Circle of Taste

Pictures from Bouchon Bakery website

By Sarah N. Balzac

Some of the best restaurants in New York City are situated inside the Time Warner Center at Columbus Circle. Such restaurants include: Per Se, A Voce, and Bouchon Bakery. And TWC wants to share their food wealth with epicureans and dessert buffs like you with their  The Restaurant and Bar Collection, which is pleased to announce the launch of its inaugural club, Circle of Taste.

Sign up to get the inside scoop on the events that will take you behind the scences and allow you to taste some of the best the Center has to offer. Members of the club will benefit from both complimentary and ticketed events, promising a wild variety of activities featuring the club’s chefs, sommeliers, and mixologists.

To kick it all off the Center of Taste will debut with “We Are Sweet on You” on November 13th at 5:30 p.m., and for more of what is to come , check out the line up below:

Porter House New York
Meat Me Under The Mistletoe
Monday November 16th
5:30pm to 7:30pm

15 lucky winners plus a guest will warm their taste buds with a deeply flavorful offering of charcuterie and two expertly prepared complimentary drinks at Porter House New York. Chef Michael Lomonaco will personally welcome the lucky guests before offering a savory selection of the finest cured and smoked meats, from the Porter House pantry. Enter to win, and you could say “meat” me under the mistletoe for a truly unique and memorable evening.

Landmarc
Taste A Holiday By The Sea
Thursday December 3rd
Three seatings at 7:30pm, 9:30pm, 11:30pm

Chef Marc Murphy will welcome nine lucky winners plus a guest (each seating) to an exclusive communal table serving of five different possible mussel preparations and your choice of a delicious dark or light Belgian beer. Explore your options with either mussels with shallots, parsley and white wine, pesto and cherry tomatoes, Provencal, or chorizo and onion combinations. Each of the three one-hour seatings will also receive a goodie bag to go. Two servings per guest, with no maximum

Bouchon Bakery
Chocolate Delight On A Star Filled Night
Thursday December 10th
Two Seatings at 7:30pm, 9pm

Nothing pairs more intriguingly with wine than chocolate. Expand your palate when you enter to win seating at a communal table wine and chocolate pairing at Bouchon Bakery for you and a guest. There will be a personal welcome from the chef to start the evening off, and eight lucky winners, plus a guest (each seating) will commence tasting some of the world’s most delectable chocolates and their carefully selected vineyard counterparts. Enter today and your stars may soon align with ours.

A Voce
Seasonal Italian Brunch
Saturday December 12th
11:00am to 3:00pm

It’s brunch, Italian style! 10 lucky winners plus three guests each, will take a culinary journey via Chef Missy Robbins’ elegant and modern take on Italian cuisine with a nod to the brunch tradition. Winners and their guests will enjoy a menu inspired by the spirit of seasonal and regional simplicity at A Voce. Enter today for a bellisima brunch event.

Parlez-vous Thanksgiving?

By Liesel Davis

Of course pie comes to mind when you think of a traditional Thanksgiving, and if you were at my grandmother’s house–she cooks and bakes tirelessly for weeks before–there would also be a lovely coffee-can steamed pudding with a rich caramellike sauce, fudge, divinity with and without nuts, cookies of all sorts, suckers, several kinds of candied popcorn, cinnamon rolls, and a variety of toffees, turtles, and other candies alongside those pumpkin, pecan, and lemon meringue pies.  And you can’t go wrong with any of that. In fact, on any given Thanksgiving weekend throughout the years that I have spent at her home, I consider it my duty to work through tasting each and every last one of those temptations.

But, in the years when I have been the hostess of my own (and much simpler) Thanksgiving feasts, and being a bit of a free spirit when it comes to the kitchen, I like to take advantage of the holiday to try new renditions on the requisite dishes and flavors. With that in mind, I was thinking how delightful a variety of macaroons would be in the line up this year. Small and light, they are the perfect amount of sweet for when you don’t want to polish off an entire slice of pie (and sometimes I don’t want to) or bury yourself in a pile of sugar overload.  Plus, any excuse to play around in the kitchen is enticement enough for me. For my first line of inspiration, I turned to Katie Rosenhouse’s Lemon-Thyme Macaroons from our Fall Conference. But don’t be surprised to see something apple–maybe spiced or with a touch of rosemary or caramel–or fig, or sweet potato, show up at my table, too. We’ll see what those baking experiments bring….

