Dessert University - Couverture rigide

Mesnier, Roland

Couverture rigide

ISBN 10 : 0743223179 ISBN 13 : 9780743223171

Editeur : Simon & Schuster, 2004

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INTRODUCTION

Devoted to Dessert

Ever since I was a boy growing up in the very small town of Bonnay in France, I have had a deep admiration for fine pastry and a curiosity about how it is made. On my way to school each morning, I would pass the local bakery, where I would peek in and see the red-hot coals of the oven. I would inhale the aroma of fresh yeast and baking bread as I walked to my classes. My family had an account at the bakery, and it was my job to bring home a loaf for lunch every day. In addition to bread, this bakery made beautiful croissants, and one day I found them irresistible. I requested one and ate it on my way home. When my mother got the bill at the end of the month, she was shocked. Money was tight, and croissants were not in the budget. But she forgave me eventually. As it turns out, sampling croissants on my way home was as much a part of my education as the lessons I learned in school.

At the age of twelve I took a summer job at a nearby pastry shop where my older brother was already well established. At fourteen I began a more formal apprenticeship that lasted for three years. From there it was a long and exciting journey to the kitchen of the White House, where I served as Executive Pastry Chef for twenty-five years. In all that time, my desire to learn and to improve my skills has not diminished. I have also become a teacher myself, passing on the lessons I have learned to a new generation of pastry chefs training in the United States.

This book is the result of those years of studying, working, and teaching. I am happy and proud to share the techniques and recipes that I have refined during the course of my career. Making wonderful desserts and serving them to kings, queens, presidents, and statesmen was a source of joy and satisfaction for me. I hope that you will derive just as much pleasure, and feel the same sense of accomplishment when you serve dessert to family and friends.

MY EDUCATION IN PASTRY

From my very early days as a kitchen apprentice, I devoted myself entirely to learning everything I could about making desserts. My first teacher was my older brother Jean, who let me hang around and help out in his pastry shop to see if I would like the work. A formal apprenticeship in a larger town followed. The hours were long, my master was stern, and the salary was next to nothing, but at the end of three years I felt only the urge to travel the world and understand more about this fascinating art.

If I had not been truly committed to becoming a chef, I would have been discouraged by the hard life of a pastry assistant. My next job, at a very fine shop in Hanover, Germany, paid so little that I barely had enough money to cover my rent and the cost of getting to work. I had about 25 cents a day budgeted for food. On my way home at night I would stop and play the slot machine at a coffee shop. If I won, I would buy dinner. If I lost, I'd eat the apple that I had taken from the kitchen. For a year I fantasized about the cold cuts on display in the window of a delicatessen nearby. When I received a small bonus at the end of my time at the shop, my first thought was, "Watch out, Cold Meat Platter, here I come!" But I left with extreme gratitude toward the chef because he was the one who really taught me the foundations of good pastry. It was by his side that I learned how to bake all kinds of basic cakes and cookies. Here, also, I learned how to work with chocolate to make a variety of classic candies and glossy decorations.

I moved to Hamburg next, to a family-owned pastry shop and tearoom famous for its marzipan. At Christmastime the shop looked like a fabulous fairyland, decorated with every kind of marzipan figurine imaginable. I loved working with marzipan, copying the traditional pieces and experimenting with new shapes. The shop became like home to me, so it was with great sadness that I forced myself to leave. But I knew that there was more to learn before I could ever run a kitchen of my own.

