APRIL 2019 CLIPS CIRCULATION TOTAL: 26,303,581
APRIL 2019 CLIPS CIRCULATION TOTAL: 10,495,670
May/June 2019
| Pastry |
full PlATe Pastry chefs are getting creative to inspire customers to open their wallets and pull out their phones. | By Rob Benes
photo credits: above, Grove Bay hospitality
Pastry chefs have been evolving plated desserts over the past several years — and for several good reasons. First, the financial part of dessert is really hard. Restaurants are known for razor thin margins, and dessert tends to offer one of the thinnest. To get customers to order more desserts, pastry chefs need use new flavor combinations, apply new techniques, use alternative emulsifiers and, above all, deliver great flavor. Second, consumers are shifting away from the traditional view of dessert as a post-meal occasion and are increasingly defining dessert as an anytime occasion, according to Technomic’s most recent Dessert Consumer Trend Report. Third, plated desserts now need eyecatching designs as well as great flavor. According to Aimee Harvey, managing editor at Technomic, social media is one of the seven key food trends for 2019. She writes, “Instagram and other photo-sharing apps have revolutionized the food industry. Restaurants have even created food and beverage with social media in mind.”
So how can pastry chefs create a plated dessert worthy enough to increase sales, meet anytime dessert cravings and inspire diners to take and share photos? Here are five pastry chefs who take all of these elements into account. ryan boya, executive pastry chef, Artscience culture lab and café, cambridge, Massachusetts
Boya does some interesting things to his ingredients to add layers of flavors and different textures. “Searing, smoking, sous viding and pickling can add subtle elements to elevate a dessert to make it unique and memorable,” he says. His Scotch and Birch involves using a painter’s wood grain tool to make faux-wood from tempered chocolate. The bark-looking chocolate is filled with dark chocolate and birch crémeux, served with cherry sorbet and garnished with birch beer brownie crumble and smoked butterscotch infused with Laphroaig scotch whisky. The Seared Lemon Cake Above: Corn Pavlova
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| Pastry |
with Bourbon Apple Butter, Lemon Buttercream, Oatmeal Streusel and Pickled Cranberries includes a lemon pound cake infused with lemon simple syrup that’s seared in a pan with butter, which adds warmth, a crisp exterior, and a soft, moist center. Jessica scott, executive pastry chef of barton g, with locations in chicago, new york, and Miami beach, florida
Dallas wynne, stubborn seed, Miami beach, florida
“When plating, I think about how I want flavors to combine,” says Wynne. “I also don’t want to instruct anyone on how to eat a dessert, but I try to place the ingredients in close proximity that go together.” Her Corn Pavlova is a standout. It includes corn custard, blackberries, honey cornbread, butter gelato, candied corn, kettle corn powder, dehydrated mixed berry powder mixed and
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phuong “pq” quach, executive chef at Alexander’s patisserie, Mountain view, california
“People eat with their eyes first,” Quach says, “so desserts not only have to taste good, but they need to look like artwork.” The London Fog includes Earl Grey tea-infused chocolate mousse, almond joconde, and kumquat and mandarinquat confit. Heavy cream and 1% kappa carrageenan are cooked with Earl Grey for a three-day, twice-steeped process that allows natural sweetness of the cream to come through and counteract the tannins from the tea. The thickened cream is whipped and folded into chocolate anglaise to make the mousse. The kumquat and mandarinquat confit takes three days to make by cooking the fruit for six hours a day, adding sugar, straining, cooling and repeating. The result is a marmalade-like mixture with a soft set to match with the mousse. To assemble, the confit are piped into molds and topped with an almond joconde and then frozen. After the inserts are frozen, mousse is poured into a mold, the kumquat/ mandarinquat inserts are pushed into the center and excess mousse is smoothed over and removed. After the mousse has set in the freezer, a blue mirror glaze is poured over. A spider web effect is achieved by using a white glaze made from pectin Above, from left: Ross Evans’ Black Sesame Panna Cotta; London Fog Opposite: Ryan Boya’s Scotch and Birch
photo credits: Spread, left to right: michael pisarri; alexander’s patisserie; artScience culture lab & café
Scott likes to transform savory dishes into something sweet. Take for example her Arancini, where a sweet risotto ball is filled with mango and coated with crumbled orange pound cake. To give the impression of a traditional arancini dish that’s normally plated in a pool of tomato sauce and topped with a basil leaf, she uses strawberry basil consommé with a cinnamon candied basil leaf to garnish. She also likes to present items that look simple but hide impressive surprises. For example, her Old MacDonald’s Farm looks like a corn cob, but when the customer cuts open the dessert, they discover lemon mousse, lemon curd and Madeleine sponge.
dehydrated lime powder, as well as lime supreme and edible flowers.
and water, which is a different viscosity than the blue glaze. When the white glaze touches the blue glaze, it disperses to create the design. The dessert is then set on top of a dark chocolate sable and topped with fresh sliced kumquats and chocolate tuile with cacao nibs. ross evans, executive pastry chef, kuro at the seminole hard rock hotel & casino, hollywood, florida
Evans’ pastry career is rooted in American contemporary kitchens. When he started cooking at Kuro, he learned about Japanese flavor profiles and textures while applying techniques and methods he mastered over the years. The Black Sesame Panna Cotta with ginger gelée, cucumber spheres, nori sponge, pomegranate foam, sesame sands and kuromitsu gel resembles a Japanese garden with unique shapes that create a visual stimulation and excite the palette. Japanese cucumber is found in many sushi rolls, so Evans' challenge was how to capture the cucumber’s flavor, but change its texture. Cucumbers are juiced, calcium lactate is added and the juice is frozen in sphere molds. When frozen, the spheres are dropped in a warm solution of water and sodium alginate, which causes a chemical reaction and results in a membrane being formed around the frozen cucumber sphere. After the membrane is formed, the component is allowed to rest at room temperature, which allows the frozen cucumber sphere to thaw and revert to a liquid. The outer membrane remains intact and is reserved for plating. Ginger — fibrous, acidic and pickled — is usually
paired with sushi. To create a new texture, raw ginger is juiced. Lemon juice is added for more acidity and curtail the spiciness. Gelatin and agar agar are included to slow down the melting when plated. The gelée is poured into a hotel pan and allowed to set. After it’s cooled, the gelée is cut into the square blocks. A pink foam is made from pomegranate juice and soy lecithin with an immersion blender. Nori sponge is made with rehydrated nori, which is folded into a sponge cake base, baked, broken into pieces and dehydrated. Sesame sand is made from white sesame oil that’s blended with tapioca maltodextrin. Gel dots on top of the panna cotta are made by combining kuromitsu, water and 1% agar. After it is boiled and cooled, the mixture is blended to create a smooth gel. rob Benes is a chicago-based hospitality industry writer. he can be reached at robbenes@comcast.net.
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APRIL 2019 CLIPS CIRCULATION TOTAL: 21,386