gâteau st. honoré, or the dessert that almost defeated me

sometimes, desserts are both impressive and laughably easy to make. think tiramisu, crème brûlée, or baked alaska: guests are sure to ooh and ah over your creation as you conveniently forget to mention that it was so absurdly simple to throw together that even your pet rock could do it.

this dessert, however, isn't like that.

meet the gâteau st. honoré. it's named after the french patron saint of baking and pastry chefs (i am once again reminded of why i love that country), and an exhausting ordeal to make. one reviewer called it "an extremely complicated dessert not to be attempted by the faint-hearted."

this dessert is commonly used as a graduation test (!) for pastry chef students, since it contains basically every component that you can possibly put into a pastry: pâte feuilletée, pâte à choux, chantilly cream, pastry cream, caramel, and chiboust. if you'd like to show off, you can get even fancier and top it with spun sugar, caramel lace, meringue, chocolate tuiles, poached pears, candied rose petals, orangettes... or you could flavour the chantilly cream with matcha or strawberries, or pipe salted caramel into the cream puffs, or dip them into milk chocolate pastry cream. there really are no limits to the complexity.

the recipe reads like a novel. a russian novel. undaunted, naive little baking dilettante moi got it into my head that it would be fun to attempt this for a dinner party on christmas day. (not unlike how i thought it would be fun to take a class on tolstoy my freshman year)

oooh boy, this was a humbling experience. i've always considered myself decently competent in the kitchen, but this dessert spurred a mini-crisis -- ohmygod i can't actually cook i'm just a poser my camera has butter all over it i hope it still works i'm not qualified to be blogging!!

i was sooo close to giving up halfway through, especially after my second batch of pâte à choux once again turned into liquidy soup, the butter supply was running low, and i had been standing in the kitchen for 1 1/2 hours with little to show. i bow to you, saint honoré, i remember conceding my defeat, pouring a batch of failed batter down the garbage disposal. i, and everything else in the kitchen, was coated in flour and flecks of butter, and i felt like such a foodie failure.

not supposed to look like this. 

but miraculously... it came together. with a lot of improvisation and disregard creative adaptation of the recipe, two sinkfuls of dishes, and 3 hours of my afternoon, the gateau ended up looking pretty decent and tasting pretty phenomenal.

i christmas-ified it with raspberries and pistachios and took it to the party, where everyone was so awed that no one dared to cut into it. only after i butchered it with a steak knife did people dig in :)

recipe & more photos after the jump!

cranberry & pear clafoutis

some of the best perks of being at home are the immensely well-stocked kitchen, three ovens to handle my culinary adventures, and having someone to help clean the mess that inevitably ensues (my lovely mother).

of course, i had to take advantage of this by making a special weekday dessert: cranberry and pear clafoutis.

clafoutis, besides being extremely fun to say, is a french country dessert with the texture of a flan-meets-cake. it looks quite rustic, tastes very comforting, and still exudes elegance. it's traditionally made with unpitted black cherries, sprinkled with powdered sugar, and served warm, but i improvised with what we had in the house: a single bruised pear standing on its last leg and a bag of cranberries.

p.s. click on the photos to see them larger!

the result completely exceeded expectations. warm custard studded with red berries and chunks of pear... then paired with vanilla ice cream and a dollop of crème fraiche. so decadent.



i was afraid of making the dish too sour with the cranberries, but the tartness ended up being such a nice contrast to the smooth sweet custard, and i wish i added more. also, my baking dish wasn't wide enough, and the batter ended up drowning the fruit, meaning the clafoutis lost its signature look of a golden moon studded with vibrant fruit.

but even so, this was imperfectly perfect.

Cranberry & Pear Clafoutis
Adapted from Ina Garten

• 1 tablespoon unsalted butter (I used Earth Balance)
• 1/3 cup plus 1 tablespoon granulated sugar
• 3 large eggs
• 6 tablespoons all-purpose flour
• 1 1/2 cups heavy cream
• 2 teaspoons vanilla extract
• 1 teaspoon grated lemon zest
• 1/4 teaspoon salt
• 2 tablespoons bourbon (Use pear brandy if you have it)
• 1 ripe Bosc pear (I would recommend using two)

Preheat the oven to 375 degrees F. Butter a 10 by 3 by 1 1⁄2-inch round baking dish and sprinkle the bottom and sides with 1 tablespoon of the sugar.

