Beignet

So I have put a new dessert on the menu called "beignets". Using liquid nitrogen I am able to dip scoops of roasted banana ice cream into a beignet batter and fry it. The result is a light crispy beignet filled with frozen banana ice cream. I was somewhat surprised by the customers' feedback. Many of our "old school" diners did not hesitate to tell their servers, "NOW I've been to New Orleans.... (this is how they all started their statements).... and this is NOT a beignet...." So the server would ask..."Oh, I am sorry, but did you not like the dessert?" and to the reply of the diner.. "oh no, it is the best beignet I have ever had." I mean c'mon people! Its banana ice cream filled doughnuts!!!! The beignets are also served with a passion fruit curd, a passion fruit jam, roasted banana-clove puree, clove shortbread, and a butterscotch made with japanese black sugar. This sugar is awesome and goes incredibly well with the flavors of the roasted banana. It is a completely raw and unrefined sugar that is very dark, literally almost black. It has intense molasses and caramel notes and the staff at the restaurant love snacking on it like candy. It makes a great caramel that almost looks burnt because it is so dark, but it tastes perfectly bittersweet.

A great article about Chef Tyler Anderson and Chef Noel Jones from ON20

http://www.ct.com/entertainment/restaurants/nm-ff49dining-20111201,0,7535574.story

Nutella

This is truly my favorite dessert to eat. It is very inspired by my italian-american roots. What is better than nutella on toast? That is the inspiration for this dessert. The baker at the copper beech inn makes the most incredible baguettes I have ever eaten. Seriously. So I wanted to use them in a dessert. I make a cocoa baguette crisp that is the "toast" on the dessert. The main component is a classic italian semi-freddo made with valhrona manjari chocolate. It is served with a valhrona chocolate cremeux, or custard. It also has a rye streusel, a nutella ganache and toasted hazelnuts. In my hometown of New Haven, many of the italian pastry shops use a lot of ricotta cheese in their desserts, especially cannolis. So I make a ricotta gelato using Calabro Ricotta cheese. The cheese making company is literally about a mile away from my house and they arguably make the best ricotta cheese ever. This dish pays homage to all the italian-americans in New Haven who love dessert. Haha.

Pear Dessert

I am very happy with this new dessert I have been working on. It is a bartlett pear and vanilla bean mousse that is aerated with NO2 and then dispense into a vacuum. It is a very aerated and fun to eat mousse. I love CT pears and I am so tired of restaurants poaching them or making crisps with them. I like them barely touched or manipulated. They are delicious with floral flavors such as honey. So in this dessert I serve the mousse with a vanilla-pear pate de fruit that is cut very thin. I serve it with raw pears, an acacia honey foam  and honey flavored kataifi. The kataifi is a form of phyllo dough that is shredded and looks beautiful on a plate and it also goes very well with honey. To add to the floral flavors I made an elderflower sorbet that is flavored with St. Germain liquor. The sorbet is very soft and has a very delicate flavor. The dessert also has a lychee puree. Whenever I eat canned lychees they remind me of more floral canned pears so I thought the combination would be perfect. Pear, vanilla, honey. Simple flavors that remind me of being a kid again.

New Year

So I have been very busy recently and this is why my posts have been seriously lacking. I have left Arrows and beautiful Maine to move back to Connecticut. I love CT and I have missed it dearly. I have recently become pastry chef at The Copper Beech Inn, in beautiful Ivoryton CT. Another new kitchen to create in and i couldn't be happier! Check out Chef Tyler Anderson and his work at thecopperbeechinn.com. He was recently on Food Network's "Chopped" and won the 10 grand! I currently have a three course dessert tasting menu at the restaurant so don't miss it! If you are in CT come check the restaurant out.

Do you know what nougat means...?

At Arrows we have an ongoing funny inside joke. I asked my pastry sous chef if he knew what nougat means a few time without even realizing and now the entire kitchen staff is always asking each other "Do you know what nougat means?" I was looking through an old french cook book and it stated that the word "nougat" was derived from the french saying "Tu nous Gates!", meaning "you are spoiling us!". Children would say it to their old french grandmothers after receiving this treat made from honey, fruit and nuts. I personally love this candy. It pays tribute to the old world cooking of Provence and it really is a classic candy. I try to perfect it everyday and I am very happy every time I make it, even though I have to dedicate 30 minutes of my life to doing it.

