It's It! Sweetly Sandwiched San Francicso Style

Alannah and I recently set out on a mission: To represent San Francisco in Paris. The reason is two-fold.

First, as San Franciscan transplants with an inferiority complex, we're sick and tired of anything remotely American here being described as "New Yorkais." Local writers have recently described a chef from Chicago, a coffeehouse owner from Washington and freakin' burritos as New Yorkais. Dubya. Tee. Eff.

Secondly, we don't really know of many people reppin' the Bay. There's Andy at our local favorite sushi joint Rice and Fish who's doing it right, and there's... uh... wasn't Alice Waters supposed to open a restaurant next to the Louvre some time back? Then you've got your French folk like Loic Le Meur (Seesmic, Sarkozy spokes-ass) and Benjamin Tremoulet (H.A.N.D.) who spent - judging by their products - about four hours in California and decided to build their businesses around their (in)experience and trust funds.

So we've got some projects in the hopper, hoping to bring real streetfighter SF culture to the old-school dining mecca. We talk a lot of shit, but we also put our money where our mouths are. And right now we're finding a lot more shit than places we want to put our mouths.

In the meantime, if we wanna make a wave, we've gotta work on desserts! And we're starting by perfecting a premium, locally-sourced-as-possible version of It's-It ice cream sandwiches, also known as "A San Francisco Experience since 1928." Basically, it's one scoop of ice cream, two oatmeal cookies, and dark chocolate.

Alannah's quite good with dessert. Especially baking. She's gone sans oven for the last torturous month (which is about how long it takes a landlord to replace a faulty appliance 'round here...) and she's finally back in action. The "cowboy cookies" she's been making since childhood will serve as the bread in this dessert sammy.

I, on the other hand, blow fucking donkey dicks when it comes to baked goods and confectionery.

It's-It style ice cream sandwiches, take two: Not an epic fail,
but not great. You don't even want to see Round 1.

This wasn't the case nearly two decades ago. As a young punk, I used to sling out cakes and ice creams to Bay Area yuppies like it was going out of style. I'd spend a good chunk of my summer days inside a walk-in freezer, sculpting melty sugary materials that'd otherwise disintegrate in the ambient temperature. It was a good time, and I loved my customers, from local Ladies Who Lunch to firefighters to Apple and HP execs who'd sneak in between meetings for a sweet treat. One of the more distinguished among them had a particular favorite that I was proud to make: The clown cone.

That's right, I was ice cream slinger and faux-pastry chef at a fucking Baskin-Robbins. Despite being the confectionery equivalent of the guy manning the fryolator – see, any asshat blogger can puff up his irrelevant culinary past – I could write the preamble to the Constitution on the face of a half-sheet cake in buttercream, make waffle cones that could stand up to four gigantic scoops of ice cream plus hot fudge, and most relevant to our mission here, I could turn out a perfect ice cream sandwich in 20 seconds flat.

That was then. This is now. I no longer have the ability to properly hold an offset spatula let alone put a tip on a piping bag. Which is exactly what our first attempt at homemade It's-It called for. We tried the recipe and technique we Googled on Gastroanthropology. And it was a big bag of fail.

This is not to knock Gastroanthropology's technique. In fact, it's not only well-researched and professional, but if we had a proper setup it would probably work. But in a sweatbox of an apartment with merely an icebox for a freezer, it just wasn't meant to be. Ice cream soft enough to be piped out of a pastry bag would actually continue to melt faster than it could re-freeze in our piddly little freezer. And it did. We disappointingly opened up the freezer to find cowboy cookies frozen into a flat puddle of ice cream. At least the oatmeal discs were perfectly round, using the biscuit cutter technique from the above recipe.

Round 2 was much better (see photo above), but it still wasn't quite right. Instead of softening ice cream and piping it out of a bag, we smoothed a bunch of it out into a tray and froze it overnight into a sheet; much as I did back in the day to create full-sheet ice cream cakes. I then punched out discs of ice cream using the same biscuit ring so they'd be the same diameter as the cookies. So far, so good. we then dipped them in melted dark chocolate and put them back in the freezer to set. Only they wouldn't fully set. Cutting or biting into the sandwiches would result in the ice cream smooshing and the chocolate breaking off in chunks.

