Sugar Works

Please don't eat the sugar. The idea is to play with it.

In the photo are four examples of sugar that's been pulled, piped, poured or made into a sugar paste known as pastillage.

If you've never heard of pastillage, think of it as a happy medium like working with Play-Doh. You've seen pastillage if you've ever popped an Altoid mint. Though it starts out in paste form that can be molded in many ways, pastillage dries to a hard result, which makes it a swell choice for display pieces.

The great Careme championed pastillage because he figured out that this original form of flavored candy could be used (if glued together) to make architectural showpieces known as pieces montees, some of which ended up on Napoleon’s table. Today pastillage is mostly made of powdered sugar and can include gelatin, an acid such as vinegar, water and cornstarch.

Make a batch, keeping it covered as you work so it doesn't dry out, and try your hand at flowers, 3D pieces, anything you like. For glue, whip up some royal icing (also keeping it covered so it doesn't dry up). 

Pastillage looks grand in its pristine white form, but you can paint it or airbrush it after the pieces have fully dried.

You'll find countless recipes online for how to make pastillage. For best results, make the pastillage at least a day before you plan to use it. After you've formed it into a big ball of paste, coat it with a little shortening, wrap it in plastic wrap, then a piece of wet paper towel, then more plastic wrap. Keep it stored in the fridge. When ready to use, knead it a bit to soften it up, then lightly dust your work surface with cornstarch (flour is too drying) for rolling it out. 

What can you do with pastillage? How about a peacock and an antique hair comb for an Art Deco feel on a cake? Go ahead, play around.

Good Gravy, Not This

It's a long way from sculpting a cake into a Chanel purse, as we saw in the last post, to finding this plate of shocking proportions. Let's not get into how I went from the classroom at Le Cordon Bleu to a small town up north near the Del Monte processing plant. We'll hash that in another post. For now, I am mystified how any roadside attraction could call this dish breakfast, much less an order of biscuits and gravy. What you see is what it is.

Let's assess blame. Should I have said I wanted gravy on the side, that it was important to me to see the biscuits? This unfathomable plating suggests that the biscuits are so bad, they cannot be shown. Is this a cultural thing, the literal translation of mopping up? Or is this how they like things in Illinois?

I'm having trouble putting into words what is so upsetting about this food. I had trouble putting it in my mouth. It's bad in every category worth scoring, according to me, the one who sent the Bloody Mary back at an airport bar because the celery fainted.

Good or bad, gravy should never cover an entire plate, nor should it resemble mashed potatoes. A good gravy stands on its own, never swims or worse, crawls.

Grady Spears has a terrific cracked-pepper gravy from A Cowboy in the Kitchen, using 5 tablespoons of flour to 1/4 cup unsalted butter and enough milk, salt and pepper to achieve creamy, hearty results.

But I digress, since my subject is the plate of breakfast from hell's kitchen. Let's hurl invective at the gravy.

Pan gravy is a sauce made with drippings of the meat or poultry with which it's being served. Similar to brown sauce, it's usually made from pan drippings and roux, plus stock, water or even milk or cream. Can you have a gravy without the drippings? Of course, as seen in the example above, where the cook threw in sausage.

The idea is to get a good balance between fat and flour, so that they thicken beautifully whatever liquid you use. A classic roux for thickening is a mixture of equal parts by weight of fat and flour, which is then cooked slightly as part of the gravy-making process. Notice I didn't say the fat and flour are the same amounts. There must be enough fat to coat all the starch granules, but not too much fat or it floats to the top and looks greasy.

As to the biscuits, please don't present them like the contents of a cat box. If you have to cover them up, you're making them wrong. If that's the way your momma did it, momma was wrong.

Use any reference you like, starting with cookbooks and online resources, but use something other than what you're using now.

And if you're the diner visiting roadside attractions, learn from your mistakes and ask good questions or, if the waitstaff looks harassed beyond belief, then see what they can do with waffles.

Note to Self: Stop ordering biscuits and gravy out of town.

In search of Chanel and the creative spirit

Have you waded into the book "Inspiration Sandwich" by Sark? Find it.

The best boss I ever had, whose secret name is Princess Papuli, sent it to me in the mail, along with a card and a warm scarf. She is wise beyond her years; she reads the wind and knows when a gal needs a wink and a smile, or a morning of hats and gloves, tea and two lumps of sugar. After reading just a few pages of this inspiring work, I jumped from the bed, threw on the Pop-Eye apron that says "I yam what I yam" and fried a batch of leeks, as outlined in Alton Brown's "Good Eats, The Middle Years." Then I felt better.

There's something gentle and engaging in this book, stuffed with reminders of how to find great pleasure in simple joys. No typed words, either, it's all spelled out in handwriting. If you haven't visited some of your early memories as a child, pack a sandwich, make a tent over a few chairs and get under it with this book.

