November 22, 2011
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!
November 5, 2011
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:
Blueberry Pie
Chocolate Silk Pie
Creamsicle Pie
Sour Cherry Pie
Strawberry Rhubarb Pie
Sweet Cherry Pie
Peach Pie
Make-Your-Own-Sundae Pie
Pear and Frangipane Pie
Coconut Custard Pie
Plum Meringue Pie
Cheddar-Crusted Apple Pie
Pecan Pie
There’s one every week, so check them out each Thursday! And, there will be even more leading up to Thanksgiving!
June 11, 2010
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
by Johnny Iuzzini. For more on this project, click here.
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.
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March 7, 2010
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 by Johnny Iuzzini. For more on this project, click here.
Oh. My. God. I just loved making this so much. First off, there is the doughnut component. As in, the dessert item that brings my two favorite culinary worlds together – bread and pastry, and throws in my favorite guilty pleasure – fried dough rolled in some sort of sweet granulated substance, just for good measure. Then there’s the subtle, mellow, slightly sweet and oh, so creamy cheese filling. And, the bright flavor from confit of meyer lemon. Yes, this is sunshine and light and guilt and cheese (!) all on one plate.
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March 1, 2010
We’re in the home stretch of winter, but it sure doesn’t feel like that here in New York, with another foot of snow getting dumped down just before the weekend. And while I can debate forever with the snow lovers, weighing the virtues and the pitfalls of having such a large amount of snow around, setting aside the tiny window of city beautification, no one can argue that it sucks when the sewers get clogged, causing mass confusion for each street crossing on every corner. Bah! humbug! to that. Even folks rocking those country-chic Hunters I’m seeing everywhere can’t escape from the lakes of slush unsplashed.
Why do I rant on about this? Well, in spite of the slushy walking conditions, I had promises to keep and dinner to make for two semi-celebrity guests: Paul, the incredibly gifted designer who is responsible for giving this site its face, and his lovely wife Jen. When selecting the menu, this recipe spoke to my favorite fun fact about the couple – they met, unbelievably, on spring break in Cancun, and ten years later, they’re one of the happiest couples you’re ever likely to meet. Rum and coke ice cream? Tropical caramelized bananas? Perfect, no? But back to the slush – this recipe had some doozies on the shopping list, so there I was, running around from store to store, covered in slush.
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February 24, 2010
Since I love the whole concept of soup for dessert, I was looking forward to trying out this concoction. The creamy, dark chocolate soup (not to be confused with the much-coveted cartons of sweet chocolate-y bliss that we remember from grade school) topped with a foam made from Devonshire (Devon) cream, and whimsical cocoa puffs enrobed in milk chocolate did not disappoint. So let’s get down to it, shall we?
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February 15, 2010
So yesterday was Valentine’s Day. Was it just me, or did it seem like people made more of a fuss about it than usual this year? My feelings on this Hallmark holiday can best be described as love/hate. One the one hand, all that pink and red crap, the blatant consumerism masquerading as love, and the starry-eyed, cooing couples who seem to think that grotesque displays of PDA are suddenly acceptable… all of that is completely off-putting. On the other hand, I have some great memories of nights inspired by Valentine’s Day backlash; wine-fueled all-girls dinner parties, slasher movie marathons, defiant nights out in the Village with every unattached friend I’d ever had. This year, the fact that Brian and I cooked a decadent dinner of caviar potatoes and cracked a bottle of amarone had nothing to do with the fact that it happened to be Valentine’s Day, and everything to do with us seizing the opportunity to spend a nice night at home together – something our schedules haven’t permitted us to do since New Year’s Day.
When I selected two chocolate desserts (this, and also, the Chocolate Soup – post coming soon) for the Dessert FourPlay project this week, it much less a coincidence: I did it, unabashedly, as a tribute to the holiday that I so love to hate. When I set out to blog the whole book, I knew that I would eventually have to make this, the most “conventional” dessert, at some point. What I hadn’t anticipated, however, was how much I would enjoy doing it. But enough of my blathering.
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February 9, 2010
I am so excited to be posting installment #1 of the Dessert FourPlay project! It took me a while to decide which recipe would make the best opener, but after narrowing it down by season and deciding that I wanted to save chocolate for next week’s valentine’s day post, I decided to focus on the light and bright flavors of the citrus salad. It seemed like an appropriate starter.
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December 17, 2009
Whenever I put a variety of cookies together, I try really hard to include something for every kind of cookie taste. For example, I always include some kind of buttery and crumbly sable, something uber-chocolate, something gooey, something jammy and fruity, and something nutty and spiced. I’m never short on ideas for these categories, but I always freeze when it comes to bars. I love including a bar cookie, no question, but with the dizzying variety, from cheesecakes to lemon bars to brownies, it’s almost another food category entirely and I just can’t decide.
This year was no exception, and an exhaustive research session with my stacks of cookbooks only left me feeling more bewildered. That’s when I decided to combine two of my favorite recipes of all time, this one, and this one (which resulted in EVK recently being featured on Saveur.com). The cookie love-child that resulted was absolutely worth my angst.
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December 4, 2009
This Thanksgiving, for the first time in my thirty year long pie-eating career, I had a pumpkin pie breakthrough. Each year of my life someone has baked one and I always partake, unable to resist what I’d imagined and build up in my mind as a creamy, airy manifestation of pure pumpkin flavor. And year after year, I’m met with disappointing first bites that are some variation of overly-spiced, too-sweet, oily, or lumpy-textured pies (many of which are made by otherwise great cooks). And so, I’d come to accept that what I hoped pumpkin pie to be was not actually what it was.
But for Thanksgiving this year, the pumpkin pie gods were smiling down on me. As the only guest at the table who has logged over two months in pastry school and done some time in a real restaurant kitchen, I was put in charge of desserts. In my role as pastry chef of Thanksgiving, I seized the opportunity to create the pumpkin pie of my dreams, with the help of this book
.
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