We put the results up on Facebook, awaiting possible troubleshooting from our foodie friends. Most of them being San Franciscans, they also know what an It's-It is supposed to be like. Our own analysis blamed not only our technique but our ingredients. In trying to make a high-quality, wholesome version of – let's face it – junk food, we just couldn't get certain things right. Using unprocessed organic oats, the cookies were too tough. Single-origin organic Peruvian chocolate? Not as easy to use for coating as the confectioners' stuff cut down with soy lecithin.

And worst of all, we had doubts about using our favorite local ice cream. I first wrote about Mary Quarta's gelato for VINGT Paris and just nabbed today's ROTD for it on Yelp (my first in over two years!) and we've been going to taste her wares at least twice a week since she opened up shop in the Haut Marais. It was the first "complex ingredient" we've decided against making ourselves (I'm even making our cheeses for an upcoming shindig) because it's so good and non-industrial, there's no point.

But gelato is a far cry in texture and structure than standard American ice cream, and it looked as though Mary's sweetness was just too soft and yielding for the type of brutality we'd put it through. We couldn't think of a non-industrial alternative, so we started thinking about how we'll make our own ice cream, solely to fulfill our desire for It's-It.

Then tonight, Round 3 happened.

Yup. Pretty much nailed it.
And we didn't have to throw Mary under the bus, either.

The difference for Round 3? A much longer freeze after sandwich assembly and chocolate coating, which itself was different. Instead of dunking and rolling the sandwiches in melted chocolate, I brushed it on thinly with a rubber spatula. Working with a nearly rock-hard sandwich to start with and making sure it went fully back to rock hard before serving made all the difference in the world. The thinner coating of chocolate didn't break off in chunks when cut or bitten, the ice cream stayed solid through most of the eating.  Alannah's excelllent cowboy cookie remained a constant. It's a bit tougher than a standard oatmeal cookie, but the taste is perfect.

Now that we've got the formula down, we're going to make a few more tweaks: The cookies will have to be slightly crisper (and possibly thinner) for easy biting. We'll have to spend even more on a high-quality nappe (coating) dark chocolate that's thinner but lecithin-free – we will NOT compromise on quality. And now having figured out how to work with Mary's super-soft gelato, we'll stick with it, but surprisingly we're going to have to find flavors even more subtle than her already subdued crème à l'ancienne. Compared to typical American "vanilla" filler ice cream, Mary's is actually too flavorful and overpowers the cookies and chocolate by just a touch.

So here's the rundown of the technique we've got down so far:

• Spread Mary's gelato into a tray and freeze overnight
• In the meantime, make a batch of Alannah's cowboy cookies (possibly increase butter, decrease brown sugar? She's the expert and will figure it out...) flatten using biscuit cutter as a guide, and chill/freeze 'em
• Remove frozen gelato from tray and quickly punch out discs using biscuit cutter.
• Very quickly assemble sandwiches, put into fridge for at least two hours
• Double boil dark coating chocolate
• Brush chocolate on to very frozen sandwiches (also considering dunking via wire basket if we work with a huge quantity)
• Freeze yet again - probably overnight - in tray, sitting on parchment paper
• Eat

It's pretty long and involved, but after blissing out on the fruits of Round 3 tonight, it'll be worth it. And the more we do it, the better we'll get at it. The material cost and the learning curve will be high, but this is going to happen. Cuz that's what it's all about, reppin' the 415: Taking the seemingly casual and humble but obsessing over quality and source, and never compromising.

One Kilo of Sweet Relief

Quatre quarts. It's French for "four quarters."  Alannah decided this past weekend that she'd bake a quatre-quarts cake, and when I finished sorting through a year's worth of papers to prepare for doing our taxes last night, we decided to celebrate by doing it. Making the cake, that is.

Tonight, after finishing the US portion of our taxes, we ate it.

No, I don't know why we have to file for and pay taxes in the US when we no longer live there, and likely will not get any American benefit unless I bake roofie-cupcakes for a 13 year-old and have to hide from extradition, Polanski-style.

Quatre-quarts cake with strawberry, mango and crème fraîche.

You may be looking at that picture and saying, "That looks like poundcake!" And you'd be mostly right. Except it's a kilo, dammit. Whereas a poundcake takes a pound of each ingredient, a quatre-quarts involves a quarter kilo (250g) each of flour, sugar and butter, and 3 eggs. (Large French eggs weigh in at around 80g, for a total of 240g, but since we buy ours more or less out of the chicken's butt, there's a ~15g margin of error. Not a big deal.)