The trouble with culinary school, as I have experienced it, is that you go into it with this eager, enormous hope that it will be a journey of sensations and discovery. You're living the passion! You'll shout "voila" and mean it. You'll discover the inner you, who has real talent, and you'll amaze even yourself.

Good reader, that's not how it goes. Even the sculpted cake pictured above in the style of a Chanel purse, from the cakes class, should have been a crowning moment of personal magic - something I made with my hands and then admired. And then came the chef's opinion of its worth, dashing the creative spirit like the snap of fingers. I lived the entire cakes class in fear of the critical reply - and that's what I got. If this is living the passion, I'm the creator of Ratatouille. Does that mean I should give up on passion? Hell to the no, as classmates say.

I need books like "Inspiration Sandwich" to remind me how to rekindle happy thoughts and moments. I need Princess Papuli and her legion of resources to point me in the right directions.

My favorite passage in the book so far is this:

"I like to think of my fears being driven away in a Rolls Royce (for it's true that once you face a fear, it loses all of its stuffing, and will sit quietly in the back seat and do as it's told.")

What color is your Rolls? Mine is white and black, ever so Chanel.

Circle of Croquembouche

This life we're in. Is it delicious or bitter? Sour or savory? Are we tasting the fruits of our labors or grubbing for leftovers? Are we building anew in daring ways, like this cream puff croquembouche you see here, or are we melting down like wet spun sugar?

Reason I ask is, my life has gone circular on me. Before Dueling Margaritas was conceived in the sweet lil town of Dubois, Wyoming, as a partnership with a fabulous editor from a major magazine, I was a cubicle-dwelling, fully employed person of a company con health insurance. I worked on big accounts and was a bit smug about it. Perhaps you've heard of Coca-Cola. Pizza Hut. Samsung. Boy, does my resume look rich.

Then came the gelatinization of the economy. Let's not dwell there. It's enough to say I'm one of those Americans you've heard about and crossed yourself that you didn't lose your job in mid-life, with two kids in college.

When I tanked, similar to the narrative in "Then We Came to the End," I had nowhere to turn, so I entered culinary school. (I've often said it's the adult's version of running away to join the circus).

On the side, I now work for a gourmet-to-go market and bakery. It has given me new perspective on the work that people do to pay their bills. In food service, the hours are long, the pay is low and the pains are unceasing. If you're not burning yourself, you're banging your elbows. At the end of a shift, you hurt all over - in your hair, in your eyebrows, in the fingernails.

I haven't written a word about working for this new company, because I never want to say anything that could reflect a point of view that is not consistent with its brand position. See how working in advertising pays off? It's enough to say the food is fresh, fast, and I know how it's prepared, so it's safe. I have a high regard for their artisan breads, and the "chocolate oblivion" flourless cake with mousse, caramel and Heath chips is a chocoholic's delight. With the company's help, I've managed to work an early shift, then go to school. It's not a life sentence, right?

Here's the circular part. Not one but two companies who previously freed themselves of my expertise have reached out to hire me on a contract basis. It gives me great pleasure to help one of them (after all, I can't take on three jobs can I?) By contractual signature I cannot say who or what I'm doing, but it is sweet as cherry pie to be needed again.

Maybe that's what I'm getting at here: Losing one's career is a bitter bag of brussels sprouts. Moving forward when you don't know where you're going is a tall glass of vinegar with sprigs of Swiss chard.

Paula Deen told me the harder you work, the luckier you'll get. And with luck, maybe your life can take a turn and maybe it's circular. Maybe what you lose along the way can come back to you.

And maybe, just maybe, there will be cream puffs in this, with a marzipan rose or two.

Under the Sea (of Sugar)

To explain what this is you're looking at: In my last post, I whined about burning my thumb trying to blow sugar for the final piece in the advanced patisserie class. I expressed doubt that like trig, calculus and algebra, blowing sugar would ever be useful in life.

I'm fortunate that two other classmates were less dismissive of the concept. They helped pull off the "Under the Sea" assignment of presenting four different sugar techniques. What you see here is a bit of a tossed salad, but we were working against extremely humid conditions, and pieces either melted or shattered, depending on sugary temperament. In other words, it was stick it together and go like aces before the blame thing cracked.

If you look to the right in the photo, you'll see a mermaid sitting on a piece of orange sugar coral. Here's how you get the coral: Heat up a pot of isomalt sugar with a touch of water in it, then pour this over a large container of ice cubes. As the sugar cools, it drizzles down through the ice for a rather cool effect. The mermaid, the work of a crafty friend, is made of pulled sugar pieces. How do you get pulled sugar? Same approach - heat up the isomalt and water to about 329 degrees, have a heat lamp standing by and a Silpat (fancy rubber sheet). Pour out the sugar onto the sheet, and when it is malleable under the heat lamp, start pulling it like taffy. This creates shine and an ability to mold the sugar - but did I mention wearing three pairs of gloves? This is ghastly hot work.

