eggbeater

pastry chef roles, styles, challenges. part 1

1. How many restaurants do you frequent per month? ___
2. What percentage of them have a chef? ___
3. What percentage of those that have chefs also have a pastry chef? ___
4. What percentage of those restaurants with both chef and pastry chef do you feel you are eating a seamless meal? ___

By seamless I mean: if your meal was a sentence would it be grammatically correct? If your meal was a fitted shirt would the neck be tight but the sleeves perfect? If your meal was a portrait would the subject be blurry and the back ground in focus? If your meal was a house would the bedrooms be a dimly lit, the kitchen tiny and the bathroom an outhouse? If your meal was a vacation would the last days be better than the first or would you wish never to return?

Whether you're in the camp calling cooking art or craft, all sides agree chefs use ingredients and cooking styles to tell a story, to share a thought, to hone an idea, to take you home, to create memory, to woo, to change or solidify or blow your mind.

In kitchens where there's more than one chef, and therefore more than one point-of-view, how many directions can a meal take you? How many directions do you want to be pulled?

Do you prefer a meal where the end of the sentence completes the initial thought or don't you mind being brought to your edge only to leave sticky but not satiated?

These are some of the questions chefs and pastry chefs ask of each other, and thus the diner, when they get into bed together. Well, not literally.

My hope is dessert finishes the sentence savory starts.

My best restaurant pastry chef jobs have been collaborative. I don't believe the last course can be made in a vacuum. A lot of savory chefs I've worked with want nothing to do with pastry and are more than happy to keep themselves oblivious. While this might feel nice-- to be allowed unbothered space with which to "do our thang," it rarely makes for growth. For either side.

I don't believe savory chefs should always be the boss of pastry chefs. Radical? Maybe. If we're both chefs--meaning we're both in charge of our teams and at the top of our respective fields, why should savory be the umbrella under which all other managers reside? I know a lot of pastry chefs with more years and experience than the savory chefs they work with.

It is important that pastry chefs have some experience in the savory realm and savory chefs do the same. Neither side wants to listen to the other when neither one has sought knowledge for that which they are attempting to correct/weigh in on/steer. It's easy to taste a soup and say you don't like it but can you pick out its nuances? Can you do the same for a sorbet? Do you know why one day a gnocchi floats and why another day it disintegrates? Do you know what ingredient's incorrect temperature causes a chocolate chip cookie to spread?

When was the last time you ate a meal in the restaurant where you work? Have you eaten any of your dishes, sweet or savory, start to finish? Meaning not just picked at the various components here and there but really sat down with the silverware you tell the waiters to mark the table with, and eaten it the way you hope a diner will?

Do you think the menu makes sense, from beginning to end? Does your food suit the clientele? Does it really?

Sometimes we have to let go of "the food we want to make" to accommodate "the food our clientele wants." Sometimes we have to take off a flourish no one eats, or condense a menu because indecisive diners make for less table turns. Sometimes we have to change our price point because the check average is scarily low, and sometimes we get to count our blessings when the stars align and everyone orders what we didn't think they'd be brave enough to and for that day we can embrace the warm fuzzies.

I don't believe I have a savory chef soul-mate out there. Or I do, but I don't believe there's only one. But I do think it's important to be in a kitchen where a conversation, with more questions than answers, is taking place.

Savory and pastry chefs who ignore or shun or tamp down or fight against or compete maliciously with or work independently of each other are doing a disservice to themselves, their food, their growth as chefs and the menu/dining experience as a whole. Some beginnings are so dissimilar from endings one wonders if the pastry chef and savory chef have ever even met.

It's a wonderful learning experience to cook in a kitchen with a great savory and pastry team. If you work in one of them, take advantage of all the corners of it! No one cook or chef or commis or sous chef should feel they can no longer ask questions or learn more or get a refresher lesson. Even if it's in diplomacy.

leaving without saying goodbye.

I like to say my g_d has a sense of humor. A notoriously tricky one, I dare say. Not exactly sinister, but definingly dry and definitively abrupt, like the person who pulls a tablecloth out from under the table settings, practiced or not, at the art of subtlety, grace or confidence.

Some friends of mine and I like to say, "sometimes g_d is doing for me what I can not do for myself."

Sometimes you're the tablecloth and sometimes you're the hands and sometimes you're the grip and sometimes you're the smile about to break and sometimes you're the dishes that tremor but do not shatter and sometimes you're the surprise and sometimes you are the glass that cracks but does not fall and sometimes you're the idea to do such a thing at all
         and sometimes you're taken by complete surprise.

Challenges will always arise. It's how we react, rise, reach to/with/into them that transforms us.