Some kitchen stuff....

S'more (revisited)

So..... I love enjoying nostalgic flavors and refining them. I love sherbets, sour patch kids, chunky bars, push pops etc.  So what is more nostalgic than a s'more. So here I was able to develop this dish.  It is a chocolate brownie (extremely nostalgic) topped with a milk chocolate cremeux (pudding). The puree is liquified graham crackers and yes the torched quenelle is marshmallow ice cream. It is inspired by Malcolm's meringue ice cream that was being developed when I was at wd-50. It is made up of egg whites, milk, cream, and various sugars. To keep it from being too "sweet", it has about 10 percent dextrose, as well as glucose. The whites are cooked like a swiss meringue, cooked to 150 degrees F. It is kept emulsified and stabilized by the use of xanthan gum, which also gives ice creams an undesirable "gummy" texture. Thiis "gummy" texture ended up being perfect for this ice cream. The texture is airing yet gummy, exactly like a marshmallow. I tried to get that signature flavor using vanilla extract and salt, but now I just use an artificial marshmallow flavor which is also perfect for the nostalgic feel. It gets aerated by the churning of the ice cream machine. It is churned for about 30 minutes and until it is a very glossy white. And yes! I can torch it!!!

Arrows Garden

So I have been crazy busy raising a family and working so I have been slacking on blogging..... Here are some great pictures of the gardens I walk through every day at work.  Great inspiration.  Instead of buying local just go outside and grow some stuff!

New Dessert - New Menu

So I am very excited to change the menu at Arrows next week.  Right now we have three tasting menus and this dessert is the 7th and final course (before mignardises) on the "Farm and Forage" 7 course menu.   

Chocolate Beet Cake / Dark Chocolate Cremeux / Clove Shortbread / 

Beet-Raspberry Puree / Mascarpone Sorbet

The sixth course is a Tangerine Sherbet served with Extra-Virgin Olive Oil Cake, Tarragon, Meringue, and Tangerine many different textures.

The other desserts in the works are:

Warm Lemon Beignets

Wild Maine Blueberries / Wood Sorrel / Wildflower Honey / Frozen Yogurt

"German Chocolate" Gateau

Dark Chocolate Mousse / Gianduja Ganache / Pecan Coulis / Aerated Coconut Ice Cream 

Check out the website for the full menus!!  arrowsrestaurant.com

Bistro Dessert

"S'more"

Toasted Marshmallow / Liquid Graham Cracker / Cocoa Cracker Crumbs / Jivara Milk Chocolate Ganache / Caramelized Milk Chocolate /

Happy Mom's Day

Took a little experimenting (a.k.a troubleshooting) but these tasty little Hibiscus Macarons made a nice addition to our large selection of mignardises for Mother's Day.  The other mignardises or "give aways" were Matcha Green Tea-Chocolate Truffles, Trail Mix Cookies, Blueberry Sour Patch Kids, Pomelo Confit, Cherry-Kirsch Chocolate Truffles,  Blood Orange Pate-de Fruit, and Almond Brittle.  Happy Mom's Day.

Garden Rhubarb

I have been immensely busy with Mother's Day and the Arrows NYC trip so to unwind a bit I spent some time roaming the Arrows Garden with our gardner Laura. She showed me some product that was ready to utilize and I was immediatly excited to brainstorm some dishes. I raided her box of Shiso that was sprouting and used the amazing anise-y herb for my Lemongrass dessert. (Lemongrass Custard / Brown Sugar Jam / Coconut Ice Cream / Toasted Banana / Shiso) We have a big event at the Yale Club in NYC tomorrow and I had a box of 20 lbs of Rhubarb in the pastry kitchen. The gardner strolls in to give me some edible flowers for service (which were awesome) and looks at me with dismay over the non-local rhubarb. She brings me out to the garden where she has this intensely flavorful, smaller kind of rhubarb.

Just another reason why I love having practically a farm outside my pastry kitchen. With just some sugar and a little bit of hibiscus I made a delicious jam that is used for a filling for our yeast-risen doughnuts.

By the way, the leaves are indeed poisonous.