But is it poundcake with the same ratio but a different base amount?  Not quite.

'Cuz it's metric.

That and for a quart-quarts, you're going to separate your eggs first. The yolks get mixed in with the butter and the flour to form a pretty heavy paste.

The whites must be whipped 'til fluffy, forming stiff peaks. The eggs are then whisked (or rather, beaten, as it's not a delicate receiver) into the rest of the batter. This seems bass-ackward and pointless when doing it.

It'd probably be much easier with a stand mixer, but you don't wanna know how much a KitchenAid Pro costs around here... Maybe if we get a good tax refund?

Then, as with a poundcake, you pour it into a loaf pan, but – one more difference – you pop it into a hotter (200ºc/400ºF) oven for less time (40-45 minutes). The outside will (alarmingly) brown and turn crispy, while the cake inside will be much lighter and airier than that of a poundcake.

In fact, the poundcake and quatre-quarts serve as a perfect analogy for American vs. French. One is generally pale and heavy, while the other is much lighter but often sports an (alarmingly) accelerated tan.

We chose to have our overly-bronzed blonde with fresh strawberries and mango, with even fresher crème fraîche from our local cheesemonger/milkmaid.

Fluffing egg whites by hand and then incorporating them into a thick dough wasn't easy, but take our word, it's much more fun – and worthwhile – than trying to figure out your Foreign Income Alternative Minimum Tax For Stimulus Credit... or whatever the hell it is we just did.

Sticky Sweet: Cinnamon Rolls

It's just too easy to go overboard with the double entendres for this one. So let's get it out of the way: Sticky. Buns. Brown crevice. Gooey white glaze. Dripping. Moist. Hot. Hot. Hot.

Apply all the terms above. Liberally.

Now that we have that out of our systems... This blog started when we realized that we were enjoying hunting down foods and preparing them at home much more often than we were at restaurants. Much of the time, we're either finding ways to exploit the fantastic local produce, dairy and meat, and the rest of the time we spend fantasizing about things you simply can't get in Paris unless you make it yourself.

For weeks now, Alannah has had her mind on one thing: Cinnamon rolls. (Or buns, as some would call them.) Personally, while I've enjoyed a good set of buns here and there, they've never really been anything I craved. But pull me out of America for a couple of years, and all of a sudden, a factory-processed Cinnabon from the mall – or even one of those nasty Svenhard's sticky buns from your typical roach motel continental breakfast – starts to sound pretty good. If only for the sheer novelty.

Anyway, Friday night, as we were killing off one of those all-made-from-fabulous-fresh-products dinners, Alannah had some dough rising. No big deal. She's always kneading things and making them rise after all. She's the baker. Saturday morning, I woke up from my Bordeaux haze to the scent of cinnamon. Lots of cinnamon.

I ambled downstairs to get caffeinated and what was on the counter? Something you'll never see in even the most daring boulangerie-patisserie in Paris:

Ladurée's got nothin' on this.

And that makes no sense to us. Cinnamon roll dough is nearly identical to brioche dough. It can very easily made in huge batches. And the smell will bring the entire quartier to your storefront like an olfactory siren song. True, many of the locals find it all too strong and overpowering, a brutal dark-hued import from the tropics all too savage for lilywhite gullets... And some just don't like the cinnamon.

Nice Pear / La poire pulpeuse

Pear Crisp (which can also be done with apples)

Last week we went a little crazy at the market and bought a few too many of the gorgeous giant Savoie pears on display. We were left with too many pears on the verge of spoiling, so Alannah turned to her childhood for inspiration, as she has so many times in the past. So when I say that this dessert is so easy that even an eight year-old can do it, I'm not lying.

La semaine dernière on a pété un plomb et a acheté trop des belles poires de Savoie au marché. Alors on avait des poires juste avant le point de pourrir et Alannah s'est tournée vers son enfance pour l'inspiration, comme d'habitude. Donc quand je dis que ce dessert est si facile qu'un enfant de 8 ans peut le faire, je ne mens pas.

