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Dessert University - Hardcover

Mesnier, Roland

 
9780743223171: Dessert University
Hardcover
ISBN 10: 0743223179 ISBN 13: 9780743223171
Verlag: Simon & Schuster, 2004

Inhaltsangabe

As Executive Pastry Chef at the White House for almost twenty-five years, Roland Mesnier has been responsible for creating thousands of elegant, delicious confections and dazzling desserts for hundreds of state dinners and family occasions. An accomplished teacher as well as a master chef, he now shares his expertise with home cooks in Dessert University.

This beautifully illustrated volume is a complete course in making the full spectrum of spectacular sweets—from breakfast pastries, cookies, and pies to fresh-fruit desserts, frozen confections, and cakes. Recipes in each chapter are organized from the simplest to the most complex, and Chef Mesnier walks you through each step, pointing out common mistakes and offering insights on technique gained from his years as a professional. Most of these recipes need few special ingredients and almost no fancy equipment; nearly everything can be purchased at a well-stocked supermarket, department store, or kitchen supply store. Chef Mesnier includes tips on techniques, ingredients, and serving suggestions, and offers home cooks practical advice, such as how to fill and use a pastry bag and the best way to whip egg whites. A resource list is also included, so cooks can find the more unusual ingredients they need to make these delectable creations.

Mesnier starts off with his fresh-fruit desserts, including uniquely wonderful recipes such as Bananas in Raspberry Cream, Blueberry Fool, and Poached Peaches with Chestnut Mousse. He moves on to creamy custards, puddings, soufflés, mousses and Bavarians, ice creams, meringues, crêpes, and breakfast treats (including buttery brioche and croissant doughs). Chef Mesnier's cookie and bar recipes will fill your cookie jar with such treats as Chocolate Chip Cookies, Almond Crescents, Orange Butter Cookies, Brownies, and Florentine Squares. There are sweet and savory tarts, and cakes ranging from the simple (Lemon Pound Cake) to the unusual (Peanut Butter and Jelly Roulade Cake) to the sophisticated (Chocolate Champagne Mousse Cake). Ambitious home cooks can even try their hand at making chocolate candy and sugar decorations. A chapter on syrups, sauces, and other dessert components completes the book.

More than fifty black-and-white line drawings throughout illustrate Chef Mesnier's instructions for the more complicated recipes, and there are sixteen stunning color photographs of finished desserts.

Home cooks and professionals spend hundreds of dollars in formal cooking classes to learn what masters like Roland Mesnier have to teach. In Dessert University, Chef Mesnier has distilled the experience and expertise of an extraordinary career into one accessible, user-friendly volume. Whether you're a novice who has never picked up a rolling pin or an accomplished cook looking to hone and enhance your skills, this is truly a book you cannot do without.

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Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Roland Mesnier is the former Executive Pastry Chef of the White House. He developed the first professional pastry program in the Washington, D.C., area, at L'Académie de Cuisine, in Bethesda, Maryland. He is also the honorary president of the World Cup of Pastry, and every year L'Académie de Cuisine awards a scholarship in his name. He lives in Virginia.

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INTRODUCTION

Devoted to Dessert

Ever since I was a boy growing up in the very small town of Bonnay in France, I have had a deep admiration for fine pastry and a curiosity about how it is made. On my way to school each morning, I would pass the local bakery, where I would peek in and see the red-hot coals of the oven. I would inhale the aroma of fresh yeast and baking bread as I walked to my classes. My family had an account at the bakery, and it was my job to bring home a loaf for lunch every day. In addition to bread, this bakery made beautiful croissants, and one day I found them irresistible. I requested one and ate it on my way home. When my mother got the bill at the end of the month, she was shocked. Money was tight, and croissants were not in the budget. But she forgave me eventually. As it turns out, sampling croissants on my way home was as much a part of my education as the lessons I learned in school.

At the age of twelve I took a summer job at a nearby pastry shop where my older brother was already well established. At fourteen I began a more formal apprenticeship that lasted for three years. From there it was a long and exciting journey to the kitchen of the White House, where I served as Executive Pastry Chef for twenty-five years. In all that time, my desire to learn and to improve my skills has not diminished. I have also become a teacher myself, passing on the lessons I have learned to a new generation of pastry chefs training in the United States.

This book is the result of those years of studying, working, and teaching. I am happy and proud to share the techniques and recipes that I have refined during the course of my career. Making wonderful desserts and serving them to kings, queens, presidents, and statesmen was a source of joy and satisfaction for me. I hope that you will derive just as much pleasure, and feel the same sense of accomplishment when you serve dessert to family and friends.

MY EDUCATION IN PASTRY

From my very early days as a kitchen apprentice, I devoted myself entirely to learning everything I could about making desserts. My first teacher was my older brother Jean, who let me hang around and help out in his pastry shop to see if I would like the work. A formal apprenticeship in a larger town followed. The hours were long, my master was stern, and the salary was next to nothing, but at the end of three years I felt only the urge to travel the world and understand more about this fascinating art.

