Cechin-De la Rosa Chris - Brooks Headleys fancy desserts: the recipes of Del Postos James Beard Award-winning pastry chef

Tell me where is fancy bred,

Or in the heart or in the head?

How begot, how nourishd?

Reply, reply.

It is engendered in the eyes,

With gazing fed; and fancy dies

In the cradle, where it lies.

Let us all ring fancys knell;

Ill begin itDing, dong, bell.

The Merchant of Venice, Act 3, scene 2, 1597

Photography by
JASON FULFORD & TAMARA SHOPSIN

BROOKS HEADLEYS

FANCY
DESSERTS

The Recipes of Del Postos James Beard AwardWinning Pastry Chef

BROOKS HEADLEY
with CHRIS CECHIN-DE LA ROSA

Copyright 2014 by Brooks Headley

Photographs copyright 2014 by Jason Fulford and Tamara Shopsin

: Sweet Science cover design: www.aulicinodesign.com.

: Pages from The River Cafe Cookbook by Rose Gray and Ruth Rogers, published by Ebury, reprinted by permission of The Random House Group Limited. Photographs by Jean Pigozzi and Martyn Thompson, copyright 1996 by Jean Pigozzi and Martyn Thompson; from London River Cafe Cookbook by Ruth Rogers and Rose Gray. Used by permission of Random House, an imprint and division of Random House LLC. All rights reserved.

All rights reserved

First Edition

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500 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10110

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Book design by Tamara Shopsin

Production manager: Julia Druskin

The Library of Congress has cataloged the printed edition as follows:

Headley, Brooks.

Brooks Headleys fancy desserts : the recipes of Del Postos James Beard Award-winning pastry chef / Brooks Headley with Chris Cechin-De la Rosa ; photography by Jason Fulford & Tamara Shopsin. First edition.

pages cm.

Includes index.

ISBN 978-0-393-24107-5 (hardcover)

1. Desserts. 2. Pastry. I. Cechin-De la Rosa, Chris. II. Title.

TX773.H345 2014

641.86dc23

2014020584

ISBN 978-0-393-24201-0 (e-book)

W. W. Norton & Company, Inc.

500 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10110

www.wwnorton.com

W. W. Norton & Company Ltd.

Castle House, 75/76 Wells Street, London W1T 3QT

THIS BOOK IS DEDICATED TO MY MOM,

Barbara. A super-feminist bad-ass schoolteacher. She is not around anymore, and I miss her every day. She once visited New York to accompany me at an event, and as she arrived in a taxi a nice elderly man grabbed her gently by the arm and escorted her to the front door. It was Juan Mari Arzak. Who was he? she asked. He was so nice! Years prior she had a screaming match with a police officer over a noise complaint filed during one of my band practices. Who the hell called the cops on these kids? She was in her nightgown on the sidewalk. This whole book is for you, Barb.

CONTENTS

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Brooks Headley is my favorite kind of artist. He does his thing, his beautiful, unique thing, and presents it to you with no fanfare. Youre going to love it of course, but what hes doing isnt only for you. He does it because hes found his thing, the thing that animates him uniquely, and screw it, might as well devote his life to it. Other peopleyouget to enjoy it, and he takes his responsibility to you seriously. But this isnt showbiz.

It is a reflection on our culture, not on the profession, that there are plenty of cooks who are in showbiz, and fuck them. Brooks doesnt pander, or leap on the latest thing. His food doesnt come in costume. It is common today for chefs to insult the palate in a parody of whimsy, forcing you to learn by experiment what should have been self-evident, that snails arent suited to ice cream. As a pastry chef Brooks has his creative crutches, but they dont include bacon.

They say that all arts aspire to music, but thats a con. Music wishes it was food. Music cries itself to sleep over not having been born a ripe fig or a shank of lamb. No song, no painting can come close to a perfect meal with friends. I would happily trade the best blow job of my life to relive the best steak or bowl of soup. It is the only art without which we die.

Cooking starts with learning to boil water, but you have no idea how difficult it is to boil water. First, you have your heart broken, and then you revel in the natural wonder of a fresh peach straight off a tree. Next, you drive four hundred miles in a van with no heat and one working door to find out the show has been canceled, but you set your shit up and play anyhow, making sure to bolt before the flashing lights get too close. You have to fuck countless people, or one person who really counts. You need to feel your face flush with embarrassment and beam with pride, and freeze in abject boredom between the two. You have to lie shivering and exhausted in a makeshift bed someplace filthy, and retire with a full belly in front of a crackling fire beside the naked body of the person you care for most. You have to build a mountain of broken junk so big you cant see the top, then climb it and beat your chest, shrieking like King Kong at the summit. You need to have your best ideas deemed worthless and exhaust yourself in fruitless experiments that lead nowhere. You have to develop a thick skin, hard with calluses and scars, and with the tips of your hard, callused, scarred fingers, feel the difference between perfect and not quite.

Boiling water is a bitch.

All art is an effort to express the creative impulse, and each discipline uses a different craft to make it tangible. You can get by in some situations without the craft, and in others you can pick it up along the way, but being good at things makes a difference. Dont let anybody tell you otherwise. You get good by trying things and failing, and in the process you develop the skills and calluses and scars that are the shibboleth of any profession. They are not enough, the calluses and scars, but they are part of it.

Its easy with cooking to be dazzled by the process and to give an uneven amount of credit to the recipe. Or the technique. Or the stick blender. But what youre eating is actually the totality of the life experience of the cook, paired with what he knows about history, the ingredients, his kitchen. He needs to be in command of all of those things, not least himself. Youre tasting the whole of the dude, and this particular dude has lived enough to be delicious.

Brooks circa 1996 ( Crimewave E.P.).

BROOKS HEADLEYS

FANCY
DESSERTS

One late night at the end of summer, Mark Ladner and I arranged to meet at a Japanese bar in the Chelsea area of New York City. Hed just finished a dinner shift at Del Posto, where he is executive chef and Brooks Headleys boss. When Ladner arrived, the bartender knowingly placed a big yellow draft beer in front of him with a smile.