I'm not saying these tricks don't ambush.  We navigate as best we can with tools we continue to sharpen or wish we did not own or wish we did.

Reacting and responding are not the same.

Sometimes we turn a corner we didn't know we were turning until we glance back and can no longer see from whence we came. We may try to reach back to say farewell to those we loved and appreciated and wanted to learn more from, but the door closes on the chapter and, to honor the memory they wish to become, we walk forward.

We put one foot in front of the other.

We have faith the ground beneath us will remain solid or we borrow faith from people we love and trust who have extra to lend.

Sometimes we can say goodbye with intention, sometimes we can not.

Strangely I feel grateful for having once experienced a grief so great, so large, so dark that I came to know its attributes, its tides, and can now, sometimes gracefully, sometimes awkwardly, stand in it's course and let it wash over/pass through me, understanding that hope, that light-a comprehension of the incomprehensible; an untangling of confusion and answerless questions, is possible and not out of reach.

One day at a time.

For all loss is loss, no matter it's timing, no matter its reasons, no matter its warnings.

If we are interested in re-defining success we must also define failure differently.
If we are interested in re-defining success, we must discontinue to draw ink lines where permeable ones would delineate more accurately.

The snake swallows its tail. There are no endings, only beginnings. Success is not virgin birth.

I know one certainty: the only thing you can rely on is change.

I proceed, as Peels recedes.
I am proud of all I conceived, built, produced, organized, systemized, learned, celebrated, conjured, inspired, taught, realized.
I built a bakery.
Whether the owners/investors re-shape or remove it, or do what they need to do to insure the space makes them the monies they need to reconcile their bottom line, I remain proud of that which I bore from nothing more than a hope, a wish, desire, a love of baking so strong I have no words to describe it.
On the day before the first day of Spring, the owners and I bid farewell, shook hands and thanked each other for the opportunities we gave and received. More than anything I'm happy for what they gave me. Wood and linen. Staples. A canvas to stretch on my own. Freedom & belief. 

Au revoir, to see again; to leave without saying goodbye. For Good. No home is permanent, excepting the one residing inside.

Be not sad for me. The life-force of a restaurant is the same as a person-it adds, expands, subtracts, grows and shifts; feathers shed; wings are clipped and grow back again; going for as long as it goes, rarely staying the same, or wanting to! The bottom line of a spreadsheet is the outcome of a list of percentages that are ingredients: a recipe for a healthy enterprise-one which not only feeds, but nourishes.

Wondering what's next? I've had some ideas on the side, shelved, proofing in the oven, on hold, hibernating, waiting, restless. I've been placating them with excuses for a long time now. "Not now, I'm opening a restaurant." "Not yet, I'm hiring a team." "Soon, I promise." 

Remember how I said my g_d has a dastardly sense of humor? G_d is nudging me to keep my promise...

Thank you a zillion times thank you to everyone who came in brought friends & family & introduced yourself & ate & tasted & worked & staged with me and for Peels pastry department & everyone who allowed me to make your birthday cake & wedding cakes/pies & photographed & wrote about what I was doing & interviewed & surprised me & gave me critical feedback & made suggestions & put me on the radio & tv & took notice of what my bakery was trying to achieve & came to the Ice Cream Social & ordered your Thanksgiving pies from us & I really do hope to see and feed you all again wherever I land with my whisk and Baby Offset Spatula next. I won't soon forget you, {as I hope you won't, me} Your support has meant so much to me and that which I am attempting to speak through my baking.

au revoir.

Killed By Dessert.

On January 16, 2012 Bill Corbett, Lincoln Carson, Francisco Migoya, Christina Tosi, Brooks Headley, and Michael Laiskonis put together an epic dinner of dessert. Aptly named Killed By Dessert, the affair was intimate, attended by 60 people. I offered my services as photographer/documentarian. And I am so grateful I did.

I took 800 photographs in about 10 hours.
One hundred sixty six of them can be seen on Flickr.

The best words on the event were the ones they put together themselves. You can read those words, that collaborative 'manifesto' on Michael Laiskonis' blog.

 

But because the photographs are without descriptions or a timeline-the menu:

Yes, you woulda been killed too...

 

"Oasis at Three O'Clock in the Morning"

Falafel, Pine Nut Hummus, Flat Bread

Bill Corbett

 

"Brupper"

English Muffin, Black Pepper Butter, Caramelized Onions, Soft Poached Egg, Pea Shoots

Christina Tosi

 

“Wish That I Had Been Born Into It”

Latkes, Smoked Salmon, Caviar and Rose Champagne

Lincoln Carson

 

“Time”

Dashi-Braised Short Rib, Bone Marrow

Michael Laiskonis

 

Mole Negro de Oaxaca

Duck and Corn Tortillas

Francisco Migoya

...

