lemon panna cotta with pistachio biscotti

I met my friend Jing for dinner one night at Limon Patisserie, a popular Peruvian place in the Mission. We ordered the panna cotta for dessert, and it was so delicious I wanted to know how to make it. So the next day in Plated Dessert I decided to go for it, as there was a recipe for it in our textbook:

Plain gelatin powder 0.5 oz (sold in packets at the supermarket)
Water 4 fl oz
Heavy cream 32 fl oz
Sugar 12 oz
Salt 1/2 tsp
Buttermilk 30 fl oz

1) Mix the gelatin powder into the water and let stand (this is called blooming the gelatin).
2) Combine the cream, sugar and salt and stir over medium heat until the sugar is dissolved but before the mixture simmers. Remove from heat.
3) Add gelatin to the cream mixture and blend. Let the mixture cool to 100F and stir in buttermilk.
4) Pour the mixture into the molds of your choice (I used silicone pyramid molds). Cover tightly and refrigerate until set.

For flavoring: I added lemon zest to the mixture, but you can also flavor the panna cotta with cinnamon sticks or vanilla bean or chai tea - just add stuff when the mixture is hot and take it out (if need be) before you stir in the buttermilk and put it in the fridge.



Since this was another cream/custard item, I had to come up with a cookie item to accompany it, and I chose to make lemon pistachio biscotti (to keep the lemon theme going).



The batter is about the same consistency of the honey tuile batter, almost mealy-looking but smooth when smoothed.



Chef patted the batter down into a wide strip, and this was baked.



After the outside browned, I took it out of the oven and cut it into slices, which were turned on their sides and baked for a bit longer.



And then I put together the display, with some strawberries for color. The lemon garnish makes the panna cotta pop and is easy to make too - just slice a lemon paper thin, make one slit from the edge to the center, then turn one edge away and let it sit on the panna cotta.

Panna cotta can be frozen and thawed (in the refrigerator overnight) without losing its texture, so you can make a big batch and have enough to last you awhile. Enjoy!

green tea creme brulee with fortune cookies

One of the standby desserts that Plated Desserts made was creme brulee, to satisfy the cream/custard requirement. I decided to make green tea flavored ones, just to defy the norm and put a twist on it. Thank goodness Chef Morse had some matcha green tea powder on hand - otherwise I would've had to use regular green tea bags and the flavor wouldn't be as pleasant (not to mention it wouldn't have had that nice green color, probably more of a grayish tint instead).



The creme part was baked in the oven with about an inch of water in the pan (to prevent it from drying out). They were in the oven for about half an hour, until the custard set.

Since this was a cream/custard dessert, Chef's requirement was to have a "crunch" element to offset the cream texture. I was going to recycle something we had in the dry box (basically a plastic tub filled with desiccant to keep things dry and crisp), but Chef suggested fortune cookie (implied Asian stereotype here!).



First I had to make a ring mold out of thin cardboard (I used a bakery cake box). The size of the mold depends on the size of the fortune cookies you want, and the thickness of the ring actually doesn't matter. The ring was placed on a silicone baking mat (to prevent the cookie from sticking) and then I spatula-ed some honey tuile cookie batter (see recipe below) into the ring mold, using the spatula to even out the batter until it was same thickness as the cardboard.



They honey tuile cookies were baked until golden, then taken out and immediately spatula-ed off and folded in half (you need heat resistant fingers) and wrapped around a wooden dowel like so. The dowel should be anchored with a weight (i.e. a heavy book) so it doesn't move around while you're trying to manipulate the fortune cookie. After you get the desired shape, place the cookie somewhere it can cool without unfolding (I lined a bunch of them up side by side between two pans).

If you want to place a fortune in the cookie, it would probably be best to stick it in when you're folding the cookie in half straight out of the oven.



After the creme part was done, we let them cool to the touch, and then covered the surface with liberal amounts of sugar and took a torch to it, making sure to keep the torch moving so there wouldn't be any burnt sugar spots.



And there you have it, green tea creme brulee with fortune cookies!

***

Honey tuile cookie batter (makes two pounds)

All-purpose flour 13 oz
Powdered sugar 10 oz
Soft butter 10.5 oz
Honey 6 oz
Egg whites 5 oz

1) Cream together the butter and honey in a mixer until smooth.
2) Add the egg whites and blend until fully incorporated.
3) Sift the flour and powdered sugar together and add to the mixer until blended evenly.
4) Refrigerate the batter until firm.

coconut mochi with peanut sugar filling

In our time on the pastry side, there was daily production but also lectures/demos/written tests, and four practicals - using the dough sheeter, making pastry cream from memory, piping buttercream shapes, and drawing designs with chocolate. And, in addition, we were assigned a project called Bring Your Own Dessert (BYOD). The idea was that everyone would make a dessert in their own free time, something from their own culture/background, something they had an emotional connection to.

I decided to make mochi, the kind that I ate as a child from the take-out dim sum shops in San Francisco's Chinatown, the kind that contained peanut sugar and was coated outside with coconut bits. I couldn't find any recipe online for it - this was the closest thing I found so I modified that recipe and came up with my own. For those who know me, I gravitate toward not cooking with recipes, and I can be very resistant to measuring things, so I've never actually created my own recipes, but this might be the beginning of something.

