably notice that I’m missing four whole pages worth of photos. I’m not going to keep talking about it because it makes me emotional, but in a few weeks I hope to have all of those photos back up on the site.
But more to the point, a long long time ago, in my humble kitchen in the East Village of New York City, I make this frozen treat from Dessert FourPlay
Back at the beginning of March I made two beautiful masterpieces for a dinner party from Dessert FourPlay
So, what do I have to say for myself?
My devoted readers may recall, three months ago, I began working as an intern in the pastry kitchen of a big, fancy, highly-acclaimed Manhattan restaurant. For a while I sucessfully balanced my internship with class at the French Culinary Institute, some freelance projects, planning my wedding, and even some (paid!!!) shifts back at my beloved Brooklyn restaurant. Then, all of a sudden, I just couldn’t get it all done. The fun ingredient scavenger hunts became a drain, heck, standing on my two feet for one minute longer than necessary became a drain, and soon, I stopped cooking at home all together. Making fancy desserts at home was probably the last thing I wanted to be doing, given that I was spending most of my waking hours working in other peoples’ kitchens doing just that.
Now I’m back, baby!
I just finished my internship at the fancy Manhattan restaurant and I’m taking a week, or maybe two, to reflect on where I want to go next. I’m using my free time to get back into my own kitchen to work on some exciting projects, one of which is the resurrection of the Dessert FourPlay project.
We may have missed blogging through the best days of the citrus season, but I saw rhubarb at the Union Square Greenmarket last Saturday, a sign of good things soon to come. Making its debut in the spring, rhubarb is the gateway drug of our local produce, an amazing dessert component in and of itself, and a sign that soon enough we’ll be enjoying berries and stone fruits from farms upstate. Chef Johnny Iuzzini has it all covered, and I hope that you won’t miss a moment of the bounty.
Next up: Key Lime Parfait ~ Graham Cracker Sable
