Build a better pie crust

I like flaky pie crust.  I also like butter.  In the world of pastry and baking, butter and flaky pie crust do not arrive at the party together, so to speak.  I have long been a proponent of lard pie crusts, because of their crispy and flaky goodness.  Vegetable shortenings are also a reasonable substitute for lard; there is a reason that Loretta Lynn used it instead of the lard she grew up using.

Butter makes everything better though...except for pie crusts: fats (e.g., lard, shortening) have a low moisture content.  When they get blended with flour, as in a pie dough, and subsequently cooked, they crisp the surrounding flour/get absorbed into the surrounding flour, and leave flakes of dough behind.  Butter has a relatively high moisture content, (around 20% for regular butter, 17% for the fancy "European Style" butters).  This moisture causes the resulting dough of butter blended with flour to be tender, (think croissants), and crumbly.

"How do I resolve this?"

I put my thinking toque on, and decided to get a croissant from Vintage Baking in Glen, NH.  As I devoured the almond croissant, I realized that this croissant was the answer!  Why wouldn't laminating my pie dough work to develop flaky layers?  Laminating dough is sandwiching butter between layers of dough.  Puff pastry, croissants, and danish doughs are examples of laminated doughs consisting of a yeast raised dough surrounding whole slabs of butter, and repeatedly folded over to create layers of dough and butter, (Julia Child believed that 73 layers were optimal).  Ciril Hitz, considered to be the best bread baker in the world, is an instructor and dean at Johnson and Wales in Providence, RI.  In this video he explains and demonstrates the technique for dough lamination.

I don't have an $80,000 dough sheeter either, so here is my recommended method for for a flaky, buttery pie crust using your favorite recipe.  You will notice that there is a lot of chilling of the dough: you need to keep the butter cold or else it starts to melt/come out of emulsion, which will result in a "greasy" dough.

Cut chilled butter into small cubes; press together with the flour and salt, add enough ice water to form a dough.  Put the dough into the center of a lightly floured piece of plastic wrap (about 20-inches long) and press the dough into a rectangle; lightly flour dough and cover with another piece of plastic wrap.  Using a rolling pin, beat the dough into a rectangle that cover the plastic wrap; roll with rolling pin to "smooth out" the dough; chill in refrigerator for 15 minutes; then using the plastic wrap to help proceed with the first "book fold" of the dough.  Turn the dough 90-degrees on the plastic wrap, (flour again if getting sticky), and proceed to beat the dough into a rectangle that covers the plastic wrap; fold the dough in-thirds again and give it another beat down into a rectangle.  Chill for 30 minutes.  Repeat the "fold-turn-bash-roll-chill" process two more times, for a total of four turns.  Proceed to use in your favorite pie recipe.

So there you have it.  Despite the fact that it reads really complicated...once you get through your first fold-turn-chill sequence, it's really quite simple...with buttery delicious results as your reward.

To brine, or not to brine...

Right about now you are starting to feel the pressure.  America's culinary "Superbowl" is only days away. 

You are responsible for the spread, the house is a mess, family needs to be picked up at the airport...AND you're supposed to present an elaborate buffet whose excess would make Squanto blush.

At this moment, I would implore you to think like a chef.  Delegate the cleaning and the execution of livery services to the kids, friends, neighbors...focus on what is really stressful: cooking for 20-plus people.

I remember my Grandma cooking on Thanksgiving, everything made from scratch, and all made on Thanksgiving except for the pies...

Then I started working in professional kitchens and was blown. Away.  There was no last minute struggle to produce the meal for several hundred people!  I love my Grandma, loved her cooking (an immeasurable influence on me as a chef), but, boy, oh, boy was she going about it the hard way!

Now, decades later, when I teach cooking classes or am asked about Thanksgiving dinner, I give the wry "think like a chef" answer as the key to success.  So...just what does that mean?  It means planning ahead.  Write your menu down, determine what you can do ahead of time that can be frozen, (desserts), or days ahead and refrigerated, (cranberry sauce, vegetables prepped for cooking).  As a chef I live and die by my daily preplists which include the big projects like "peel potatoes for mashed potatoes" to the minute, "chiffonade sage for gravy."  The more of the advance work you can do before Thursday, the easier/more relaxing/successful your Thursday will be.  (And, foods like stuffing are WAY more delicious if you make it days ahead and let the flavors develop in fridge...and then all you have to do is re-therm the stuffing on Thanksgiving).