Here are the ingredients you need to make 8-10 mochis:



10 oz rice flour, 10 oz water, and 2 oz sugar (for the mochi).
2 oz roasted peanuts and 1 oz sugar (for the filling).
1 oz vegetable oil and 3 oz shredded coconut (for the outer coat).

Professional recipes differ from home recipes in that all the ingredients are by weight and not by volume (hence ounces instead of cups). If you don't have a scale at home, just make sure the ratios of ingredients are correct (ex: 1 cup rice flour and 1 cup water and 1/5 cup sugar for the mochi).



Cooking the mochi is the hardest part. At least, I had to go through three attempts - the first two using the method that I had found online in that previously linked article (boiling the sugar with water, mixing everything in a stand mixer, etc. etc.). It was a laborious process, and moreover, IT DID NOT WORK. The mochi was unbearably sticky and completely impossible to work with. In a fit of desperation I combined the flour, sugar and water in a bowl (kneading out all the lumps with my hands), covered it with plastic wrap and microwaved it on high for 6 minutes. It worked! And, unlike the other method which took close to an hour, it took only six minutes.



While the mochi is cooling, combine roasted peanuts and sugar in a food processor and pulse until the peanut crumbs are to the size of your liking. (If you don't have roasted peanuts on hand, you can roast some yourself by putting some peanuts in the oven/toaster oven until they brown but before they burn.)



When the mochi has cooled enough to be touched, divide it into 8-10 pieces. Make sure your hands are coated with vegetable oil, or else the mochi will stick. Take a piece and press it flat onto your palm, then spoon some of the filling into the middle. Then lift the edges and pinch shut over the filling so the mochi forms a ball.



Roll the mochi ball in the shredded coconut (food process the shreds if you would like them to be more like bits) until evenly coated.



Place each mochi ball in a cupcake liner with the seam side down, or serve as is!



To see my classmates's BYOD projects, go to my flickr and scroll through by clicking 'Next'.

fancy tarts

Plated Desserts is known as the fancy station, not only because all the desserts are made for the Pierre Coste Room (PCR), the fine dining restaurant on campus, but because the station requires the most work in presentation.

Given my previous success with presentation, I was thought to be able to excel at this station. I did all right - presentation requires skills and not just natural ability, obviously.

Chef's requirements for the station were that we produce three types of desserts a day: usually one chocolate item, one fruit item, and one cream/custard item. Something we did often were tarts: they could be filled with any of the three.

I had some familiarity with tarts from the Cakes & Tarts station, but Plated Desserts was like Cakes & Tarts to the next level (in fact, leftover desserts from Plated Desserts would be given to Cakes & Tarts to sell the next day in the cafeteria). In other words, a tart in Cakes & Tarts might have some pastry cream and sliced fruit in it, but a tart in Plated Desserts would involve something more like poached pear.



Poached pear is one of those things that sound super fancy but are easy to make. I peeled some pears, halved/cored them, then boiled/simmered them in a simple syrup liquid. Simple syrup = boiled sugar water (equal parts sugar and water), used in drinks because it's concentrated sweetness that mixes easily, especially for cold drinks where sugar crystals don't dissolve easily. You can infuse simple syrup with whatever flavor you want - in the case of this fashion/food blog that I follow, the designer made mint simple syrup for mojitos but she also reserved the liquid to flavor other drinks such as iced tea. In my case, the simple syrup was infused with a cinnamon stick and peels of orange zest (from using a vegetable peeler). The pears simmered until they were knife-tender (so you poke a pear with a knife and it slides in/out without any resistance).



The tart shells themselves also receive a lot of attention in Plated Desserts - the bottoms are completely flat (done by pushing the dough carefully against the sides and bottom), and the tops are smoothed out (after baking the uneven parts are shaved by a microplane zester).



I came up with the presentation by myself, and it's not bad, but behind it is a failure. A day or two before I had been attempting a plated dessert presentation, and Chef came over to supervise but he took over and I felt like: 1) I had no clue what I was doing and 2) I was overestimating my own abilities by even attempting to do the arranging myself. This time I slyly put everything together while Chef's watchful eyes were elsewhere, so maybe it was just the pressure of him watching that made me doubt myself.



I do have to admit though, the pointed elliptical shape of whipped cream I had put underneath the pear chip (called a cannelle) was rather unprofessional looking, because to make it correctly takes lots of practice. You have to dip a spoon into piping hot water, then deftly twirl it in some whipped cream and plate immediately. These 2nd semester culinary students took an hour just doing them over and over.

And to conclude, here are just some other tarts that were made at the station while I was there:



Banana cream tarts with toasted coconut and whipped cream and bananas brulee



Chocolate covered peanut butter tarts (gourmet Reese's cups, basically)

a slow recovery

So I've abstained a bit from blogging because of the whole exhaustion thing, but now that finals week is coming to a close, I'm feeling more relaxed (and more like a normal person), so I foresee some blogging in the near future.

Coming up are posts on:
- the plated desserts station
- the bread station (the most intense but arguably the most enjoyable of them all)

And maybe some posts on:
- what I make at home, now that I have some time
- food-related volunteering and/or internships I'll be taking on this summer

I would love suggestions on what kind of posts you would like to see. Also feel free to ask questions or request recipes, I'm pretty open!