Similar Creativity

Now motorcycles and chocolates may not have a lot in common but the passion and creativity is very similar.  I love motorcycles, ahem choppers, and my very close friend Leo has mastered the art of chopper building.  He is currently working on my Sportster and he is more dedicated at his art than anyone I know. His passion for creativity is just as inspiring as any painter or artist.  I will soon figure out a dessert that is inspired by raw metal and perfect welds, but in the mean time check out his blog

http://leospeedshop.blogspot.com/

Dondurma (Turkish Ice Cream)

The chefs/owners of Arrows, Mark and Clark came to me and asked me if I could make the famous nougat-like Turkish Ice Cream, Dondurma, for the tasting menu. They had eaten some when they visited Turkey and they loved the pliable ice cream that you can actually cut with a knife and fork. So when they asked me, I immediately thought it would be a daunting task, but I became very enthusiastic on trying to re-create it. I ran into the first problem after doing some extensive research, which was that the main ingredient Salep Flour was illegal to export out of Turkey. Salep flour comes from wild Turkish orchids and it contains a hydrocolloid that produces the stretchy, chewy ice cream. The "ice cream" has to be worked for a while to make it stretchy. It was almost like the way you would to make gluten develop in a bread dough.  Vendors in Turkey beat and pound the hell out of it with long rods to get the consistency right, like below…

So unless I found a Turkish pastry black market, I would have to find a new way to make it. I first tried to use a combination of guar gum and low acyl gellan. I was reading another blog and the chef was trying to make an ice cream that can be "bruleed", similar to Heston Blumenthal's flaming sorbet.  He said the final product was similar to Dondurma so I figured I would give it a shot.  I first made the base by shearing in the gums into the milk and cream mixture. I made the base like any other ice cream base but I made it into a fluid gel. The base looked promising and seemed like it would be some what "stretchy".  I churned the base and piped it into a container and then proceeded to beat the mixture like hell. The ice cream did not become anything like Dondurma, but it was chewy and did not melt quickly. The amount of gums actually kept it from melting for quite a while, almost 20 minutes.  I tried it again after speaking with my friend James (the pastry chef at On20 in Hartford CT), and he said to try another starch. I tried a combination of potato starch and glutinous rice flour and the ice cream was somewhat stretchy but just tasted like starchy mochi. I learned that in pastry, if you do not have a key ingredient, do not try to expect the same results.  I am going with a frozen yogurt now.

Mise-en-place

Gelled Base 

Fluid Gel Base 

Final Product

50 Best

The World's 50 best

I am happy to hear that Eleven Madison Park made the list and is ranked 24!  I was honored to work in that pastry kitchen with Chef Angelina Pinkerton.  She is a creative, reserved yet focused chef whom I find to be a great inspiration to me.  So congrats to her and the entire Eleven Madison Park staff.

New Kitchen

So I just started getting to work in the Arrows pastry kitchen a few weeks ago and it is great for two main reasons.  It is large and it has this awesome ice cream machine....

 I moved in all my containers, molds, and pastry tools and completely organized the entire pastry kitchen.  By the way these containers are from IKEA and they are my personal favorites for keeping additives clean and organized.

Now to get to work and get ready for the opening this weekend..... First experiment was trying to replicate the Turkish, nougat like ice cream called Dondurma..... I will have a post about how that went soon enough..

Micro Greens

I must confess that the best part about my job is being able to go and check out the Arrows Garden. It is inspiring seeing the sprouting garden. The spring season is one of my favorites and I am glad to have joined the arrows staff just as some new vegetables and fruits are coming around. Its an incredible experience being able to go out and talk to the on-staff gardner and watch your product grow before you. You learn a lot and you truly appreciate your product all the more. As lame as it sounds, I felt like a kid on Christmas Day when the gardner showed me the 8 different types of micro greens she has growing. Here are some pictures ...

 Bull's Blood

Misc. sprouts

 Micro Greens

Micro carrot, celery, chervil, etc 

Misc. micro greens

Sugar isn't evil

Very cool article from the huffington post about sugar, not being bad for you....

Sugar Isn't Evil

WD-50

Earlier this year I had the privilege of working with Chef Malcolm Livingston II, the new pastry chef at WD-50 in New York City, and I find his work to be incredible. He creates some amazing dishes and shows immense creativity. So I advise that you go check out his new creations and order the dessert tasting menu at WD-50...

Here is one of his vivid dishes...

I turn to cookies for motivation.....

Who says inspiration can't come from a cookie?