Now, one of the big bones of contention amongst professionals is do you brine your turkey?  Some will say that if you do this, that, and the other thing you don't need to brine your turkey.  I am a full-on convert to the brining of turkey!  I like to break a turkey down and remove the breasts and legs from the carcass.  (This method provides myriad advantages: you can now use the carcass to make stock for gravy, stuffing, soup..., the breasts and legs cook at separate rates so you can control cooking better, a broken down turkey will take up less space in the refrigerator and oven, it is much easier to handle on Thanksgiving, AND it will take far less time to cook than a bone-in bird.)  Brining produces a flavorful, and moist turkey, (even if you cook it a wee bit longer than you should).

Of course, if you break the turkey down you loose that Norman Rockwellian photo opp with Dad carving the turkey at the table.  And yes, it is the Chef's Mantra that if the meat is attached to the bone, cook it on the bone for maximum flavor.  I will take an edible turkey over a photo opp any day.  And, when you brine your turkey you more than compensate for taking it off of the bone.

I hear the grumbling that it is all well and good in a restaurant kitchen, but at home it such a pain, too messy, blah, blahbitty, blah...there are plastic bags available at the supermarket that made specifically for brining turkeys, people will place the turkey, brine, and ice in a cooler...there was one year when the temperature stayed below 40 F and I put the turkey and brine in a 5-gallon bucket and kept it in my car overnight!  Where there is a will...

What about the actual brine?  Here is where I encourage you to experiment with flavors, with one exception: the amount of salt.  There is a scientific ratio, by weight, (scales are for cooks, measuring cups are for building sand castles), for salt:liquid which is:

1:20; 1-part salt to 20-parts water, or approximately 1-1/4 ounces of salt (by weight) to 1 gallon of water.

You can replace some of the water with wine, brown sugar instead of white sugar...just make sure you taste it before you put your turkey in the brine to make sure it is delicious.  I will usually add the salt, water, whole peppercorns, a cinnamon stick, some crushed red chili flakes, sugar/honey, and soy sauce (just enough for some umami) to a pot and bring up to a boil.  This helps dissolve the salt, and sugar while extracting flavor out of the spices.  After the salt has dissolved I will strain the brine into a clean container and put in the fridge to cool; you can substitute ice for some of the initial liquid to chill it faster (like you did when setting gelatin when you were in a hurry).  After the brine is cool, add your turkey parts; I would recommend brining the turkey for 12-24 hours.  (If you brine the turkey for any longer than that, you are going to move from "brining" to "curing" and the texture of the turkey will change dramatically (almost to the point of deli counter turkey).)

Cooking you brined bird is easy-peasy: remove the turkey from the brine and pat dry with paper towels.  (In a professional kitchen we will do this on Wednesday morning, and place the dried turkey on roasting racks- the ones sold as "cooling racks" in kitchen supply stores- and store them uncovered overnight to really help the skin dry).  You want to dry the skin because moisture is the enemy of crispy.  We will then roast the turkey at 275 F until an instant read thermometer reads 155 F (usually less than 1 hour); remove the turkey from the oven and cover with foil.  (SCIENCE ALERT: This is resting the meat to allow the juices to redistribute back into the turkey; it will allow the turkey to "carry over" cook to the government recommended 165 F; it will allow the proteins to relax making your slices nice and pretty).

So plan ahead.  Prepare ahead.  And go through Thursday like Martha Stewart has a thing or two to learn from you!  And, regardless of whether you brine your turkey whole, break it down and roast the pieces un-brined, or order take-out from from your local restaurant, have a happy and safe Thanksgiving.

Escoffier didn't have to put up with this...

"I am a hotel chef."

That was a big admission for me.  And a generalization based upon looking at my resume, (all generalizations are false by the way.)  For the sake of this argument, I will accept the label.

I have spent 11 of my 17 years as an Executive Chef in hotels, so I guess it is correct: I.  Am.  A.  Hotel.  Chef.  "But, why is this such a 'big admission' for you?" you may ask.  Well...I have always fought against labels and being pigeon-holed as this or that; as a musician/fan of music I don't like labels...so why would I want to be labeled as chef?  There are some who believe that chefs that work in hotels are less talented, don't really cook, and if they were "really that good" they would have a restaurant of their own.