Beat the eggs and the 1⁄3 cup of granulated sugar in the bowl of an electric mixer until light and fluffy. On low speed, fold in the flour, cream, vanilla extract, lemon zest, salt, and bourbon. 

Peel, quarter, core, and slice the pears. Arrange the slices in a single layer, slightly fanned out, in the baking dish. Sprinkle cranberries into the gaps. Pour the batter over the pears and bake until the top is golden brown and the custard is firm, about 40 minutes. Serve warm, with crème fraiche and vanilla ice cream.

how to look like you know what you're doing:
wear a gingham apron and wield a stick of butter earth balance

honey. luscious.

diminished rather rapidly, especially with a sweet-toothed little brother around :P

adventures in domesticity

some people, perhaps a lot of people, are under the delusion that i can cook. i'm not sure where they get this idea (perhaps because i eat a lot, which means my taste buds are developed, or because i won some school cooking competition in the past, which really had nothing to do with cooking) but anyways, i'm not just being a prototypically humble chinese chef who denigrates her own culinary abilities for the sake of lowering expectations only to blow them out of the water -- i'm being honest when i say that i really don't think i can cook.

anyways, a few weeks ago, for some crazy reason i suggested making dinner together with le garçon and he happily agreed, probably supposing that i had some secret giada de laurentiis double identity in the kitchen just waiting to spring forth.

as i walked to whole foods, where we were to meet and pick up the ingredients for dinner, i frantically called my mother, telling her about my predicament and begging for advice. what do i cook?? holy effing crap what if i destroy the kitchen???! she gave some pretty excellent tips that i hadn't thought of: ask what he likes, and then design a menu. "fish is easy! so is chicken!" she rattled off ideas. hmm, i think easy would be pouring cereal into a bowl, but okay.

we scoured the perimeter of whole foods, looking for things we liked. salmon piqued our fancy, and so did the idea of a very fresh salad with watermelon and feta. and for dessert, i decided to be ambitious, eyeing the gorgeous purple plums on display and deciding to make a rustic tart from scratch, with ice cream on the side.

back at home i coated the salmon in evoo, sprinkled it with salt and pepper, and flopped it into the pan. ridiculously loud hissing noises and scary oil splatters everywhere sent me cowering on the other side of the kitchen, every so often inching closer to the stove and prodding the filets with a spatula.

"you're doing a great job!" he reassured (bless him). i winced, clutching the spatula as if it were a shield between the stove and i. (i have to admit i was kinda more worried at that point about destroying my clothes with oil than about how the food was going to turn out.)

completely butchering one of the filets and destroying its photographic potential by smooshing it in half, i determined that the salmon was just the right shade of pink to serve. we plated it, serving it with slices of lemon and quinoa (courtesy of whole foods' salad bar) on the side.



how'd it turn out? flipping FANTASTIC. the skin was perfectly slightly crisped, the meat was moist and flaked at the gentle touch of a fork, the creamy mild flavour perfectly accented with salt and pepper (and sips of white). simple, fresh, and delicious.



spinach, watermelon, feta, sliced almonds, and a bit of balsamic make an excellent salad.

by the time we finished eating i was so drained from the ordeal of making dinner that i couldn't imagine getting up and preparing a tart from scratch. haagen dazs to the rescue, along with dark chocolate and strawberries. simplicity is perfect.

we both agreed that this was such a refreshing change from eating out. more intimate, satisfying, and fun -- not to mention healthier!

happy exhausted chef. maybe i do have some giada in me?

the great boston macaron expedition

given that this blog is the namesake of my most beloved pastry, it's basically a crime that i haven't written anything about macarons yet. i'm sorry! there's no excuses, except that there's too much to say. (but at the same time there's really nothing to say--a macaron needs to be experienced, not talked about.)

anyways, that changes today. i'm going to detail one of the most absurd, unhealthy, and immoderate things i've done, foodwise, in recent memory.

i've dubbed it the great macaron expedition of april 2011.

it all started when, unhappily back at school after a food-filled week in france, i bemoaned boston's lack of good macarons. boston, i was convinced, didn't have macarons that could hold a candle up to even just the mediocre ones in paris, not to mention laduree or pierre hermé.

i want you.