I arrived at the kitchen of the Savoy Hotel in London, clutching my letters of recommendation but speaking no English. This was the place where all of the really ambitious young chefs wanted to work. The quality of the food and of the service in the hotel restaurant was unbelievable, unmatched by any other establishment at the time. All desserts were made to order and assembled tableside. A Peach Melba, probably the simplest dessert on the extensive menu, became a full-scale production at the Savoy. First, a peach was carefully chosen from the storeroom, dropped in boiling water to remove its skin, and pitted so that it remained whole. It was placed in a glass bowl, and that bowl was placed on top of a silver bowl of crushed ice. A portion of ice cream was placed in another glass bowl over ice. The maître d' would carry the peach, ice cream, melba sauce, whipped cream, and almonds out to the diner on a huge silver tray lined with a white linen napkin and assemble the dessert, topping the peach with as much or as little of the melba sauce, whipped cream, and almonds as the diner desired. I carry so many lessons with me from the Savoy about choosing quality ingredients and preparing them meticulously. I also learned much about presentation and the theatricality of tableside service that made dessert truly exciting. As a result of my experience at the Savoy, my desserts absolutely must be beautiful and presented with a flourish if possible, because I like to hear "oohs and aahs" when they are brought to the table.

The head chef at the Savoy was an amazing manager who inspired a staff of about eighty chefs with his gentlemanly and calm manner. He was demanding but fair. If you made a mistake he would certainly let you know, but as soon as he was finished reprimanding you, there were no hard feelings and you got back to work. We tried hard to please him, not because we were afraid of him but because we wanted to live up to his standards and become better chefs ourselves. All these years later, if I am struggling to keep my cool in the kitchen when things are going wrong, I remember how this exemplary chef was able to focus on fixing mistakes and then move on.

After making desserts and observing the head chef at the Savoy for quite a while, I was ready to be a head pastry chef. I left London for the Princess Hotel in Bermuda and a kitchen of my own. Any sense of complacency I had about knowing it all was immediately shaken by the new climate, which made me rethink many of the tricks and techniques I had learned in Europe. Through hard work and ingenuity, I was able to produce the desserts I had promised. The experience taught me that no matter how expert I thought I was in pastry and baking, there was always more to learn. This is a lesson that I still carry with me. Knowing that I don't know it all, and wanting to learn something new every day, has made me a better cook and a better teacher.

BECOMING A TEACHER

Running my own kitchen made me think about how to teach my staff the things they needed to know. I discovered that I enjoyed teaching almost as much as I enjoyed making desserts. When the Greenbrier Hotel in West Virginia called to ask if I would like to lead some pastry courses for guests and apprentices during my time off from the Princess, I had my first formal opportunity to teach. When I moved to the Homestead resort in Hot Springs, Virginia, I continued to run dessert seminars for guests and kitchen apprentices. Remembering my own training, I always demanded that my students master the basics before moving on to more complicated desserts. I was very proud if they left my class able to make a perfect crème caramel or genoise.

In 1979 I was hired by Rosalynn Carter to be the Pastry Chef at the White House. I had applied for the job at the urging of some Washington-based guests of the Homestead who had enjoyed my desserts, but I really had no reason to think that I had a chance. I drove up to Washington for an interview with the First Lady, and after a brief chat, she asked me when I could start! I cannot tell you how shocked I was to realize that all of my studying and working had led to a job making desserts for the President of the United States. I had come a long way from Bonnay.

Working at the White House was a delight. Every day was something new. It was a great challenge, but also a great opportunity, to have to come up with a different dessert for each state dinner, White House function, and First Family event. I felt that my desserts were on view to the world, and I wanted them to be beautiful as well as delicious. It was at the White House that I developed a personal style, refining my ideas about decorating and garnishing until I was satisfied that my desserts were a pleasure to look at as well as to eat.

It seemed only natural to share with aspiring pastry chefs what I had learned before and what I was still learning. I had visited the new professional schools for chefs that were being established around the country and was excited by what I saw. I thought it would be wonderful to teach pastry arts to committed students at a real school, where the subject was taken seriously and there was time and space to learn without having to meet the demands of pastry shop or restaurant business.

I was quite busy at the White House, but when the director of L'Académie de Cuisine in Maryland approached me about developing a professional pastry training program, I eagerly said yes. At the time, there were only a couple of such programs in the United States. Here was a once-in-a-lifetime chance to influence the way desserts would be made in the future. While designing the curriculum, I thought long and hard about what tomorrow's pastry chefs would need to know. In my off-hours I taught this course. It is still being taught today by a former student, and hundreds of its graduates now work in prestigious restaurant and hotel kitchens around the country.

