Kate Zuckerman - The Sweet Life: Desserts from Chanterelle

Copyright 2006 by Kate Zuckerman

Food photographs copyright 2006 by Tina Rupp

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the publisher, except by a reviewer who may quote brief passages in a review.

Bulfinch Press

Hachette Book Group

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First eBook Edition: October 2006

ISBN: 978-0-316-07033-1

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THE SWEET LIFE

Desserts from Chanterelle

KATE ZUCKERMAN

Photographs by Tina Rupp

Say the word Chanterelle to food-loving New Yorkers, and the first thing they will think of is not the once-exotic wild mushroom but the beloved, award-winning New York City restaurant that has been critically acclaimed since its founding twenty-five years ago. Kate Zuckerman, Chanterelles pastry chef, creates exquisite desserts that draw upon her culinary travels all over the world and her vast experiences as a four-star pastry chef in San Francisco and New York.

The Sweet Life offers not only detailed, delicious recipes for every kind of dessert from tarts and cakes to custards, souffls, and frozen confections, but also in-depth explanations of methods and of chemical changes that occur in cooking, along with fascinating histories and descriptions of key ingredients.

Zuckerman possesses the remarkable ability to create gourmet desserts that home cooks can actually craft in their own kitchens. Her warm, accessible tone will appeal to both the beginner and the advanced pastry cook. Whether they are making the Crispy, Chewy Chocolate Chip Cookies or the Cardamom and Honey Pistachio Nougat Glac, readers will know they are in good hands.

Say the word Chanterelle to a food-loving New Yorker, and the first thing he or she will likely think of is not the once-exotic wild mushroom but the beloved restaurant that put SoHo and Tribeca on the culinary map and that has charmed and indulged its patrons for twenty-seven years. Since its opening, New York has been transformed into the food capital of the world, and Chanterelle has become a destination for New Yorkers celebrations and special evenings. As Chanterelle begins its second quarter-century, David and Karen Waltuck, who opened the restaurant to celebrate Davids extraordinary French-American cuisine, continue to cook for and welcome guests every day.

Chanterelles desserts are the last course, the final salute to a meal at this renowned New York institution. Karen and Davids passion for pleasing their customers is a daily challenge for me and my workas pastry chef, I have to make my desserts match their hospitality and enthusiasm. This book takes the essence of flavor from these sweet concoctions and makes them accessible to cooks and bakers at home, allowing them to bring the special atmosphere of Chanterelles dining room into their own homes.

I came to Chanterelle in the fall of 1999, the mother of a nine-month-old boy. Having worked in pastry kitchens in Boson, San Francisco, Paris, and New York, I knew full well the extraordinary demands of the job. I wasnt really sure whether it was all going to work out, this mix of pastry and parenthood. But seven years and another kid later, it is a combination I have come to love.

I grew up making cookies for my two big brothers. I liked sweets, but what I really loved was watching my brothers consume and rave about everything I made. Each time I began creaming the butter fur my next batch, I thought about the qualities of the cookies my brothers liked bestchewy, with lots of oatmeal, and packed with milk chocolate chunks, raisins, or dried cherries. With each new batch I tried to improve upon the last, to emphasize the characteristics they praised, and then eagerly awaited their comments and cries of adulation.

We all grew up; they moved out; I became interested in my studies. I went to Princeton and studied anthropology, but I found that I could not escape baking for lovers of sweets. I made confections during my summer breaks, and when I finished college I began working as a baker in restaurants and bakeries.

Over the last fourteen years, I have had many demands placed on me by chefs and restaurateurs. I learned to work hard, to be responsible, to work efficiently and neatly, to develop good technique, and to recognize tastes, textures, and temperatures and their subtle interplay in a dish. In my first few jobs as pastry chef, menu changes were stressful. I struggled to come up with perhaps one new menu selection every month. At Chanterelle, we change the menu, top to bottom, every four weeks. At the beginning of my time there I was somewhat tentative about conceiving and executing four desserts each month. But, over time, as I have fallen in love with the ingredients of the pastry kitchen over and over again, I have become passionate about the process of finding new sears to distill and intensify their flavors. Coming up with new desserts is no longer a burden, but rather has become both deeply satisfying and also somehow essential to how I think about my work.

My desserts are derived from my experiences with food throughout my life. What may seem like a complicated plated dessert is often a dressed-up version of a simple pleasure from my past. I cannot forget the rice pudding I had in India; I love to stroll through orchards at the peak of fall and pick and bite into a crunchy Macoun apple; I cannot get the scent of a ripening guava out of my head; I must snatch and smell a golden quince as it cooks and transforms itself into an aromatic compote with a lustrous rose color. These sensual and gastronomic experiences drive my conception of a tart, cake, or crme.

What ultimately turns these passionate memories of tastes and textures into a menu of desserts are the frank realities I am faced with in the kitchen. How much oven space is there? What fruits are in season? Do I have enough molds and plates? What will this months required chocolate dessert be? Is there a dessert on the menu without nuts for our patrons who are allergic? The constraints I deal with in the professional kitchen mirror those of the home cook, and that friction between creativity and constraint is one of the abiding themes of this hook. Home cooks stay not have the right pan, the right ingredient, the right oven, or the time to produce a plated dessert composed of multiple preparations, but I believe that the best work comes not from unbounded freedom but from the realistic boundaries we deal with every day. Rather than present restaurant desserts as an unreachable pinnacle accompanied by fancy pictures to be admired but not attempted, I guide you through detailed instructions and carefully thought-out methodology so you can find ways to make desserts youll love to prepare, to serve, and to eat.

Another source of inspiration for this book is my increasing awareness of the role of the pastry chef as chemist and of the sensory tools we use to record data in the pastry kitchen. As a professional baker in a restaurant, I produce recipes on a daily basis. The process of following the same methods and techniques day in and day out forces me to pay attention to very small, subtle changes in my final product. I begin with a hypothesisto produce a sauce, meringue, or souffl, for examplemy materials, and a procedure. I produce data (the finished sauce, meringue, or souffl) and answer certain questions based on them. Why, for example, is one meringue less shiny, less satiny than the one made the day before? Why is one financier springier than the other? Why are these apple chips crunchier than yesterdays?