This Week >> 6/26/2008
What better way to study history and to travel, then by its food? This week, foodies Susan and Catherine take Let's Travel! listeners on a culinary tour of the world with Cathy K. Kaufman, professional chef, author and culinary historian and Eric Bedoucha, executive pastry chef and Co-Owner of Financier Patisserie in New York City. You'll learn how you can travel inexpensively by sampling the foods of different countries and what food tells us about us, an age, a country, a civilization? We'll also discuss other "hot topics" such as the current food crisis, shortages, the extremes - too much food, too much of the "wrong foods" vs. too little food, Global Warming, etc. You'll also hear about what Eric learned from the various cultures he lived in and how he incorporated that into his baking and business. So sit back and indulge.
Guests
Financier Patisserie
As Executive Pastry Chef and co-owner of Financier Patisserie, Eric Bedoucha has made this charming pastry shop and cafe in the Financial District a favorite destination for breakfast, lunch and dessert. Financier received a food rating of 28 in Zagat's Marketplace Guide, and its popularity led to the opening of two new branches.
Chef Bedoucha has created a simple and elegant menu of classic French pastries, His large repertoire includes classic French pastries such as Opera and St. Honore, as well as modern interpretations such as "Cassis-White Chocolate Mousse Cake" and "Adrienne", a pistachio and chocolate composition. He has a distinctive eye for color and the pastries on display in the shop look just as beautiful all together as they do individually.
Raised in Paris, Bedoucha was born in French Algeria, where he spent the first two years of his life. Growing up, Bedoucha was accustomed to traditional Algerian fare which included couscous, as well as pastries filled with almonds, dates, pine nuts, and scented with rose and orange blossoms. At the age of fourteen, Bedoucha discovered his passion for pastry as an apprentice for a bakery in Paris under the tutelage of his first mentor, J.P. Weiss. It was Weiss who encouraged Bedoucha to enter his first competition at the age of seventeen. He continued to compete throughout his career, winning many awards.
At the celebrated Dalloyau in Paris, Chef Pascal Niau taught him organization, the pursuit of perfection and the handling of volume. Later, his career path took him to the United States, where he worked with Gray Kunz at the Maxim's, La Grenouille and Lutece before heading to Bayard's in November, 2000 to join the Poulakakos family of restaurants. In 2002, the owners of Bayard's offered him a partnership with the opening of Financier Patisserie.
Below are some recipes from Eric:
Sugar dough
1 pound of unsalted butter
8 ounces of confectioner's sugar
2 fresh eggs
20 ounces of all purposed flour
3 ounces of almond flour
Direction:
In a mixer bowl using the paddle combine almond flour, flour, butter, salt and the confection sugar. Mix on a slow speed when all ingredients are well mix adds the egg and the vanilla. Keep mixing till smooth. Remove from the mixer and place it in the refrigerator till you're ready to use it. Roll the dough into thin layers to form your tarts shells by using tarts mold.
Almond Cream.
8 oz Butter
1 ½ cup Almond flour
1 ¼ cup granulated sugar
4 whole eggs
Direction:
In a mixer bowl using the paddle combine almond flour, flour, butter. Mixed till well creamed then add the eggs slowly. Then add a splash of rum (Optional) a splash of vanilla.
Filled half way, the Tarte shell with the almond cream then bake it in a 350f oven till light golden brown. When cool, spray some raspberry preserves on top of the almond cream and garnish the Tarte with your favorites berries or fruits?!
13 ea fresh lemon (15oz)
5 ea lemon zest (1 ½ oz)
15 fresh eggs
11 oz granulated sugar
18 oz heavy cream
Directions:
Combine eggs and sugar mix well; add the heavy cream cold then the lemons juice and zest. Bake on a pre-bake sugar dough tart shell that has been egg washed to seal the crust.
Baked at 325*F
This will be made in three parties.
1) The sable dough (pate sablee)
2) The rhubarb compote
3) The crumbed (streusel)
4) Strawberry coulis
Then when each element will be done the tart can be assembling anytime.
Pate sablee:
All purpose flour 14 ounces
Butter 10 ½ ounces
Confectioner sugar 5 ounces
Salt pinch
Yolks 3 large
Vanilla extract splash
Directions:
In a mixer bowl using the paddle combine flour, butter, salt and the confection sugar. Mix on a slow speed when all ingredients are well mix adds the egg yolks and the vanilla. Keep mixing till smooth. Remove from the mixer and place it in the refrigerator till you're ready to use it. Then roll the dough down to ¼ of an inch appx and shape it into a ring. Bake it at 325 F. set a side.
You need approximately 10 stalks of fresh rhubarb peeled and cut into an inch long.
In a bowl toast in all the rhubarb pieces with enough granulated sugar to cover all pieces of rhubarbs. Set a side ¼ of that sugared rhubarb, through onto a hot pan the remain of the sugared rhubarb, Cook till tender add a lemon juice. Drain the cook rhubarb set a side. Meanwhile cook the first ¼ of sugared rhubarb the same way but you want to keep a bite crunchy, so don't cook it all the way. Drain it on top of the first cooked rhubarb. Set a side.