Although I was on call at the White House twenty-four hours a day (it was not unheard of for me to be summoned to the pastry kitchen at 2 A.M. to make a last-minute cake for the President to carry onto Air Force One first thing in the morning), I continued to teach both professional and amateur cooking classes whenever I could. On my days off, I would show an auditorium full of future pastry chefs the tricks of covering a globe of ice cream with hot caramel to create an autumn dessert that looks like a pumpkin. Or I would demonstrate some tricks for making the perfect blueberry muffin to a group of avid weekend bakers. To be honest, teaching was not entirely selfless. Working with eager students, watching them learn, and feeling their enthusiasm often gave me the energy and inspiration I needed to do a good job at the White House.

After cooking at the White House for twenty-five years, I wanted very much to write a book for home cooks. The idea is not as odd as it might sound at first. After all, I devoted a large portion of my working life to making dessert for an American family. Even when the President and First Lady were entertaining hundreds of people, they were still doing so in their home. And a large part of my job was to make the First Family and their guests feel at home. Writing this book has allowed me to refine my ideas about desserts made at home. I have learned so much, and I hope you will too.

A FEW THINGS I HAVE LEARNED ABOUT MAKING GREAT DESSERTS

My dearest hope is to pass on the general principles of good dessert-making revealed to me by my best teachers. In brief, here are five golden rules that have guided me in the kitchen and that inform the rest of this book. They may seem obvious, but it is surprising how many times they are ignored in professional and home kitchens, with sad results.

LEARN THE BASICS AND THEN PRACTICE, PRACTICE, PRACTICE

You can't become a good dessert chef without a solid knowledge of the basics and a lot of experience with your recipes. Don't be discouraged if the first time you whip egg whites they dry out and collapse. Try again. It's a wise idea to perfect your technique before you attempt a Floating Island. Cooking is a practical art. Even if you have a good, detailed recipe to guide you, you still need hands-on experience to truly understand the way the ingredients should come together into a dessert. Perfection isn't an accident -- it's the result of taking care and learning from your previous mistakes.

RESPECT THE CLASSICS

Classic recipes are the foundation of dessert-making. There is a lot to learn by making a Chocolate Petit Pot, Apple Tart, or Marjolaine. I am the first one to embrace innovation in the kitchen, but only if it is informed by the past. Take, for example, crème brûlée. I must have tried ten different variations on the basic recipe before I developed my own way of making this dessert. And only after I was satisfied with my version of Vanilla Crème Brûlée did I attempt to develop variations such as Orange Crème Brûlée and Champagne Crème Brûlée with Green Grapes. One of the reasons that I am so confident about the recipes in this book is that all are relatives (however distant) of venerable recipes, and all use time-tested techniques that really work.

VALUE ECONOMY AND SIMPLICITY

I hate to waste time, energy, and ingredients. There is no way I could have produced the number of high-quality desserts that I did at the White House, usually by myself or with just one assistant, if I had not worked with maximum efficiency. If there is a quick way to do something, I will always choose it. If I can think of a way to cut out steps in order to save time, I do so. Nothing makes me happier than figuring out a way to use one mixing bowl instead of two, to save on cleanup time.

My biggest pet peeve is a recipe loaded down with unnecessary ingredients that add nothing more than expense and effort. To me a recipe is truly successful when its ingredient list is pared down so that it contains only the ingredients that truly contribute to its success.

FOCUS ON FLAVOR

This is, after all, what dessert is about. Fresh, natural flavor is the most important quality in any dessert. I am not concerned with richness for its own sake. I prefer a tart filled with plain yogurt, fresh fruit, and a drizzle of red clover honey to one weighted down by heavy pastry cream. A terrine made with lime sorbet, vodka parfait, and frozen raspberries appeals to me more than a leaden chocolate cake. I carefully choose my ingredients and flavor combinations so that the finished dessert will refresh rather than weight you down, no matter how caloric it really is. At many points in the book, I will suggest how to choose ingredients and design your own desserts so that they are as flavorful as possible.