Katie Rosenhouse’s Lemon-Thyme Macaroons
Makes 24 large cookies

3 1/3 cups (400 grams) confectioners’ sugar
3 cups plus 2 ½ Tbsps. (300 grams) almond flour
1 2/3 cups (325 grams) granulated sugar
8 large egg whites
2 drops yellow food coloring
Lemon-thyme curd (recipe follows)

1. Heat an oven to 375˚F.

2. Combine the confectioners’ sugar and almond flour in a food processor and grind until very fine, 3 to 5 minutes. Sift into a mixing bowl and set aside.

3. Place the granulated sugar in a small saucepan and add just enough water to make a wet sand. Bring the sugar to a boil. Cook to soft ball stage or until the mixture registers about 235˚F on a candy thermometer.

4. Meanwhile, whisk the egg whites in the bowl of an electric mixer fitted with the whisk attachment. Gradually add the boiled sugar, with the motor running. Add the food coloring. Whisk to medium peaks.

5. Fold the meringue into the reserved dry ingredients until smooth. Place in a piping bag fitted with a round tip. Pipe small circles onto parchment paper-lined cookie sheets and bake until just brown on the edges, about 7 minutes. Remove from the oven. Cool completely. Spread half of the cookies along the bottom with some curd and top with the remaining cookies, bottom side down, to make sandwiches.

Lemon-Thyme Curd
Makes 1 cup

3/4 cup fresh lemon juice, along with the zest of the lemons
1/3 cup granulated sugar
3 large eggs
3 large egg yolks
2 sprigs fresh thyme
Pinch of salt
3/4 pound (3 sticks) unsalted butter, chilled and cubed

1. Bring a small pot filled with about 3 inches of water to a boil. Combine all of the ingredients except the butter in a small bowl and place over the pot of water. Reduce heat to medium and cook, stirring, until the mixture has thickened, 8 to 10 minutes.

2. Remove the bowl from the heat and whisk in the butter. Strain through fine-mesh sieve into a clean bowl. Discard solids. Cover the bowl with plastic wrap and refrigerate at least overnight or until ready to use.

2009 Fall Conference

Pastry chef-instructor Kir Rodriguez of The FCI made sure that everyone had truffles to take home to enjoy later.

By Sarah N. Balzac

A day packed full of classes hosted by pastry chefs is never a bad thing. Truffles, cupcakes, and doughnuts in between, there was a lot to learn and a lot to taste. Some of the city’s best came to show off their talents and teach us how they do it, while the audience sat back and enjoyed the sights, the sounds, and the smells that permeated the halls of The International Culinary Center. Cheese provided by Lactalis was served between sessions as well as delicious viennoiseries created by The French Culinary Institute”s pastry department. A few prizes here, a few tastings there–not to mention the wealth of pastry information dispensed; the fall conference had a lot to offer. We hope to see you there next year!

And for another perspective on the day’s events, visit   Hungry Sofia’s blog . Also, be sure to check out our Flickr page for even more photos from the days festivities.

Pumpkin woopie pies dipped in white chocolate along with classic chocolate woopie pies made by pastry chef Martin Howard

Chef Martin Howard piping out the cakelike cookies for his chocolate woopie pies.

Pastry chef Zac Young of Flex Mussels made miniature raspberry marshmallows to serve with his cream cheese ice cream.

A beautiful gingerbread house made by pastry chef Victoria Love of the The Water Club for her holiday gingerbread decorating class.

Student helpers take a break to pose for the camera.

Chef Zac Young talks ice cream.

Emily Wallendjack made everyone one of her amazing Cookshop Candy Bars.

Death by chocolate

By Liesel Davis

The New York Chocolate Show opens it’s doors for one blissful weekend each fall. Make that the same weekend as Halloween and the New York City Marathon, and you have a city filled to the brim with out-of-towners and  locals on a rush, whether from adrenaline, chocolate/sugar overindulgence, or parading around the town in a let-loose parade-cum-party-in-the-streets.

