Fry Day on a Wednesday

Bomboloni with Caramel Ice Cream and a Trio of Sauces

Today was fry day--everything we made was deep fried. It was a good day, even if I did smell like oil and look all greasy after. We made brioche dough last class so we could fry up some bomboloni. We also made some sweet wontons and fruit beignets. Everything was great!

Bomboloni with Raspberry Coulis and Chocolate Sauce

The bomboloni were almost as good as the ones Jacques Torres made at his recent demo. I think they would have been as good had I not let the dough over proof slightly. We filled them with vanilla and chocolate pasty cream. I opted for making mostly chocolate ones. I also made one shaped like a doughnut without filling. We served them with raspberry coulis, chocolate sauce, and vanilla creme anglaise and caramel ice cream. They are also incredible plain, or served simply with one or two sauces.

Beignets with Spiced Nuts, Coconut Foam,
and Tamarind Ice Cream

The beignets are not traditional New Orleans-style beignets as far as I know (I've never had beignets in New Orleans). They are large pieces of fruit, dipped in a yeasted beer batter, and dunked in a deep fryer. My favorite were the apple rings (which we cut horizontally and cored, so they resembled very thick onion rings or, perhaps, doughnuts). We served these with delicious spiced nuts, coconut foam, and tamarind ice cream. Tamarind has a sour taste that is quite unusual but in a good way. I didn't like the ice cream on its own very much, but with one of the nuts or a bite of beignet, it was quite pleasant.

Apple Wontons with Apple Cider Dipping Sauce

The wontons were great! I made the apple compote for the whole class (we divvy up tasks and I got that), which was really good practice as I haven't made a compote in a while. Plus Chef said I could flavor it however I wanted so I had some fun with that. I digress. So we filled wonton wrappers with the apple compote and fried them. We served them with a hard apple cider dipping sauce. Gosh they were good.

Brioche

Bomboloni are made with brioche dough. Well we could only fry up so many, so we made brioche loaves with the rest. Mine was slightly over proofed, which is why the top isn't quite evenly shaped. Ah well it was still brioche, so yum!

White Chocolate Hazelnut Semifreddo

This was delicious, but not quite as nice as the mendiant. That's really only because I prefer milk chocolate to white chocolate. Semifreddo means partly frozen in Italian. Just like the mendiant or the parfait, it's a frozen dessert that isn't frozen solid because of all the air whipped into it, not to mention the fat and sugar. Anyway, we served this with drizzled with dark chocolate (which sets up when it comes in contact with the frozen semifreddo), set on top of a piece of hazelnut cake, sitting on a long curved piece of chocolate, with chocolate sauce, raspberry coulis, raspberry compote, and raspberry cream (raspberry flavored whipped cream) filled with chocolate sauce. It was not easy to make the filled raspberry cream scoops. They were worth it though...raspberry cream with a chocolate surprise inside!

White Chocolate Citrus Parfait

I'm surprised at how much I liked this. I'm not a huge white chocolate fan and I wasn't sure how I felt about it with citrus. I really did enjoy it though. I think parfaits are one of my new favorite desserts to eat (but not to make...they are not terribly enjoyable to make). They are basically a frozen mousse set atop a slice of moist cake, so they are light, almost creamy, cakey (where the cake is), and, obviously, cold, which I always enjoy. We served it with a strawberry salad, strawberry coulis, chocolate sauce, and a lace cookie. I'm not sure I approved of the garnish, I think I'd have preferred leaving off the dark chocolate sauce and lace cookie and adding white chocolate decor (such as a fan or cigarette).

Cold Green Apple Charlotte with Red Currant Sorbet

I think that this is my least favorite plated dessert. I'm not a big fan of cold charlottes to start and this did nothing to persuade me to change my mind. The bavarian cream was a bit lumpy--that's not quite the right word, maybe grainy works better--due to the slightly odd texture of the green apple puree we used as a base. The red currant sorbet was a bit unimpressive. That's not to say it wasn't good, it was, but it just wasn't as good as other things we've made in this unit. The red currant coulis was nice but the clear vanilla sauce was a bit grainy--to match the bavarian, I guess. The lady fingers on the outside of the charlotte were nice, but we've made them before, so they aren't anything new or all that impressive. The best part was the apple chip, which I could eat a ton of and be incredibly happy. They fool you into thinking you are eating something healthy (they are apple after all), but they are really crisp sugary slices of goodness that only vaguely resemble the apple them came from. Oh gosh they are nice!

Manjari Chocolate Tart with Coconut Ice Cream

Oh yum! The bittersweet chocolate custard--manjari chocolate is a somewhat acidic, bitter, dark chocolate that is mellowed out here by the addition of, among other things, sugar--in a chocolate tart shell was great on its own (seriously--I brought home some extras, so I know they were really good without all the fancy plating!) The coconut ice cream was very nice, as were the coconut creme anglaise, the chocolate sauce, and the raspberry coulis. All together they were wonderful.

Lemon Tart with Mixed Berry Sorbet

This was okay. The mixed berry sorbet was very nice, the crystalized basil leaf was good, and the basil crème anglaise and berry coulis decoration was beautiful and tasty. The problem was the lemon tart. It wasn't bad, it just wasn't great. I loved the lemon tartlets we made in Level I so much that these just didn't thrill me. I thought that they were a bit too sweet and a wee bit bland...definitely not enough lemon flavor. I really liked the crust, which was a sweet tart dough with lemon zest mixed into it, on its own (as a cookie). I think that the sweet crust, however, coupled with the sweet baked custard filling was just too much; it needed some tartness or at least something a bit savory (like a pâte brisée crust) to cut the sweet. I think that the sorbet and basil were there to add the tart and savory elements, but they just didn't cut it, in my opinion. Ah well, it was still nice and very attractive.

Kiwi and Milk Marmalade Mille Feuille

This is my favorite plated dessert so far. It is two disks of puff pastry with milk marmalade (a sweet almost custard made of condensed milk, evaporated milk, and coconut milk that's thick like a light buttercream) between them and on top, a scoop of delicious lemon frozen yogurt, kiwi coulis--a coulis, as it turns out, is a quasi-sauce that is made without heat--pieces of kiwi, and a tuile with a slice of kiwi baked into it. The sweetness of the milk marmalade, the crispy-ness of the puff pastry, and the slight zing of lemon and kiwi worked so well together. Yum! And isn't it pretty?!