A La Cuisine!

The Maple Syrup Confection Worth its Weight in Gold (2005 IFFA)

I'm honoured to be amongst the food bloggers who have been asked to create and present an award for the inaugural Independent Food Festival & Awards.  The IFFAs, run by TasteEverything.org, gives each blogger the opportunity to come up with an award to present to a person or organization creating exceptional food.  Each award should be creative and unique – so if you take a look at other food blogs today, I’m sure you’ll find many awards that are truly weird and ingenious.

From the start, I wanted to present an award that was distinctly Canadian.  While Canada may not be a food mecca like France or Italy, it does produce some world class food that’s delicious and extraordinary.  Without a doubt, my favourite local ingredient is maple syrup, also known as ‘liquid gold’.  It tastes wonderful by itself and pairs beautifully with other foods including pancakes, fruits, pork, salmon, nuts, and chocolate.  If memory serves me correct, Canada produces 80% of the world’s maple syrup supply.  It’s not as though we brush our teeth with maple syrup, but I probably would, if not for the cavities I would get.

I’m excited to be presenting the award for The Maple Syrup Confection Worth its Weight in Gold.  Over the past few weeks I’ve searched Toronto and the rest of Canada (via the Internet) for confections and sweets that use maple syrup as an ingredient.  Last Sunday, two friends and I met to taste test 11 maple syrup confections.  Needless to say, we were on a dizzying sugar high by the end of the day.

I’ve included tasting notes and rankings for each confection below.  But first, without further delay, I would like to congratulate DC Duby Chocolatier from Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada for their Wild Squash Truffle, which we’ve chosen as the Maple Syrup Confection Worth its Weight in Gold. 

DC Duby’s Wild Squash Truffle consists of a roasted squash - maple syrup ganache rolled in roasted pumpkin seeds.  While the maple syrup flavour is subtle, its combination with squash and chocolate form a creamy and delicious ganache filling.  In contrast, the crunchy shell of pumpkin seeds and dark chocolate adds bitterness to the truffle.  This is a wonderfully unique and delectable truffle that’s certainly worth its price of $2.94, if not its weight in gold of $375.

Sugar High Fridays 5 Round-up

I can't tell you how excited and relieved I am to see so many entries for this month’s Sugar High Fridays event.  After all, practically everyone is up to their heads in work this time of year, and puff pastry was certainly one of the most challenging themes to date.

In spite of all this, 31 bloggers from around the world rose to the occasion to create 39 fabulous desserts using puff pastry. 

So without further delay, I present to you the entries in the order they were received.

Puff Pastry with Peanut Ice Cream, Chocolate Leaves, Praline Ganache and Condensed Milk Cappuccino (SHF 5)

I recently noticed that puff pastry is everywhere.  It's great by itself, or for enclosing meat, fish, fruits, and chocolate.  It can be used in either sweet and savoury preparations, or as a garnish for desserts.  While its rich but neutral flavour certainly makes it appealing to use, puff pastry’s versatility seems to have much to do with its light and flaky texture.  In my opinion, just about everything goes well with something that’s light and flaky, and thus the reason for puff pastry’s universal appeal.

So what would happen if I were to combine puff pastry with a myriad flavours and textures in the same dish?  That was certainly what I wanted to find out when I adapted a recipe by Jean-Paul Bonnet of New York’s Atelier Restaurant for my entry in the fifth edition of Sugar High Fridays.

Trials and Tribulations in Puff Pastry (Pre-SHF 5)

There’s something enormously satisfying about jumping off a cliff, and figuring things out as you’re falling down.  Such was the case when I chose puff pastry as the theme for February’s Sugar High Fridays event.  I had never made or used puff pastry before, but I had read so much about the wonders of this legendary dough that I couldn’t wait to try it out.  And so I chose it as the theme for SHF 5 on the basis that it would be fun and challenging, and with the belief that I would be better off jumping from this cliff alongside everyone else.

Over the past two weeks, I’ve been slowly learning the intricacies of puff pastry by trying out three basic recipes.  My first attempt involved a classic puff pastry preparation from Sherry Yard’s The Secrets of Baking.  As with all puff pastry recipes, this one began by making the détrempe (the dough) and the beurrage (the butter block) separately, before enclosing the beurrage inside the détrempe, and proceeding through a series of six turns.

Tarte au Citron Meringuée

At 4 o’clock on Sunday morning, I couldn’t go to sleep.  I was in the midst of making puff pastry for the first time, and if everything went as planned, I would be done by seven, and only then would I take a nap.  In the time between turns, I found myself with nothing to do.  I had read all my favourite food blogs, Rachael Ray was on Food TV, and every other station was showing infomercials.  So what else could I do but cook?  Since my fridge was mostly empty except for two lemons, a few eggs, and butter, I decided to try out Maury Rubin’s Manhattan Style Lemon Meringue Tart, essentially a lemon tart topped with a cylindrical dollop of meringue.

I started by making the pate sablée – the delicate, cookie-like pastry that would be used for the crust.  It was actually because of this pastry that I bought Maury Rubin’s Book of Tarts last summer.  In Jeffrey Steingarten’s It Must’ve Been Something I Ate, Steingarten searches New York for the perfect tart pastry, and Rubin’s is one of only two that he finds to be acceptable.  To emphasize his point, Steingarten warns that:

“If a baker, at home or in commerce, cannot make better pastry than Maury’s, he or she should simply follow Maury’s recipe or throw in the towel and find other work.”