And summoning the spirits of great chocolatiers everywhere, a haunted house was constructed by several of the pasty chef–instructors at the FCI, honoring two of the weekend’s festivities (maybe three if the sites below make you run away in fright). Kir Rodriguez and and Jae Kim gave me a sneak peek of their horrifying masterpiece as it neared completion this morning.

Happy Halloween!

The first story of the main house. Check out that marvelous front door.

Blood and carnage

FCI pastry chef-instructor Jae Kim

A portrait of the dead house owner who started all the haunting mayhem, as the story I was told goes. Chef Kim poured melted chocolate over ice to create the frame and applied five layers of color, starting with black, to create the burnished hue.

Edible Week

By Sarah N. Balzac

PastryScoop.com is really excited about Edible Magazines, Edible Week! Running through September 27th to October 4th, local restaurants will feature local foods and drinks in an effort to help promote (who we think are) New York’s finest. Come and get to know the people behind the food! For more information click here.

Vosges Ice Cream Social

By Sarah N. Balzac

As in most big cities, there is a lot to do in New York City, but you can’t always rely on the Times or even the Village Voice to tell you about everything. Sometimes you have to find things by walking on your own two feet and keeping your eyes wide open. And that’s how we came upon Vosages’ ice cream social.

Vosges Haut-Chocolat is truly the haute couture of chocolate. The Chicago-based company caters to those looking to try something exciting, exotic, and different. Made famous by their crazy flavored chocolate truffles and their chocolate bars, such as Mo’s Bacon Chocolate Candy Bar, the company also sells ice cream, incorporating some of the same flavor components featured in their sweet treats. The “haute glace” flavors are Naga, a custard base spiced with sweet Indian curry tamed with young coconut, Pandan, a dark chocolate base infused with the flavors of the pandan leaf, the Aboriginal inspired Wattleseed, which is complemented with roasted macadamia nuts, and, finally, Red Fire, an Aztec rooted dark chocolate ice cream, punctuated with a blend of ancho and chipotle chilies and the sweet heat of Ceylon cinnamon.

Inside the shop on Spring Street in New York City

We tried the Naga and the Wattleseed, both topped with matcha green tea chocolate syrup. It didn’t take long for either of us to lick our bowls clean. The ice cream base itself is silky smooth and is flavored perfectly—not too much spice to render it inedible, but not so little that you don’t taste anything. In reality, wattleseeds are not that exotic in flavor; their taste is very familiar even though it is a native Australian spice rarely seen stateside. Curry however, isn’t something common in ice cream, sweet or not, the flavor combination of cumin, turmeric, ginger, clove, and chiles isn’t often thought of in conjunction with dessert, but add young coconut and you’ve got yourself a spectacular flavor hit!                   

Don’t be afraid to stop by the shop nearest you, to see what’s going on, or check out the events page on the company’s website. And if you don’t happen to have a location in your state or surrounding city, then go to their site and load your virtual cart with some sweet loot as their chocolates and ice creams are not to be missed. Ciao and Bon Appetito!                                        

Wattleseed ice cream to the left and the Naga to the right. Both drizzled with a matcha green tea chocolate syrup.

Time for ice cream

By Liesel Davis

Ice cream appears to be taking over the dessert scene just as cupcakes did a few years ago. And at least in this city, several restaurants have moved their ice creams from the humble place at the bottom of the menu to front-and-center carts outside their establishments. So, on my way to stroll the new High Line park last Saturday, I made a stop by Cookshop’s cart on the corner of 20th and 10th. A double scoop of market strawberry and Valrhona chocolate with Valrhona chocolate sprinkles was a success. Nothing zany here. The flavors are simple and straightforward but earnest—the strawberry tastes like a whole bowlful of strawberries all mashed up and barely mellowed by the addition of cream and eggs and the chocolate was downright decadent, like a rich dark chocolate pudding. With more flavors to try (mmm, rootbeer sorbet), you’ll probably find me there any given weekend before the cool weather sets in.

Cookshop
156 Tenth Avenue (at 20th street)
212.924.4440
http://www.cookshopny.com