PASTRY: STILL SUMMER

The summer isn't through and neither is the menu we've been using for the past month and a half but tonight is the last night we'll be using it. We'll be making the desserts I'd thought we were making on Friday, the Raspberry and Cookie Napoleon (Mille-feuilles aux framboises), and the Coconut Panna Cotta in a Plum Soup (Panna Cotta A La Noix de Coco et Sa Soupe Aux Prunes Fraiches. Both desserts looked appetizing. Even though the Napoleon looks like a delicate construction and a lot of work for one bite to destroy I'm interested in making it. We'll probably have more people joining us tonight.

More after class after the jump...

DISH: Raspberry and Cookie Napoleon (Mille-Feuilles Aux Framboises)

RECIPE:

The Cookie
50 G Butter
50 G Sugar
50 G Light Corn Syrup
50 G All-purpose flour
50 G Sliced and Crushed Almonds

Crème Pâtissière
2 Gelatin Sheets
20 ML Framboise Liqueur
500 ML milk
½ Vanilla Bean, Split & Scraped
4 Egg Yolks
120 G Sugar
20 G All-purpose Flour
20 G Cornstarch
40 G Butter, for Beurre Noisette
1 L Heavy Cream, Whipped to Medium-Peak Stage

Fresh Raspberries Raspberry Coulis, for Plating*
1 Container of Raspberry Purée
250 G Sugar
Juice of 1 Lime

Procedure:

COOKIE Cream the butter in a mixing bowl, and add the sugar, corn syrup, and flour. When well mixed, add the crushed almonds. Wrap in plastic wrap and chill it for at least an hour. Preheat the oven to 350ºF. Roll the dough into a 1-inch thick roll. Cut into 40-G pieces. Butter and flour sheet pans or line them with nonstick silicone mats. Place the pieces a good distance between each other on sheet pans. Bake the cookies in the preheated oven for 10 minutes. Remove fromt he sheet pan when cool.

CRÈME PÂTISSIÈRE Place the gelatin in the 20 ML of framboise liqueur and set aside to bloom. Bring the milk to a simmer with the split half vanilla bean. Combine the egg yolks with the sugar and whisk the mixture until it becomes pale yellow (blanchir). Add the flour and cornstarch to the yolk-sugar mixture. Stir the mixture until smooth. Pour half of the boiling milk into the yolk-sugar mixture while whisking vigorously. Put the tempered yolkd-sugar-milk mixture into the saucepan containing the rest of the milk. Stir the mixture over the heat for about 3 minutes after it comes back to a simmer. Be mindful to scrape the spatula against the corners and sides of the saucepan so that none of the cream scalds and sticks.

Gently heat the butter in a heavy-bottomed saucepan until the milk solids coagulate and turn pale brown. Strain the beurre noisette through a fine chinois and stir it into the crème pâtissière. Add the bloomed gelatin leaves and their soaking liquid to the crème and stir this in as well. Transfer the crème to a bowl set over ice and chill, stirring occasionally, until cold. Remove the bowl from the ice, press plastic wrap against the top of the crème to prevent a skin from forming, and refrigerate until service time. Whip the heavy cream to soft peaks. Give the crème a good stir to loosen it. Gently fold the whipped cream into the pastry cream and create a smooth mixture; this lightened pastry cream is referred to as crème légère.

*COULIS (as per chef, not the book) Mix the raspberry purée, 250 G sugar and juice of one lime over heat and bring to a boil, then simmer for two minutes, strain, put in squeeze bottles and cool in an ice bath.

To order: Pipe a rosette of crème légère in the middle of one cookie and surround the rosette with raspberries. Repeat with two more cookies, and place all three in the center of a plate with some raspberry coulis.

