Master Chef Jacques Torres

Yesterday I attended the demo of Master Chef Jacques Torres, The FCI's Dean of Pastry and Owner of Jacques Torres Chocolate in NYC (see link). Chef Jacques is by far one of my favorite people I've met in a long time and I completely admire him. He's a very accomplished business man, engineer, chef and teacher. He's cooked for a lot of famous people, worked at Le Cirque (see link) and now owns a chocolate shop. He has a great sense of humor and is very playful in his work.

He told us about the time he cooked for the Pope and while the Pope was away, and no one was looking he sat in the Pope thrown.

How cool is that!

Have you seen what the Pope's thrown looks like?

No.

OK. Here's a picture. ------------------------------>

Seriously.

See what I mean. That's pretty cool.

Anyway, so at the demo, Chef Jacques initially explained some principles of how to be a successful restaurant pastry chef. " When you make a new dessert menu, make it the best one you ever wrote. The last menu you wrote must always be the one you ever wrote. " He said that every menu needs to have contrasting temperatures, textures, flavors and weight. Creamy, crunchy, hot, cold, light and fruity, heavy and deep.

For me, his ideas on creating dessert menus was especially interesting because I'm thinking that's what I want to do first when I'm out of school. There are a lot of different job opportunities for a pastry student and many of my fellow piers want to work in bakeries, cake shops, at catering companies or open their own shop. Initially I thought I would be interested in cakes. However, after finally having the opportunity to work in a restaurant I think, at least while I'm young and have the energy, the restaurant life will suit me well.

At the Demo, Chef made a birds nest out of slivers of filo dough, resting on a creme brulee, topped with powder sugar covered egg almond slices. It was very cute and playful.

This was just my tasting portion but you could add multiple layer of filo which could sandwich chocolate or bananas or chocolate and bananas. Yum! The cool thing is, I know how to make every component of this recipe so I could make it at home.

But just in case you wanted something a little easier... here is a video from Chef Jacques which I think most everyone could handle.






How to make chocolate covered corn flakes


I'd love to know if anyone does indeed try to make the chocolate corn flakes how it goes. (Honey I'm expecting you to try this, if you haven't already)