More disconcerting, is the reaction amongst other hospitality professionals and kitchen colleagues.  I have gone into job interviews for a "Restaurant Chef" only to be sneered at when the interviewer looks at the resume to only see hotels...despite the fact that in a hotel I run multiple restaurants AND a banquet business AND catering AND room service...  Anthony Bourdain has called Hotel Chefs, "sell outs" who cook "schlock food."  And while there are definitely those chefs in hotels, I take umbrage to Mr. Bourdain's assertion, and the general perception of Hotel Chefs.  AND here is why:



1)  It is almost universally acknowledged that Auguste Escoffier, building upon the work of Chef Marie-Antoine Careme, is the Grandfather of Modern Cuisine as we know it.  He was referred to as the "king of chefs, chef of kings."  The Certified Master Chef Test uses the recipes from Escoffier as the basis of its judging criteria.  Almost every kitchen office has a copy of his Le Guide Culinaire.  Odd then, that chefs tend to forget that he teamed up with Cesar Ritz, (you may have heard of the Ritz Hotel in Paris...or the Ritz-Carlton...), the most successful hotelier of the era to become the preeminent chef, possibly of all.  Time.  And even though it is a fact oft overlooked, Escoffier was a Hotel Chef!

2)  I realize that a lot of chefs who have no hotel experience, may look down upon a Hotel Chef as "playing it safe" while they are running a restaurant "without a net."  Which is fair.  Hotels have the "luxury" of having room revenue to offset the costs of the entire hotel; hotel food and beverage operations are often subsidized, and looked at as amenities/loss leaders and not a profit center.  A freestanding restaurant, if lucky, will cover all of their costs with their Sunday through Friday sales with all of their Saturday sales being profit.  Many are not that lucky...

However, as a "restaurant chef" there is a much higher reward to accompany the much higher risk.  If you are a chef in a restaurant and you are a great "Culinary Artist" or are doing something of note, people will.  Take.  Notice.  There is more media attention...which leads to more covers...which leads to more profits...which leads to more and more and more...In a hotel, "high praise" is, "This doesn't taste like hotel food."  Regardless of how innovative or delicious your cooking is, the only media coverage you can expect is from trade magazines.  AND if you are truly awesome and worthy of a national spotlight, the Corporate Chef of your hotel company will swoop in for the photoshoot...while you toil away in awesomeness and anonymity.

3)There are actually working Executive Chefs that work in hotels!

Seems obvious.

There are many Executive Chefs that follow the somewhat antiquated-traditional model of the Executive Chef who do not cook for a living anymore.  They are the chefs that sit in an office, looking out the office window at the kitchen operations.  They embrace the Executive part of their title more than the Chef part..."Clipboard Chefs," (labeled as such because they are more apt to be found with a clipboard in their hands instead of a knife or food); it is the stereotype that I fight against everyday.

In the same vein of the somewhat "new school of thought" which sees hoteliers treating their restaurants as Restaurants in a Hotel instead of the staid model of Hotel Restaurants, I consider myself a Chef that works in a hotel more than I would say I am a Hotel Chef.  Oh, sure...I can still rock the Hotel Chef paperwork with the best of culinary administrators.  And I can multi-task and execute a wedding for 250 people while feeding another 250 people in another dining room.

I just choose to be hands-on.  I choose to cook.  I would rather help you instead of delegating the task of helping you to someone else.  I would rather work on one dish all day until it was "perfect," or I was convinced that it wouldn't work, instead of doing paperwork.  I can work your dinner line and still bring in a targeted COGS and write my budget for next year.  I guess you could say, that I am a Restaurant Chef, trapped in a Hotel Chef's career path.

4) Although I disagree with the general perception, I can see how we may be viewed as "sell outs" or "prima donnas."

Yes, by-in-large, being employed in a hotel affords me things that my restaurant brethren are not: health insurance, 401k's, paid time off, vacation pay, travel discounts, etc...  It is also easier for a hotel chef to budget for new equipment in the next year as part of "Capital Improvements".  In a restaurant, a bad week can mean the difference between buying tongs for the cooks, or requiring them to buy their own!