DISH: Coconut Panna Cotta In A Plum Soup (Panna Cotta À La Noix De Coco Et Sa Soupe Aux Prune Fraîches)

RECIPE:

The Panna Cotta
600 ML Heavy Cream
150 ML Milk
250 ML Coconut Milk
1 Tablespoon Lime Juice
2 Vanilla Beans, Split & Scraped
120 G Granulated Sugar
3½ Sheets Gelatin, Bloomed in Cold Water

The Plum Soup
1¼ L Water
75 G Granulated Sugar
½ Vanilla Bean, Split
Juice of 1 Lime
500 G Fresh Plums, Washed & Cut in Pieces
Plum Eau De Vie (Slivovitz)

The Garnish
1 Box of Kataifi Dough
10-X Sugar, For Dusting
300 G Fresh Plums

Procedure:

PANNA COTTA Bring the heavy cream, milk, coconut milk, lime juice, vanilla beans, and 30 G Sugar to a gentle boil for 45 seconds. Remove the cream mixture fromt he stove, squeeze the excess water from the bloomed gelatin, and stir it in along with the remaining 90 G sugar until the sugar is dissolved. Cool the mixture over an ice bath until it is cool but not set. Pour the cream into the molds and place them in the refrigerator to set up.

PLUM SOUP Mix the water, sugar, vanilla bean, lime juice, and aplums in a pot and bring to a boil. Cook 1 hour at a slow simmer, and then pass the soup through a china cap. It should have a smooth, puréed consistency. If it is not too thick, pass some of it through a chinois to extract more of a clear liquid. Mix the liquid back in with the remaining soup base, and continue to strain it. Flavor the soup with a little plum eau de vie

GARNISH Preheat the oven to 350ºF. Unwrap the kataifi and make small, thin discs the size of the top of the panna cotta. Sprinkle with 10-X sugar. Bake the kataifi discs in the preheated oven until golden. Wash the plums and slice them. Heat the plum soup in a sauté pan and warm the plum slices in the soup. Be careful not to warm them up too much, or the skins will come off in the soup.

FOR ASSEMBLY Unmold a panna cotta and place it in the center of a chilled soup bowl. Ladle some plum soup around its base. Arrange some of the sliced plums around the panna cotta. Sprinkle a kataifi disc with some 10-X sugar and place it, on an angle, on the top of the panna cotta.

BREAKDOWN: So we were back to almost full strength, only one of our group wasn't at school-- five strong. Then w learned that one of our group had been reassigned to a group of students currently doing Saucier. It appears from here on out we'll have a group of five.

I liked both the desserts we made tonight-- they're light enough to be summer sweets. The cookie, composed of butter, sugar, corn syrup, flour and almonds, is flattened before being put in the oven then crisps, caramelizes and thins. We used pastry-cutters to press circle-shapes down into the thin cookies while they were still warm.

When the cookies cooled the edges around the circles broke easily away leaving us with almost perfectly round cookies for the mille feuille Napoleon dessert. Using a cornet (parchment paper rolled up) filled with a little chocolate ganache we put a line down through one side of the plate. On either side were drops of white chocolate ganache (top) and raspberry coulis.

There's no way of getting around the fact that the dessert breaks easily with the first fork or spoonful, but at least it tastes good, especially when you drizzle more raspberry coulis all over it. For restaurant service we mulitplied the cookie ingredients by 10 times. By the end of the night, the customers in the restaurant proved the Napoleon as the favored dessert-- we ran out and were about three short for service. We used a star-tipped pastry nozzle to pipe the pastry cream.

Halfway through preparing the panna cotta we changed the amount we were mulitplying the recipe by from 2½ to 3 times (both the recipes for the panna cotta and the plum soup were muliplied by 3). For 2½ times the recipe chef told us to use 12 sheets of gelatin (bloomed in cold water not in liqueur as the book advised). In the confusion of the recipe change, we only added one extra sheet of gelatin (when we probably should have added three) so later after the panna cotta was supposed to have set, we had problems with some of them having set better than others. Who said there's no math in the kitchen...there's plenty of it, especially in pastry.

The plum soup was strained once through a fine chinois then twice through a fine chinois lined with cheesecloth (dry the first time and then we wet the cheesecloth the second time). The soup was allowed to gently drip without being touched when being put through the cheesecloth the second time to make sure that it resulted in a clear plum 'consommé.' Also the plums weren't very ripe so to soften them after slicing each in half and each half in thirds, we sprinkled them with granulated sugar (to draw out some of the water) and cooked them for about 10 minutes at 250ºF. The kataifi (filo dough) was drizzled with clarified butter and sprinkled with confectioner's sugar and then cooked in a convection oven also at 250ºF for about 10-15 minutes until they were blond, not brown but blond.