Also in our showpiece, there are two blown fish and a jellyfish (not blown by me, but I did overcome my revulsion to it), also wavy frondy things and some bubble sugar not quite visible in the back of the ring. Doing the bubble sugar is a snap. Just pour some isomalt (no heating!) onto a Silpat, cover with another Silpat and place in the oven at about 350 degrees. Wait the length of a cup of tea, and you'll get a melted, bubbly effect that is visually seaworthy.

The blue ring and the base this creation is sitting on are made of "cast" sugar, that is, heat it up, pour into a cake ring (or one ring inside of another to get the cylinder effect) and within an hour, remove the rings.

You glue pieces together by using the heated sugar like hot glue. Works, sticks, gets a little messy but keep going.

Should I say how we got the colors? The white coral was done with white food coloring - yes, white food coloring. The other elements were done in the same way - just heat the isomalt and the water about halfway to 329, say around 265ish. Add color at that stage, then continue boiling the sugar until you've reached the top temp. If you don't pull the sugar, the mixture will remain colored but clear enough to see through. By pulling the sugar, you achieve shine, oxygenate the crystalline structure and end up with an opaque piece in your thrice gloved hands.

Check out Pastry Chef Central if you want to buy isomalt. Don't try anything I just said above at home unless you're clever, creative and fear nothing at high temperature. A burn is a burn is a burn.

Burning Shame

The Duelist is upset and you might as well hear about it. I burned my thumb with isomalt sugar in class yesterday, my sucking thumb. (No no, I don't really suck it anymore but at times, like a fretful child, I can still imagine the comfort of a soft blanket and a balled-up fist to the face.)

Of course, the closer we get to the finish line, the more painful this journey to a culinary degree becomes. I know this is true. Right now, I feel all too Hans Solo in the carbonite mold, slabbed from head to toe, with no place to go until the rescue party gets here.

"No," I told the chef yesterday, "I do not expect to be able to blow this blob of heated sugar into a ball using copper tubing and a blood pressure pump before Thursday." She seemed to understand, didn't try to stop me as I scuttled out of the room, my thumb in flames, "just need a moment" hissing through my teeth.

We are just 3 days from finishing advanced patisserie (plated desserts), and the most scorching of products has been saved for the end. Do you know what a dollop of 320-degree sugar feels like on bare skin? Just ask my thumb. My purple thumb. The one I strike the space bar with, the hitchhiker thumb, the thumb's up thumb. The comforter.

Why (and this is whining at its surliest here) do I need to blow sugar into a fish that goes in the "Under the Sea" showpiece when I'm least feeling bold and courageous? When we're out on externship we will not be doing this kind of work. Panning cookies, yes. Scooping muffins. Piping white chocolate over chocolate-dipped strawberries. Making buttercream rosettes on troops of cupcakes. Do you imagine we'll make sugar showpieces with butterflies and ribbons? I think back to a certain chef from a well-known entertainment mega-giant company who told a pastry student, "our wedding cakes may run $4,000. You'll never get near one on externship."

Exactly. So take this boiling sugar from me. Blow it, pull it, melt it with a torch, do whatever you want. I'm all thumbs when it comes to this kind of work, and I need both of them, believe me.

Oh but isn't this a lovely picture above of a Napoleon with a bubble sugar garnish and a sugar spear?

Tart Tatin Tower

Let's discuss. This work of art above is an assigned production. That is, what you see is my effort to recreate the school assignment to make a tart tatin plating that includes dragets of hazelnut, a gastrique, raspberry sauce, phyllo nest, quenelle of ice cream, tempered chocolate disks and a sugar spear.

Would you try this at home? Never. Non! How can you possibly deliver it to the table without a meltdown? It's a constructive sturm und drang - storm and stress - all over the place. Have I mentioned that I am foundering in the uniquely challenging class known as "plated desserts"?

Recently a wise friend helped me see that plated desserts are akin to DI assignments in school, if you're familiar with the Destination Imagination program that challenges kids to solve seemingly unsolvable structural projects using creativity, teamwork and problem solving.

That means I need to imagine solutions for works of dessert, not just look up recipes. Plating is a form of architectural balance and beauty, form and function. Some desserts look gorgeous on the plate but fail to deliver on flavor. And flavor is the number one aspect you remember of a dessert, so why skip its importance when building something good?

Other desserts may taste home-style "yum toy," as the great Gay Smith used to say, but are visually piggy pie messed up. Slop on the plate. The art of this discovery process is to find what works in flavor, texture and temperature, then organize the elements in a way that treats the eye. The Eyes Eat First.

Would you like to see examples of what I've just said, both good and bad? Check out Dessert Professional.

Just around the curve, the world of chocolate. Yum toy!