Crumble (streusel)
Flour 2 ¼ Cups
Sugar 1 1/8 cups
Almond paste 1/2 cup
Butter 8oz (2 sticks)
Directions:
In a mixing bowl by using the paddle combine the flour, sugar and almond paste mix on a slow speed, When the mixture become sandy add the butter by small pieces at the time. Do not over mix. The mix should be all incorporated but still remaining sandy. Remove from mixer and pass the mixture through a screen (rack) to keep it granulated. Place in a refrigerator for few hours. Then sprinkle onto a baking sheet lined with a parchment paper, Oven should be at 350-375 F bake till light golden colored remove from oven set aside.
Strawberry coulis
1 pint of fresh strawberries
2 ounces granulated sugar
Directions:
Place the clean strawberries into a blender with the sugar, purée pass it through a chinois.reserve.
Tarte the final step!
Now that you have all your elements ready, your Tarte shell should be pre-baked and cool, Fill the shell with the rhubarb compote (cold) then top evenly the crumble. You can decorated the Tarte with fresh slice strawberry, served with a coulis.
CulinaryHistoriansNY.org
Cathy K. Kaufman is a professional chef and culinary historian. She is on the faculty of The Institute of Culinary Education (formerly Peter Kump's New York Cooking School), where she teaches classes in historical cookery and gastronomy, in addition to French cooking. She has acted as a consultant on historical cookery for Sotheby's Institute of Art and the Italian Cultural Foundation of America.
Chairperson of the Culinary Historians of New York since 2003, she is a senior editor of the Oxford Encyclopedia of Food and Drink in America and author of Cooking in Ancient Civilizations, Greenwood Press. Before earning an honest living in the kitchen, she practiced law for eleven years in New York.
Below are some recipes from Cathy:
Conditum Paradoxum (Honey-Spiced Wine), (Apicius 1.1.1)
Honey-infused wines, generically called mulsum, were served as aperitifs at Roman dinner parties. The recipe is one of a very few in Apicius to give precise quantities for the ingredients, suggesting that it originated as a medicine.
The skimming is unnecessary with modern refined honeys. If you cannot find dates with pits, and the recipe works well without the pits. Mastic is a resin from the bark of the pistacia lentiscus, a shrub found only in the eastern Mediterranean. It is still used in some Greek and Turkish pastries and as a breath freshener.
15 lb. of honey are put into a bronze jar which already contains two pints of wine, so that you boil down the wine as you cook the honey. This is to be heated over a slow fire of dry wood, stirring with a stick while it cooks; if it begins to boil over it is stopped with a splash of wine; in any case it will simmer down when the heat is taken away, and when cooled, re-ignited. This must be repeated a second and a third time; then the mixture is finally removed from the brazier and, on the following day, skimmed. Next 4 oz. of pepper, 3 scruples of pounded mastic, 1 dram each of bay leaf and saffron, 5 roasted date-stones, and the dates themselves softened in wine to a smooth puree. When all this is ready, pour on 18 pints of smooth wine. If the finished product is bitter, coal will correct it.
1 bottle white wine
1 cup honey
1 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper
1 small bay leaf
¼ teaspoon crushed mastic
1 pinch saffron
2 dates, with pits if possible
Place all but ½ cup wine in a saucepan and add the honey. Stir and heat just enough to dissolve the honey. Add the pepper, mastic, bay leaf, and saffron. Remove from the heat.
Remove the pits from the dates if unpitted. Place the date pits in a small sauté pan and gently toast them over a low flame until lightly colored. Add to the wine mixture. (This step can be omitted if the dates are pitted.)
Soften the date flesh in the remaining ½ cup of white wine. Puree in a blender or by pounding in a mortar. Add to the wine mixture. Stir to combine and let infuse for several hours or, ideally, overnight. Strain and serve at room temperature or chilled.
Pounded Olive Relish (Columella 12.49.5)
[Pausean olive] is especially suitable for the preparation of preserves which are served at the more sumptuous repasts; for, when required, it is taken out of the jar and, after being crushed, blends with any other seasoning you like. Most people, however, cut up finely leeks and rue with young parsley and mint and mix them with crushed olives; then they add a little peppered vinegar and a very little honey or mead and sprinkle them with a little green olive-oil and then cover them with a bunch of green parsley.
According to Columella, Pausean olives have a "whitish" color, indicating a particular variety of olives likely picked under-ripe. The recipe also specifies "young" herbs, presumably "fresh."
1 cup green olives, pitted and finely chopped
1 tablespoon finely chopped raw leek
1 teaspoon minced fresh rosemary leaves
4 sprigs parsley, chopped
8 mint leaves, chopped
1½ tablespoons vinegar
coarsely ground black pepper to taste
2 teaspoons honey
2 tablespoons olive oil
whole parsley sprigs for garnish
Combine all of the ingredients and garnish with the whole parsley. Serve with unsalted crackers or pita bread as an hors d'oeuvres.