 

“Just Plain Vanilla”

Supported by Mandarin, Buddha’s Hand, Coriander

Lincoln Carson

Delamotte Rose Champagne

 

Butterscotch Semifreddo, Tony Style

Brooks Headley

Delamotte Rose Champagne

 

“Words”

Tarte Tropezienne a la Façon Thorne

Michael Laiskonis

Delamotte Rose Champagne

 

Napoleon Trimmings

Caramelized Puff Pastry Shards, Just-Made Mousseline Cream

Francisco Migoya

Rosa Regale, Brachetto

"Cornflake Cookie Dough Should Make Up 91% of Everyone's Daily Intake, Not Just Mine"

Fresh Cookie Dough, Cookie Puree, Warm Cookie, Cereal milk

Christina Tosi

Domaine Weinbach, Gewürztraminer, Cuvee Theo 2009

 

"My Family's Lack of a Culinary Legacy" aka "The Only Thing My Mom Ever Taught Me How to Make"

Peanut Butter and Banana Sandwich

Bill Corbett

Kracher Beerenauslese, 2008

 

"I was Too Picky of a Kid to Ever Understand PB&J"

Crock Pot Cake, Warm Pickled Strawberry Jam, Peanut Butter Halvah, Sweet Cream

Christina Tosi

Kracher Beerenauslese, 2008

 

INTERMEZZO

Brooks Headley

 

"Peaks and Valleys"

Milk Chocolate, Tarragon, Hazelnut

Bill Corbett

Warre’s Otima 10 Year Tawny Port

 

Melanzane E Cioccolato, Tableside

Brooks Headley

Warre’s Otima 10 Year Tawny Port

 

Coffee Éclair

Francisco Migoya

Knob Creek Bourbon and Coffee Ice Cube

 

“The Beginning of the End, aka The Old Fashioned”

Orange, Toffee, Smoked Vanilla, Praline, Bourbon

Lincoln Carson

Knob Creek Bourbon and Coffee Ice Cube

 

“Ritual”

Caramel Coffee Parfait

Michael Laiskonis

Lamill Coffee

 

The James Beard Award for Outstanding Pastry Chef. {*please consider this post a call to action}

 

The James Beard Foundation has just published their extensive list of semifinalists for 2012. There are dozens of names listed in every category. My name was on that list last year. It was a cause for great excitement and anticipation. While I didn't make the nomination list, being a semifinalist is enough to put on a resume and feel proud of. To be noticed and recognized by the James Beard Foundation is a wonderful thing. And none to easy for a pastry chef, for which only 1, in all of the USA, is chosen per year.

What are the JBF awards? From their website:

Excellence. Passion. Achievement. Success.
The James Beard Foundation Awards shine a spotlight on the best and brightest talent in the food and beverage industry.

Covering all aspects of the industry—from chefs and restaurateurs to cookbook authors and food journalists to restaurant designers and architects and more—the Beard Awards are the highest honor for food and beverage professionals working in North America.

Why do they matter? In The United States of America a James Beard award is considered the highest honor for a chef.

Cook. Baker. Chef. Pastry Chef. Commis. Sous Chef. Saucier. Prep. Dishwasher. Restaurant Owner. It's mostly a thankless job, despite what the media screams at you. It's hard work, day after day, hour after relentless hour, year after vacationless year. Month after month of the same chaos, sometimes reigned, mostly flood.

And then, bam! Once a year a list comes out. The names on it are ones we know, ones we've hard before; some we're surpised by, many we're bored of hearing about. When we read the winners, we're happy there are so many of them it takes a minute to realize there are so very few in the categories of Pastry Chef, Baker, Chocolatier. It takes you another minute to realize there's only 1 award for Pastry Chef Baker Chocolatier. 1.

One James Beard Foundation Outstanding Pastry Chef a year.

In all of the United States of America. A small country, I'll admit, but still. Really? 1?!

How are the awards determined? There's general, legalese information on the James Beard Foundation website under the title "Policies & Procedures." And then there's the critique by Josh Ozersky in Time Magazine. But for the "real deal" see what a JBF Judge says about the process, the criteria, for voting on and choosing "the one," out of hundreds of thousands.

How can one award once a year, define us? It can't, of course.

     being a chef is part pirate, part whore, part punk rock,    part cop,   part junkyard dog, part priest, part cog-in-the-wheel, part junkie, part celebrity,       part sell-out, part pawn, part athlete, part mother, part judge & jailer & lawyer,        part diplomat, part lunatic,    part model, part artist, part factory drone, part convict, part philoopher, part conductor,    part jock and stoner both, part   prat, part citizen, part murderer, part numbers-cruncher, part mayor, part      politician, part polyanna, part bad guy & good girl both, part craftsman, part jailer,   part tornado,         part scoundrel, part construction   worker, part radical,    part accountant, part do-gooder, part thief,    part doctor,

part indefinable.

