Secrets of the
Great French Chefs
How I learned to stop worrying while I cleaned the walk-in
Twenty years of professional culinary experience has brought me to this- I still don't trust my own instincts in the kitchen. The other day I was ad-libbing a chocolate mousse to stuff and frost a pecan meringue cake and as I assembled ingredients and planned how to make it, I had zero confidence in the process, and in my skills. But as I went on,. melting the chocolate slowly over not boiling water, dissolving some gelatin in water, cooking the egg yolks, whipping the cream and the egg whites, and finally folding everything together, I realized one thing. I knew what I was doing after all. I was in control of the whole process and the cake came out. Too bad I can't now really remember what the recipe was, but I can offer the following:
Chocolate Mousse for a Party
Carefully melt 24 oz best bittersweet chocolate with 8 oz unsalted butter and allow to cool. Whip 1 qt heavy cream to sorta stiff peaks and set aside. Separate 30 eggs and cook the yolks with 1/2 cup of strong coffee or liqueur of your choice over a low flame as if you were making hollandaise, till thick and creamy. When thick, remove from the heat and beat until cool. Whip the egg whites to stiif peaks. Fold the chocolate and the yolks together. Fold in the beaten whites. Spread 1/3 of the whipped cream across the mousse and fold in. Repeat this maneuver unti. l the cream is all folded in. The mousse should have enough body to hold a peak. Failure is most often the result of not allowing the chocolate to cool, thus deflating the cream. Serves 35
Classic French cuisine, or at least an interpretation of it, was the first cooking I was exposed to as a student of the art. I became obsessed with learning how to duplicate the dishes I read about, and for many years was nomadic, seeking this knowledge and that information, who had it and how could I learn what he or she knew. I worked for one bona -fide French chef, who, when nouvelle cuisine was hot, still made his fonds every week. I must be the last person in North America to learn classic stocks and sauces from an old-timer. And while I wouldn't make my demi-glace in quite the same way nowadays, anybody who would turn their nose up at this doesn't know how to eat:
Chef Martin's Sweetbreads with Olives
Poach 1 1/2 lb sweetbreads in acidulated water for 5 minutes with some bay leaf and clove. Allow to cool in the broth for 10 minutes and then peel them carefully, pulling away the thin membrane and all the little tubes and bits of fat. Put them on a shallow pan, place another flat pan on top, weight them down and refrigerate for a couple of hours.
Dredge the sweetbreads in seasoned flour and saute gently in clarified butter till they take on a nice golden color. Add 2 minced shallots and 1/2 lb sliced mushrooms and cook until the mushrooms start to give up their water. Remove the sweetbreads, jack up the heat, and saute the mushrooms till they squeak. Replace the sweetbreads and flambe with brandy. Add 1/2 cup sauce Demi-Glace and reduce a bit. Add 2/3 cup green olives and 1/4 cup Madeira, taking care not to boil the sauce after this point. You might also swirl in some sweet butter if you wish. It is a fundamental error to deglaze this dish with the Madeira, which should be added at the last, since it is a fortified wine.
What's that you say? Sauce Demi-Glace? Fundamental errors? There are in fact culinary principles which the conscientious cook will follow and what I am going to attempt from this point on is to give you a foundation in some of them which will allow you to successfully cook my cuisine. Because that's another lesson I learned from the chocolate mousse. I have a style all my own, it's taken me 20 years to develop it, and if my interests have wandered from the haute cuisine of France to other things, well, it's just made me more well-rounded. For instance:
Father Norman's Tabbouleh--a Haddad Family Recipe
- 4 bunches parsley
- 1 cup fine bulgur wheat
- 1/2 cup olive oil
- 1/2 cup fresh lemon juice
- Scant teaspoon pepper
- 1 1/2 Tb salt
- 1/4 tsp allspice
- 1 bunch scallions chopped
- 1 small onion chopped fine
- 4 medium fresh tomatoes seeded and chopped
- 1 lb frozen spring peas
- 1/2 cup fresh mint chopped
Pick the stems off the parsley, wash and spin dry in a salad spinner. Chop finely in a food processor but do not mince. Wet the bulgur in a strainer with water and let the water soak through. Put the bulgur into a bowl and add the olive oil and lemon juice and refrigerate until ready to use- at least a couple of hours. Then add all the other ingredients.
The Maple
Syrup Queen...uh, King
Link to my virtual restaurant...
Everything you need to know about sugar artistry...
Some notes on chocolate production and pralines...
The Official Todd English Home Page...not!
June 17, 2001
I just found this site in the index of some food site along with links to Paul Bocuse. I don't quite know if I belong in that same league. You will notice that there are several dead or incomplete links here. I composed this site strictly to see if I could, and it just snowballed and I lost track of pages and links and actually never got around to writing some of the pages. But I'm finally learning how to compose stuff in word on my new jacked-up computer, so maybe I'll fix this site up. I really don't have a restaurant. I got email from some French cognac company which obviously had some robot searching for terms relating to French chefs. So I made up a restaurant, and sent them the menu.