Medrich - Pure Dessert

Artisan/New York

For Lucy

Faced with an overly sweet, complicated dessert or one made with mundane ingredients, I sometimes long instead for a bowl of good plain yogurt drizzled with honey and sprinkled with walnuts or pistachios, a piece of bittersweet chocolate, or some ripe figs.

I havent given up dessert, but when I eat it, I want it to taste as good as that bowl of yogurt or piece of chocolate. I want the soul satisfaction and the sensual pleasure of real flavors. The best chefs cook savory food simply, with the best ingredients. Thats how I like to eat. Why dont we make more desserts that way?

The dessert repertoire needs an infusion of new and better ingredients and new approaches to working with them. High-quality ingredients of all sorts are available now. Fresh, delicate cheeses (cow, goat, and sheep) can redefine cheesecake. Interesting grains should not be reserved for heavy loaves and health food: their toasty, nutty
flavors can bring nuance and depth to indulgent buttery cookies, delicate wafers, and moist, tender cakes. Organic yogurts, milks, and creams can transform ice creams and sherbets. Great chocolates and cocoas can elevate simple desserts, as will flavors captured from fresh flowers and herbs, coffee beans, and tea leaves.

Pure Dessert is a collection of simple, ingredient-driven recipes for cakes, cookies, tarts, ice creams, and other desserts, made from fresh, artisanal, organic, natural, or otherwise distinguished real ingredients. Such ingredients are increasingly abundant in better supermarkets as well as in the obvious places: farmers markets, cheese shops, gourmet and natural food shops online, and a growing number of urban and suburban gardens.

Authentic ingredients are important because they taste good. Simple recipes are essential because they allow us to savor that goodness. The emphasis on flavor means desserts that are often (but not always) less sweet and/or less rich than mainstream desserts. If they are less sweet and rich, it is primarily in pursuit of pleasure. Incidental health benefits are just bonuses.

My pure desserts are simple, relaxed, convenient, and elegant. These accessible, home-kitchenfriendly recipes include tips to ensure success and notes that reveal the method to my madness. Pure desserts are for busy people who love food and care about what they eat, for people who are curious and open to new tastes, and for those who appreciate the details that make the difference between a good dessert and a great one.

Pure desserts can stand alone or be mixed and matched for special occasions. Sour Cream Ice Cream, Tropical Lace Cookies, and strawberries is worthy of a dinner party, but each component is delicious on its own. Pure dessert recipes are brief and inviting, and they welcome improvisation.

The media proclaim the message: organic, natural, local, slow, hand-crafted, and authentic. So what more could we ask for? Here are recipes and techniques that are simple, and as easy for the home cook as the chef. Thats the cherry on the top.

No two cooks do things in exactly the same way, whether it is measuring flour or preparing a cookie sheet. If you have a passion for cookbooks, you already know that the pages before and after the recipeswhere the impatient never strayhold valuable keys to producing the best each recipe has to offer. Although seemingly mundane, the equipment and ingredient information and tips on technique are a personal introduction to the author-as-cook in her kitchena real piece of her mind. How does she think and move and solve problems? What does she love or hate? And how can she help you succeed?

Although the recipes in Pure Dessert are relatively relaxed and easygoing, small, simple, often nonintuitive details can alter the results. Unlike the savory cook, the baker can rarely taste and adjust or repair as he or she mixes batters. Knowing which details are important sets you free to be as creative and playful as you like, without sad surprises.

Mise en place is a French phrase that means put in place or set up. Professional chefs could not survive in a busy kitchen without their mise. When you see TV chefs with all their ingredients measured in little dishes before any cooking begins, thats mise en place!

The ritual of setting out and measuring ingredients focuses your attention and promotes a calm connection to the task at hand. It allows you to be sure, before you start a recipe, that you have all of the ingredients and equipment you need. You are less likely to measure incorrectly or forget to include an ingredient, regardless of any distractions.

Most dessert recipes turn out best when the recipe steps are performed without interruption. Mise en place ensures that once you begin the recipe, you will not have to run to the store, search the sandbox for your sifter, or rummage through the pantry for a particular pan while your chocolate hardens, your eggs curdle, or your batter deflates. Mise en place makes baking and dessert making both more enjoyable and more successful.

Many experts emphasize the importance of accuracy in baking without making a distinction between the critical ingredients, which make or break the recipe and must be measured accurately, and those that may be adjusted to your taste. You can use a liberal hand with, or instead omit, inclusions such as raisins, nuts, chocolate chips, or even vanilla to your taste. You can normally substitute dried fruits and nuts in equal measure one for another, and experiment with flavor ingredients. You can substitute one liquor or liqueur for another, or even omit it without affecting the result.

But, for tender cakes with a perfect crumb, delicate cookies, or perfect panna cotta, you must carefully measure the baking soda, baking powder, salt, gelatin, and particularly the flour and cocoa powder. Even in, or especially in, the simplest recipes, baking is not as forgiving as cooking. If cakes or cookies are tough, dry, doughy, or leaden, chances are your flour measurement is at fault.

A cup of all-purpose flour can weigh anywhere from 4 to 6 ounces, depending on whether or not it is sifted before measuring or packed firmly into the cup. That 2-ounce (50 percent!) discrepancy can make the difference between a moist, light, poem of a cake and a highly effective doorstop. Cooks and cookbook authors do not all measure flour the same way, so it is best to read any instructions about how to measure in each book that you use (or get a scalesee ).

When a recipe in this book calls for 1 cup all-purpose flour, this means 1 cup flour measured without first sifting, as follows: Loosen the flour in the sack or canister with a spoon if it is compacted. Spoon the flour lightly into a 1-cup dry measure until it heaps above the rim. Do not shake or tap the cup to settle the flour! Sweep a straight-edged knife or a spatula across the rim of the cup to level the flour. A cup of unsifted all-purpose flour measured this way weighs 4.5 ounces; a cup of unsifted cake flour weighs 4 ounces.

If a recipe calls for 1 cup sifted flour, sift the flour before measuring. (Ignore the presifted label on flour sacks. Presifting eliminates any stones and foreign matter, but the flour gets compacted again en route to your grocers shelf.) Set the measuring cup on a sheet of wax paper. Use a medium fine-mesh strainer (my preference) or sifter to sift the flour over the cup until it is heaped above t he rim. Do not shake or tap the cup to settle the flour! Sweep a straight-edged knife or a spatula across the rim of the cup to level the flour. One cup of sifted all-purpose flour measured this way weighs 4 ounces; 1 cup of sifted cake flour weighs 3.5 ounces.