There are some of us who do not take advantage of our situation, and run our kitchens like an independent restaurant with our name on the door, (i.e., we are not spendthrifts).


5)  I really care about where my food comes from, too.  This has always been another knock on the Hotel Chef:  "Hotels get all of their food out of a box/off of the back of a tractor trailer instead of out of a garden/off the farm."

Going "farm-to-table" in a hotel can be a challenge.  It is difficult to serve locally raised beef steaks for 250 when 1 cow may only provide enough of said steaks for 50 people.  The successful chef does not ask the farmer to scale up his production to suit his/her needs; the chef will scale his menu to the production availability of the farmer.

6)  If running a Hotel Restaurant/Restaurant in a Hotel is such a sell out move, why do more and more successful Celebrity Chef/Restaurateurs keep opening restaurants in hotels?

7)  I don't give a rat's ass where you have worked!  If you are talented, I will call you "Chef."

And maybe I have my mentors to blame for that attitude...  I did my apprenticeship in a private club in upstate NY; versatility was the key to success in that situation:

Learn how to do charcuterie, it is a dying art. (That was the way the wind was blowing then...fortunately there has been a resurgence as of late, part of the nose-to-tail movement).  Learn how to carve ice...work with chocolate...do pastries...pull sugar...I was trained in an atmosphere where cooking a hot dog was just as important as cooking foie gras!  Know how to work the line, run a banquet, pack for a cater-out, cost out a recipe, write a schedule, place an order, budget...these are all essential building blocks, the DNA, of being a chef; it matters not whether you are in a restaurant, hotel, corporate cafe, diner, or hot dog cart!



And maybe it was the last point that is the cause of my ire; the reason for my reticence to be labeled as a certain kind of chef.  The venue should not matter one iota.  I am proud to be a Chef.  I am happy that I learned how to knead bread, temper chocolate, carve ice...how to be a complete chef.  I will put forward the same passion and drive to succeed no matter where I choose to ply my trade.  If you are going to treat me differently because I work here, and not there...then that is on you, (and if you are a potential employer who says I can't work in your industry segment because my experience is in another industry segment, I say to you, "what is this?  Montagues versus the Capulets?")  And if you really need to label me, just call me "Chef."

Frozen Punkin' Mousse Pie

Pumpkin Mousse “Pie”

Serves twelve

This is an adult version of the classic pumpkin pie, with a big twist.  It has all of the traditional flavours, but with a pecan crust...oh, and it’s frozen too!!!  This is a great dessert for the lovers of pumpkin pie, but a little lighter and unexpected.  And the filling makes for an excellent stand alone desserts as well just simply chilled and served with sweetened whipped cream.

For the crust:

3        Cups            Pecans, toasted (about 11 ounces)

½       Cup             Firmly packed brown sugar

3        Tblsp.                   Butter, melted

For the filling:

2 ½    Cups            Heavy cream

1        Cup             Light brown sugar, (packed)

8        Ea.              Egg yolks

1 ½    Cups            Solid pack pumpkin

½       Cup             Corn syrup

3        Tblsp.                   Dark rum

1 ½    tsp.              Ground ginger

¾      tsp.              Ground cinnamon

¼       tsp.              Ground nutmeg

¼       tsp.              Ground allspice

For the topping:

1 ½    Cups            Pecan halves, toasted (about 5 ½        ounces)       

1        Ea.              17 ounce jar butterscotch-caramel fudge sauce

FOR THE CRUST:  Preheat oven to 350°F.  Finely chop nuts and sugar in processor.  Add butter and blend, using on/off turns, until moist crumbs form.  Using plastic wrap as an aid, press mixture onto bottom and all the way up the sides of a 9” diameter springform pan with 2 ¾” high sides, covering completely.  Freeze 10 minutes.  Bake crust until golden, about 10 minutes.  Cool completely.

FOR THE FILLING:  Whisk together 1 cup of heavy cream with sugar and egg yolks in medium-heavy sauce pan.  Stir constantly over medium heat until a thermometer reaches 160°F, (about 6 minutes).  Strain mixture into mixing bowl.  Whip, with an electric mixer, until cool and slightly thickened (about 8 minutes).  Beat in pumpkin, corn syrup, rum, and spices.  Using an electric mixer, beat remaining 1 ½ cups heavy cream to medium stiff peaks.  Fold the whipped cream into the cooled pumpkin mixture. Transfer filling to cooled crust.  Cover and freeze overnight.