BE AN ARTIST: DEVELOP YOUR TALENT

With the right inspiration, anyone can be creative. Everyone has talent. Dessert is an opportunity to make something beautiful as well as delicious. This doesn't mean that you have to garnish everything with chocolate curlicues or spun sugar bows. It can mean arranging a fruit salad with contrasting colors and shapes that please the eye as well as the palate, or taking the extra step of dusting shortbread cookies with confectioners' sugar and running them under the broiler to give them a beautiful caramelized glaze.

USING THIS BOOK

When I am teaching in the classroom, I try very hard to stick to the essentials and not overwhelm students with unnecessary detail. If I am giving a lesson on rolling out pie dough, I don't throw out a lot of numbers about the protein content of every different kind of flour. If I am teaching a lesson on tempering chocolate, I don't discourse on the discovery of cacao plants in the 16th c...

Présentation de l'éditeur :

As Executive Pastry Chef at the White House for almost twenty-five years, Roland Mesnier has been responsible for creating thousands of elegant, delicious confections and dazzling desserts for hundreds of state dinners and family occasions. An accomplished teacher as well as a master chef, he now shares his expertise with home cooks in Dessert University.

This beautifully illustrated volume is a complete course in making the full spectrum of spectacular sweets—from breakfast pastries, cookies, and pies to fresh-fruit desserts, frozen confections, and cakes. Recipes in each chapter are organized from the simplest to the most complex, and Chef Mesnier walks you through each step, pointing out common mistakes and offering insights on technique gained from his years as a professional. Most of these recipes need few special ingredients and almost no fancy equipment; nearly everything can be purchased at a well-stocked supermarket, department store, or kitchen supply store. Chef Mesnier includes tips on techniques, ingredients, and serving suggestions, and offers home cooks practical advice, such as how to fill and use a pastry bag and the best way to whip egg whites. A resource list is also included, so cooks can find the more unusual ingredients they need to make these delectable creations.

Mesnier starts off with his fresh-fruit desserts, including uniquely wonderful recipes such as Bananas in Raspberry Cream, Blueberry Fool, and Poached Peaches with Chestnut Mousse. He moves on to creamy custards, puddings, soufflés, mousses and Bavarians, ice creams, meringues, crêpes, and breakfast treats (including buttery brioche and croissant doughs). Chef Mesnier's cookie and bar recipes will fill your cookie jar with such treats as Chocolate Chip Cookies, Almond Crescents, Orange Butter Cookies, Brownies, and Florentine Squares. There are sweet and savory tarts, and cakes ranging from the simple (Lemon Pound Cake) to the unusual (Peanut Butter and Jelly Roulade Cake) to the sophisticated (Chocolate Champagne Mousse Cake). Ambitious home cooks can even try their hand at making chocolate candy and sugar decorations. A chapter on syrups, sauces, and other dessert components completes the book.

More than fifty black-and-white line drawings throughout illustrate Chef Mesnier's instructions for the more complicated recipes, and there are sixteen stunning color photographs of finished desserts.

Home cooks and professionals spend hundreds of dollars in formal cooking classes to learn what masters like Roland Mesnier have to teach. In Dessert University, Chef Mesnier has distilled the experience and expertise of an extraordinary career into one accessible, user-friendly volume. Whether you're a novice who has never picked up a rolling pin or an accomplished cook looking to hone and enhance your skills, this is truly a book you cannot do without.

À propos de cette édition

• Éditeur: Simon & Schuster
• Date d'édition: 2004
• ISBN 10: 0743223179
• ISBN 13: 9780743223171
• Reliure: Relié
• Nombre de pages: 608