sweet gratification

i had the honor of cooking for eric ripert once. i don't remember the whole menu. it was when i was at the nyingma institute so it was a vegetarian lunch w/five or so courses. i remember gnocchi w/chanterelles was the main course. for dessert, i made some odd concoction but also caneles. this is a very local french dessert from gascony. both eric & laurent manrique, his great chef friend who'd brought him to the institute, were gasconais. the dessert appeared to delight them. i was called in for praise.
eric is head chef & co-owner of the nyc restaurant, le bernardin. he got to the top of the ny restaurant quickly but not w/o having paid considerable dues back in france. as a young man, he worked for the genius joel robuchon. robuchon is known as an exacting taskmaster & if you've ever seen the food he used to put out at jamin, w/all those perfectly symmetrical dots, you know it's not just talk. this was the culmination of 20th century french cuisine, which had been systematized since the days of careme(18th century) & which jacques pepin wrote about in his terrific book, "the apprentice." i remember ripert telling a story about working for robuchon, the stress. he'd wake every morning, still wrung out from the day before, & curse bitterly, "robuchon!!!" then he'd get up & head for another day of it.

we don't do things quite the same here in america.

eric's food isn't as fussy as robuchon's. it is as precise, tho. from preparation to presentation, the dishes achieve the sublime: "it is what it is, no more & no less." that's why the menu is simply a listing of ingredients. the simplicity is audacious but the combined results are incredible.
so it was gratifying to see that they'd eaten all the caneles. paula wolfert describes caneles as " a magical bakery confection, a cake w/a rich custardy interior enclosed by a thin carmelized shell." i baked mine in tiny caneles molds. they weren't much bigger than your thumb. you could eat a bunch of them(even tho they are very rich)& they had. wolfert has a recipe for them in her "slow mediterranean kitchen" & that one works fine.

this is michael laiskonis' blog. he's the pastry chef at le bernardin. he's also a good writer. enjoy.


http://michaellaiskonis.typepad.com/main/