FOR THE TOPPING:  Arrange pecans side by side atop torte, covering completely.  Drizzle ½ cup caramel sauce over torte, covering the nuts completely, (the pan will be filled to the top).  Freeze until the caramel sets, at least 3 hours or overnight.

Run a sharp knife dipped in hot water, around pan sides to loosen torte.  Release pan sides.  Heat remaining caramel sauce.  Slice torte into 12 slices and serve with warm caramel sauce.  

Thank You, Chef!

Recently my schedule was "opened up" for me...much to my chagrin.

This development is OK as working was cutting into my job searching time, (and free time in general...I haven't posted in yonks!)

SO...I found myself sitting.  Staring at the googler...so I decided to go look at chef/restaurant websites.  Not unusual for a chef to check out what other chefs are doing, after all.  I started with Jimmy Bradley's Red Cat Food Hall in Manhattan, and as I was scouring the online menu, I realized that I hadn't checked out Chef Sat Bains' website in a very long time.

Off to a virtual Nottinghamshire I went.  Restaurant Sat Bains is a two-Michelin starred restaurant and inn situated in Lenton Forest...just off the A52 carriageway.  Chef Bains serves modern English cuisine, and uses a lot of "molecular gastronomy"/modernist/avant garde techniques in his cooking; much of which he picked up while working in Spain at el Bulli.  He is also a locavore, and one course of his menu is called NG7, taken from the restaurant's post code NG7 2SA, as all ingredients for this course are sourced from within 10 meters of the restaurant!  (which also proves that avant garde and local CAN coexist).


As I had not been to the website in a while, I was poring over the home page...and I noticed a little badge on the page that drew me in.  I clicked on it.  I was directed to another Sat Bains website, this one devoted to creativity.  I went further down the rabbit hole, and I found the journal for his recipe/menu item development.  (Having el Bulli on his CV this seems almost natural; Ferran Adria was fanatically meticulous about record keeping).

Well, after reading cooking techniques, tasting notes, general ideas, and equipment suggestions (I still want a centrifuge...) into the early morning hours, light dawned on Marble Head: why not put notebook material online?

For those unfamiliar with the practice, or the obsession of chefs...we keep notes, to-do lists, menu ideas, techniques and recipes in notebooks.  For some chefs it is a necessary evil or even a convenience.  For other chefs it is a full blown case of OCD and a compulsion.  The artist/author Jeff Scott has published a gorgeous two-book exploration of this practice "notes from a kitchen."  (He is currently working on the next volume).  In "notes," the relationship between chef and notebook is explored, and the reliance on notebooks of the chefs executing at the highest levels is laid bare.  Heck!  Rene Redzepi from NOMA Restaurant is publishing his second cookbook as a series of notebooks...

Being a chef, I have kept notebooks since I was a commis at LaFayette Country Club, (it was in fact required that every cook keep a notebook!)  I have boxes of of them accumulated over the years...so I am not surprised to hear of, and see other chef's notebooks.

Here's the rub, finally: his notes were there, for the whole world to see.  For free.  For a little bit of leg work, you are rewarded with a glimpse into the mind, and creative process, of an outstanding chef.  And it is not self aggrandizement; his notes are there with typos, warts, failures, and successes all put in the public domain.  He is sharing his knowledge so that others can learn from his experiments.

This sharing of knowledge is a relatively new development in the evolution of "chefdom."  When I first started cooking, you kept a notebook because, 1) you had to, 2) the only way you could reference the recipe or formula the chef gave you as he walked through the kitchen was to write it down, and 3) the more knowledge you had accumulated in your notebooks the bigger your "leg-up" on the other cooks in the kitchen.  It was highly competitive, and closed.  Now it is just as competitive, but much more collaborative and open.

Chefs share ideas much more freely and we contribute to each other's knowledge with a generosity unseen before.  I am hoping to capture the spirit of Chef Bains, and start sharing notes from some upcoming projects in this forum.

Cheers