Pastry Curious

I’m not sure that all of our traits are in-born or lifestyle choices, but once in a while I do admit to being a little, you know, “pastry curious”.

I’ve mentioned before that cuisiniers love to make fun of pâtissiers.  Pastry is a slightly precious art of precise measurements and temperatures, and seems to attract the personalities to match.  I had a little fun this week in the production kitchen working with a couple of Intermediate Pastry students who were doing their required hours.  When they were asked to debone some lamb scraps to make sausage they weren’t even sure which knife in their kit was their boning knife because they’d never used it, not even once.  Even a cuisinier’s pastry bag gets a better workout than a pâtissier’s knife kit.   We have creepy obsessions with our knives, they get all weird about spoons and whisks.

That said, I’m always a bit intrigued by some of the beautiful things coming out of the pastry kitchens – the chocolate, the cake and the sugar artwork.  Not my thing because my temperament is all wrong, but if there’s an opportunity to learn a little more, I’ll take it.

I had some conflicting plans today, but decided to drop in on the “Chocolate Demonstration” short course for a little while.  Full-time students are allowed to attend any of the demonstration portions of short courses for free, and can take the full course at a discount.  And since this was demonstration-only, there was no cost at all. 

Got a chance to see the new pastry Chef (shall we call him Chef 5?) in action.  A (very) short history of chocolate and a tasting of some of the various chocolate products, right from cocoa nibs (roasted unsweetened cocoa beans), through white chocolate (not really chocolate), milk chocolate, and more bitter dark chocolate.  Didn’t get to stick around to see all the steps for the cake, but it was interesting nonetheless.

Took a few notes about the precise temperatures for tempering chocolate.  Is it something I think I’m going to use very often?  Probably not.  But on the other hand, it’s always useful to have that info on slip of paper in my knife kit or in the back of my mind.  I had a little success with making dessert this week, so now if chocolate were to show up in my basket I have a few ideas about what I can do.

A little bit of my Saturday well spent, but I’m not going to switch teams anytime soon.