If I had not been truly committed to becoming a chef, I would have been discouraged by the hard life of a pastry assistant. My next job, at a very fine shop in Hanover, Germany, paid so little that I barely had enough money to cover my rent and the cost of getting to work. I had about 25 cents a day budgeted for food. On my way home at night I would stop and play the slot machine at a coffee shop. If I won, I would buy dinner. If I lost, I'd eat the apple that I had taken from the kitchen. For a year I fantasized about the cold cuts on display in the window of a delicatessen nearby. When I received a small bonus at the end of my time at the shop, my first thought was, "Watch out, Cold Meat Platter, here I come!" But I left with extreme gratitude toward the chef because he was the one who really taught me the foundations of good pastry. It was by his side that I learned how to bake all kinds of basic cakes and cookies. Here, also, I learned how to work with chocolate to make a variety of classic candies and glossy decorations.

I moved to Hamburg next, to a family-owned pastry shop and tearoom famous for its marzipan. At Christmastime the shop looked like a fabulous fairyland, decorated with every kind of marzipan figurine imaginable. I loved working with marzipan, copying the traditional pieces and experimenting with new shapes. The shop became like home to me, so it was with great sadness that I forced myself to leave. But I knew that there was more to learn before I could ever run a kitchen of my own.

I arrived at the kitchen of the Savoy Hotel in London, clutching my letters of recommendation but speaking no English. This was the place where all of the really ambitious young chefs wanted to work. The quality of the food and of the service in the hotel restaurant was unbelievable, unmatched by any other establishment at the time. All desserts were made to order and assembled tableside. A Peach Melba, probably the simplest dessert on the extensive menu, became a full-scale production at the Savoy. First, a peach was carefully chosen from the storeroom, dropped in boiling water to remove its skin, and pitted so that it remained whole. It was placed in a glass bowl, and that bowl was placed on top of a silver bowl of crushed ice. A portion of ice cream was placed in another glass bowl over ice. The maître d' would carry the peach, ice cream, melba sauce, whipped cream, and almonds out to the diner on a huge silver tray lined with a white linen napkin and assemble the dessert, topping the peach with as much or as little of the melba sauce, whipped cream, and almonds as the diner desired. I carry so many lessons with me from the Savoy about choosing quality ingredients and preparing them meticulously. I also learned much about presentation and the theatricality of tableside service that made dessert truly exciting. As a result of my experience at the Savoy, my desserts absolutely must be beautiful and presented with a flourish if possible, because I like to hear "oohs and aahs" when they are brought to the table.

The head chef at the Savoy was an amazing manager who inspired a staff of about eighty chefs with his gentlemanly and calm manner. He was demanding but fair. If you made a mistake he would certainly let you know, but as soon as he was finished reprimanding you, there were no hard feelings and you got back to work. We tried hard to please him, not because we were afraid of him but because we wanted to live up to his standards and become better chefs ourselves. All these years later, if I am struggling to keep my cool in the kitchen when things are going wrong, I remember how this exemplary chef was able to focus on fixing mistakes and then move on.

After making desserts and observing the head chef at the Savoy for quite a while, I was ready to be a head pastry chef. I left London for the Princess Hotel in Bermuda and a kitchen of my own. Any sense of complacency I had about knowing it all was immediately shaken by the new climate, which made me rethink many of the tricks and techniques I had learned in Europe. Through hard work and ingenuity, I was able to produce the desserts I had promised. The experience taught me that no matter how expert I thought I was in pastry and baking, there was always more to learn. This is a lesson that I still carry with me. Knowing that I don't know it all, and wanting to learn something new every day, has made me a better cook and a better teacher.

BECOMING A TEACHER

Running my own kitchen made me think about how to teach my staff the things they needed to know. I discovered that I enjoyed teaching almost as much as I enjoyed making desserts. When the Greenbrier Hotel in West Virginia called to ask if I would like to lead some pastry courses for guests and apprentices during my time off from the Princess, I had my first formal opportunity to teach. When I moved to the Homestead resort in Hot Springs, Virginia, I continued to run dessert seminars for guests and kitchen apprentices. Remembering my own training, I always demanded that my students master the basics before moving on to more complicated desserts. I was very proud if they left my class able to make a perfect crème caramel or genoise.

In 1979 I was hired by Rosalynn Carter to be the Pastry Chef at the White House. I had applied for the job at the urging of some Washington-based guests of the Homestead who had...

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Verlag
Simon & Schuster
Erscheinungsdatum
2004
Sprache
Englisch
ISBN 10 
0743223179
ISBN 13 
9780743223171
Einband
Gebundene Ausgabe
Anzahl der Seiten
608
Kontakt zum Hersteller
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Verantwortliche Person
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