admittedly, i had never tried any macarons in boston before making such an assertion, but i was certain that just by virtue of not being french, and not being consumed in a tearoom in saint-germain-des-pres, boston macarons were doomed to taste, feel, and look inferior. (yeah, i'm pretentious, but i'm not the only one. a former classmate/current colleague of mine once said, vis-à-vis gastronomy, "Boston is God's punishment for all of our sins.") 

a macaron is not just about having the right ingredients, or a master pastry chef, or fancy flavours, or the perfect features and proportions and textures--it's about the environment in which they are made and purchased and savoured. boston might have fine patisseries, but it doesn't have the french waiter, or the parisian air so redolent of lavender and freshly-baked bread and love, or...

okay, i might be romanticizing a bit here, but i was confident that boston macarons were going to suck.

my friend sam, a boston native, was eager to prove me wrong. "Boston is the 12th largest city in the world by GDP," he pointed out. (my response: "so?") what it may lack in quality, boston perhaps makes up for in quantity: there were macarons to be had at l.a. burdick's, athan's bakery, tatte fine cookies & cakes, flour bakery, st. emilion macaroon company, etc. 

i was dubious but optimistic when we set out on a trip to gather macarons from every single bakery in boston that offered them. we were going to compare and contrast, record voice notes, and photograph each specimen. we were going to dissect, inspect, and eat them all. in a single sitting. omg. this was scientific, this was delicious, this was disgusting. this was the over-the-top pursuit of the perfect macaron.

we did our research, and headed to the danish pastry house, menton, formaggio kitchen, burdick's, crema cafe, and sportello. i'm getting a sugar high just looking at that list...

lots of places that we thought would stock them ended up macaron-less, and formaggio's was closed by the time we got there, but by the end of the day, we had a trunk filled with enough macarons to feed marie antoinette and her entire retinue.


macaron acquisition in progress.

dessert for two

the loot! as you can see, we didn't just get macarons, but other sweets as well: almond tarts, coconut macaroons, baklava, a giant pistachio-studded meringue from sportello, and other random assorted pastries.


in a vague attempt to be healthy, we decided to make a lots-of-greens dinner before digging into dessert. on the menu: poached eggs with homemade hollandaise, sushi, and salad with strawberries and avocado. domestic goddessy-ness on display right here (just kidding, i did very little of the work).

but of course, what we really want to eat were the macarons. so we began...

up first were these babies from sportello. they look, erm, like i made them, haha. (not a good thing.) lumpy shell, off-center sandwiches, and far, far too crumbly. with each bite, shards of macaron rained down onto the plate, which sort of defeats the air of elegance that is supposed to accompany macaron consumption (admit it, we all eat macarons partially to seem cultured).



sportello's meringue served as a palate cleanser lol. i had fun chipping tiny pieces off this gargantuan block and nibbling on them between macarons.

menton is actually a french restaurant in south boston that presents bite-size macarons to diners after their meals, but with sam's connections, we got a bag to take with us. :)

these menton mini macarons were surprisingly quite nice despite their unconventional diminutiveness. lemon and green tea were my favourites. soft texture, not crumbly, good ratio of filling to cookie. however, i do wish they had been larger--it's hard to really enjoy the taste when they're so tiny.



oh burdick's, you are such a disappointment, from your inexplicably raved-about hot chocolate (which i find far too rich and gag-inducing) to these macarons (flavours were ginger, raspberry, chocolate, citrus, lavender, and pistachio). they sure looked nice--smooth, well-formed, and good texture--but tasted so weak.

to my disappointment, the raspberry didn't taste like raspberry. to my relief, the ginger didn't taste at all like ginger. (i have ginger issues.)

the lavender was nice and lavender-y, probably my favourite of the bunch.

starting to get a headache now...

danish pastry house macarons. nothing of note. the coconut macarons were lovely though!

the aftermath...

as if that weren't enough sugar, we proceeded to bake more cookies using the egg whites we had leftover after making the hollandaise sauce. specifically, coconut meringue cookies! the recipe came from the joy of cooking, aka the bible.



i promise they tasted better than they looked.

a gazillion calories later...

the verdict is: boston should stick to chowder and baked beans. macarons belong decidedly to paris.

is this any surprise?
however, i'm willing to give new york a shot this summer. :)

(all the photos except the first two were taken with sam's badass nikon D700.)