Chef. A recipe with a list of unattainable ingredients. Incompatible parts.
And there are so many of us.

But because the James Beard Foundation yearly awards are where it's at, I beg you to write them requesting a Regional Outstanding Pastry Chef Award, as they do for savory chefs.

One such person has already written and set forth such a letter. Jenny McCoy, my good friend and colleague, most recently pastry chef of Craft in NYC, set down brave and eloquent words, sending them to Susan Ungaro, President of the James Beard Foundation. Jenny's words, as she is in person, are strong, educated, positive, proactive and utterly brave.

Very lucky for me, and all of you, she has agreed to let me publish her letter.

July 26, 2011           

Susan Ungaro
President
James Beard Foundation
167 West 12th Street
New York, NY 10011

Dear Ms. Ungaro,

   The James Beard Foundation has repeatedly wowed me over the years with their commitment to honoring culinary professionals of all kinds in the United States—not only are the crème de la crème of the industry acknowledged by the JBF, but also professionals who are just beginning their careers; professionals who use food as a way of giving back to their communities; professionals who write about food, photograph food, and even design spaces where food is served. Professionals, who just like the JBF, set the standard for the nation’s industry.

   My first introduction to the James Beard Foundation was in 1999. I was finishing a program in pastry arts at Kendall College, 19 years old, and embarking on my career as a pastry professional in Chicago.  My chef, and former JB Nominee, Don Yamauchi and pastry chef Celeste Zecola of Gordon were asked to cook the last two courses for a “Friends of the Beard House” dinner at Crofton on Wells; I was invited along to assist.  It was at that dinner, in the company of amazing chefs and former James Beard Award winners such as Charlie Trotter, Norman Van Aken and Carrie Nahabedian, that I decided, I, too, wanted to become a friend of the Beard House.  I, too, wanted to strive to win an award, as Pastry Chef of the Year. I still have the menu from that evening; it serves as a reminder of my goal, and as a reminder of my respect for the James Beard Foundation’s endeavors.

   Fast forward twelve years, and many James Beard dinners, benefits, award ceremonies later and while I still dream of an award, my dreams have broadened slightly.  Now I dream to make a lasting impact – an impact that will garner recognition for more of my peers and for the pastry profession as a whole.   I found myself sitting in the auditorium at Lincoln Center last spring thinking, “One pastry chef award a year just isn’t enough to honor all the hard work and expertise of pastry chefs nationwide.”  Just as the cuisine of savory chefs varies throughout the country by region and season, the desserts of the country’s finest pastry chefs do as well. 

   The baking and pastry industry has flourished in recent years. Television shows like Top Chef: Just Desserts have top ratings; schools are being dedicated solely to the art of baking and pastry; films like Kings of Pastry, chronicling the World Pastry Cup competition are in theatres nationwide; pastry chefs have celebrity status and are becoming household names; restaurants are highlighting their pastry chefs nearly as much as their head chefs; enrollment in pastry-based culinary programs has increased by 50-75% in the last handful of years.  With the field of baking and pastry growing at the rate it is, wouldn’t it be wonderful to see the James Beard Foundation rise along with it?

   And so my question to the James Beard Foundation, its Board of Trustees, and its National Advisory Board is this: Would the James Beard Foundation consider honoring pastry chefs within regions just like they do savory chefs?  In just the last few months, I have mentioned the idea of award expansion to several of my pastry and savory chef colleagues across the country, chefs who are both former JB Award nominees and winners, and every single one of them agrees—awarding more than one pastry chef a year would be a tremendous acknowledgement to the pastry profession from the organization that the pastry profession respects most.

   Many thanks for your time and consideration. I look forward to working with you soon.

 

Sincerely,

Jenny McCoy
Pastry Chef
Craft

Jenny's blog, Seasonal Sweets, also has a copy of her letter published, and another plea to write to The James Beard Foundation.

Please honor Jenny's gift, Jenny's bravery, Jenny's letter with a letter of your own!

Consider this post a call to action.

Please send a letter-- especially if you are a cooking for a living. Please write a letter if you [or someone you know, know of, respect, love and or admire, are inspired by] are now, or want to be: a Chef, a James Beard Award Winner, a Pastry Chef, Pastry Cook. Or believe Pastry Chefs should get the same recognition as Savory Chefs.

Thank you.