Pastry Chef Tasting

15 08 2009

 

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Familiar Flavors of Pie
“Key Lime Pie Ice Cream, Lime Shortbread Crumbs,
Fresh Blueberries in Blueberry Gel,
Blueberry and White Chocolate “Ganache”,
Hibiscus Foam”
I recently did a tasting for a pastry chef position at a highly acclaimed restaurant in chicago. They asked me to keep the flavors simple and approachable. I knew the chef was looking for something very simple but i had to put my own style into so I could enjoy what i was doing too. I kept the amount of components down and the plating relatively simple. This was the first dish

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The second dish with a more complex presentation than originally presented

 

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“Amaretti Panna Cotta, Amaretti Tuile,
Marinated Apricot, Salty Burnt Honey Caramel,
Apricot Puree, and Tarragon and Apricot “Zabione”
This dish is made to take a familiar item and manipulate it into different texture than normal. Amaretti cookies are made from almond paste and come out with a nice soft pillow like texture, here they are steeped into cream and made into a panna cotta and pureed with egg white, flour, and liquid glucose and baked into a tuile sprinkled with fennel pollen and maldon sea salt. The acidity from the apricots brightens the dish and is accented by the anise flavors of fennel pollen and tarragon. The zabione is apricot jus and tarragon whipped up with versawhip and xantham gum. The flavors of the dish are solid and rich but not overpowering.
There is a third dish that I will post later.
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Believe it or not…Here is a new post

12 02 2009

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I know that i have not posted in like a year but, i just do not have the opportunity to create like i did at my last job. I made this for my chef at L2o and the owner of the restaurant. I am happy with the dish overall but there would be small tweaks if i were to make it again. I  hope soon I will be able to create more dishes or maybe some amuses. Here is the list of components.

Grapefruit and cardamom sorbet

Under the sorbet are balls of the the mayo cake batter  nitro blanched

Olive oil mayonnaise cake (isi siphon in the microwave) rolled in evoo powder

Grapefruit marshmallow (made very soft and is the rectangle going into the bowl)

Whipped Grapefruit curd (the white colored piping made in the paco jet)

Passionfruit film

Shiso “mojito”  foam, when i made the dish for the owner i go the foam to come out much more green and it was garnished with purple shiso buds instead of leaves

Passionfruit tuiles and fresh grapefruit

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It Has Been A while

1 06 2008

I dont have a picture of a dish that I have made and the last time that you guys heard from me was over three months ago. The last thing that I told you is that I was moving to Chicago to work at Alinea. I did work at Alinea for just a few weeks. Why only a few weeks? well it was just not for me. I stopped working there and moved on to work at Laurent Gras new restaurant L2o. I am working on pastry and there is no pastry chef. The kitchen is insane. They had to have put at least 6 million in the kitchen alone. If you want you can check it out at l2o.typepad.com. Also I decided to wait to post until I got 30,000 hits, again thank you all very much and as soon as I get to start cooking again I will post everything I got. I will keep this blog for years I am just on a stand still in my career right now when it comes to creating.





KimChi

19 02 2008

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“Bok Choy KimChi, Ahi Tuna,

“Shredded” Kimchi Soup, with Korean Carrot”

I had been wanting to make kimchi for the soup of the day at work for some time now and when I saw how much baby bok choy we had in the walk in I decided to go for it.

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I served most of these ingredients on the plate as the soup garnish but decided to make a plate as if it were my restaurant. The very first customer we had tonight was korean of course, and she ordered the soup. I was not worried about the flavor because I knew it was tasty, but I knew that it was not as spicy as she wanted. And that is what she told the server, it tasted great but ot spicy enough for her.

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And to show the smooth texture of the carrot tube is as smooth as a puree here is a pic.

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Work In Progress II

15 02 2008

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Rabbit “Noodles”

I have been working on the almost 100 percent meat noodles for several weeks now. These can be served cold or hot with no side affects. They are almost what I want but they can only be bent to 9o degrees with a lot of care. Here they are shown with sweet carrot puree and asiago cheese.

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