Yes, you can make your own puff pastry (when the Daring Bakers tell you to)

September 27th, 2009  |  59 Comments

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What is it about puff pastry? The mere mention of it sends shivers down every baker’s spine. Could it be the knowledge that it has 944 microscopic layers of dough and butter, which seem to break all laws of physics? You look down at your own two hands and think, “These two hands? All by themselves? No way,” before huffing off to the grocery store to buy the ready-made version. At the risk of sounding like Tony Robbins, I say “Yes way,” and this month’s Daring Bakers have laid down the law.

The September 2009 Daring Bakers’ challenge was hosted by Steph of A Whisk and a Spoon. She chose the French treat, Vols-au-Vent based on the Puff Pastry recipe by Michel Richard from the cookbook Baking With Julia by Dorie Greenspan.

Now please sit down. I have to break something to you. It might surprise you to learn that no restaurant I’ve ever worked in, no matter how fancy, ever made their own puff pastry (though surely there are some that I’ve never worked in that do.) If you peek in their freezer, you’ll find cases of  stacked up sheets of dough, looking all guilty and unhomemade. Granted, it’s high quality, all-butter dough made by artisan vendors in our neighborhood and it saves the chef lots of hours and labor costs. I wouldn’t even know how to make enough puff pastry to feed hundreds of napoleon-loving patrons. Do you make lots of individual batches? Do you make one monster batch and pound out a dozen blocks of butter with a broomstick? The truth is, I’ve only made my own puff pastry a handful of times, and never in a professional setting, only at home.

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The Rain in Spain

September 22nd, 2009  |  18 Comments

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I know how much you all clamor to see other people’s vacation photos. Since I have your rapt attention, here are the best of what I could cobble together of our recent trip to Madrid and Barcelona. Most days we left our hotel room for fourteen hour stretches and I didn’t feel like lugging the hefty dSLR around. I tossed the point-and-shoot in my bag. Well, the rain in Spain really must fall mainly on the plain, because there was so much sun glare on the camera’s preview screen, I couldn’t see what I was photographing. I pointed, clicked, and hoped for the best.

If you like the ubiquitous, quaint, European-style cities with majestic buildings and narrow streets, then you must get your butt over there pronto. It’s exactly what I was expecting, and it still managed to leave me dumbfounded with awe. My favorite way to see a city is to wander around for hours, until the feet can’t take one more step. One can’t help but stumble on some funny little buildings or postcard-worthy cafe.

As far as fancy dinners, it wasn’t in the cards. We kind of winged our meals, based on where we were and when we got hungry. The language barrier was getting to me and if I recognized gambas or jamón on the menu, I pointed to that and nodded away at the waiter, who nodded back, and then I nodded again, like foreigners do. Scott and I did make one attempt to go to lunch at a lofty establishment. Correct me if I’m wrong, but I always think of lunch as a casual affair. Not overseas, it isn’t. After they learned we had no reservation, we got shoo’d right out the door.

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Orange Lace Cookies

September 18th, 2009  |  35 Comments

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They kind of look like potato chips, don’t they?

They really are impossibly delicate. Scott saw these all strewn about the table and his immediate urge was to smash them with his fist. Is there something about these that tap into man’s desire to go to war? Against a lace cookie? An easily conquerable foe, I’d say. Or maybe it’s that same impulse that makes popping bubble wrap so enthralling. Regardless, I set aside a few rejects and let him get his ya-ya’s out of his system. And you know what? I kinda wanted to crush them too. Hey, what’s fun is fun.

Then again, one false move and they’ll crush themselves. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve knocked over a tupperware-filled box in the middle of a busy service. And what do you have? One pissed off chef and a tupperware-filled box of dust. You have to treat these like a newly unearthed treasure at an archeological dig. They’re butterflies that can barely be breathed on. The best way to store them is in a plastic box with one cookie overlapping the other, in a row. Kind of like Pringles, when the tube is laid out on its side and the chips fan out. Just keep them away from the heavy handed.

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Chocolate Sorbet

September 14th, 2009  |  29 Comments

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You’ll probably want to throw tomatoes at me for saying this, but I don’t like frozen chocolate anything. Not chocolate ice cream, not sorbet, not frozen parfait, nuthin’. I’ve always preferred fruit flavors in my freezer. I don’t have a good explanation, but could theoretically defend myself by saying chocolate flavors are best and most pronounced when closer to room temperature. Yes, that’s it, that’s the ticket.

So what’s all this? Why the chocolate sorbet now?

Back off, man! It’s just that so many folks around these internet parts have been making it, it lodged into my psyche. Like a song stuck in my head, I couldn’t shake it off. A friend once told me that the cure for a tune looping in the brain was to actually play the offending song out loud. Believe what you will, but it works! Following this faulty logic, it stands to reason that I could get some relief by making this nagging dessert. The base can be made in a few minutes so I knew it would be no skin off my teeth to easily throw it together and forget it for, I hope, at least a few months.

I’m not one of those people that thinks eating ice cream after summer’s over is like wearing white after Labor Day. I eat it all year long, even if it below zero. Scott would now tell you about the blanket I keep near the couch in winter for such occasions. I’ll happily eat a bowl of a frozen treat on a bitter cold night while watching movies, wrapped in the Martha Stewart K-Mart special.

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A little something for you

September 9th, 2009  |  40 Comments

Valrhona-chocolate-bars

I apologize in advance. I’m about to get someone hooked on this excellent dark chocolate. Here are 5 bars, totaling 13 oz, which should be enough for most recipes and some nibbling on the side. Since I’ve been carrying on so much about Valrhona, I figured it would be a great first giveaway. It’s a little thanks for being among the first readers of my young blog. I’m thrilled to have “met” you.

Anyone can win. All you have to do is leave me a comment below about what you might make with this chocolate and I’ll select a random number to determine one winner. This will be open until midnight (Eastern Time), September 12, and I’ll announce the lucky recipient soon after.

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