In the same family as the crumble or the cobbler, the crisp is an easy, highly adaptable dessert that can be made with just about any filling, or even made savory. Traditionally made with apple, here it is with pears. Alannah and I both like pears better than apples anyway, but with a few tweaks beyond the traditional recipe, this dessert will blow your tastebuds to kingdom come no matter how you fill it.

De la même famille du crumble ou du cobbler, le crisp est un dessert facile est fortement adaptable qui peut être fait avec quasiment toute garniture, même salée. Traditionellement fait avec la pomme, ici nous en faisons avec la poire. Alannah et moi, nous aimons plus la poire, néanmoins avec quelques petites modifs à la recette traditionelle, cette dessert va vous envoler, n'import quelle garniture.

Start by lining a baking dish with sliced pears (or apples). How many? It depends on your dish, but enough to line it about 1 inch/3cm deep. Most recipes will call for you to peel the apples/pears and mix sugar with them. Don't. You don't need the extra sugar, and you do need the fiber!

Pour commencer, remplissez un plat à four avec des poires (ou pommes) émincées. Combien ? Ça dépend de la taille de votre plat - assez pour faire une couche de 3cm de fruit. La plupart des recettes disent que vous devez epluchez les poires et les macérer. Ne faites pas. Vous n'avez pas besoin de trop du sucre, et vous en avez de fibre végétale !

Preheat your oven to 325ºF/160ºC/Th.5.5. Then start making your topping. Mix 1.5 cups/300g of rolled oats, 1 packed cup/200g brown sugar, 1 cup/125g flour, 2 tsp cinammon, then pour in 1 cup/225g of melted butter. For a subtle but noticeable dose of "wow," add a healthy pinch of allspice. Real allspice. As in "Jamaican pepper." Don't use a blend of spices, or "pumpkin pie spice," or Alannah swears she'll punch your head in. To make sure you have the real stuff, just buy the stuff called Jamaican pepper and pulverize it yourself with a pestle and mortar.

Chauffez le four à 160ºC/Th.5,5. Puis commencez à faire la croûte. Mélangez 300g de flocons d'avoine, 200g de sucre foncé (C'est pas le sucre roux mais un sucre en poudre à melasse!), 125g de farine, 2cc de canelle, et puis versez 225g de beurre fondu. Pour ajouter une petite dose de "waouh" mettez une grosse pince de poivre de la Jamaïque. En anglais on l'appelle "allspice" mais c'est souvent un faux melange des autres épices. Alannah insiste que vous achetez le vrai poivre chez un bon épicier, et l'écraser avec un pilon et mortier.

Once your mixture is fairly combined - don't overdo it - spread it over your pears in the baking dish. It should be about half as thick as your fruit layer. Don't worry if it's not even: You know you want it rough!

Une fois que la pâte est assez mélangée - ne faites pas trop - tartinez-la au dessus des poires dans le plat. Il faut être la moitié de l'épaisseur de la couche de fruit. Ne vous inquiétez pas s'elle n'est pas lisse ou plate. Vous l'aimerez un peu brutale.

Most crumble recipes call for only 25 minutes of cooking at a higher temperature, but the secret to this crisp is the caramelization of all the brown sugar. Plan on baking it for 35-40 minutes, but check on it regularly anyway! The size of your baking dish and overall thickness will vary the cooking time. When the topping has turned a rich golden brown (and is solid to the touch when you tap it) and the sugar and juice are bubbling together, it's time to pull out. The longer (and slightly cooler) cooking time should ensure a more gooey caramel topping than the standard method.

La plupart des recettes ont besoin de 25 minutes de cuisson à une température plus élevée, mais le secret de cet crisp est la caramelisation du sucre foncé. Comptez 35-40 minutes de cuisson, mais le contrôlez régulièrement ! La taille de votre plat à four et l'épaisseur du crisp va faire varier le temps de cuisson. Quand la croûte est devenue bien dorée (et bien firme à la touche quand vous le tapez avec les doigts) et le sucre et le jus de fruit bouillonnent vers le haut tout ensemble, c'est l'heure de l'enlever du four. La cuisson plus lente doit assurer un caramel plus collant sous la croûte que la méthode normale.

Allow it to cool at least a little bit before serving. Nobody likes eating napalm, and it'll be much easier to cut into pretty squares. Although it'll be pretty hard not to just attack the baking dish with a spoon.

Laissez-le froidir un peu avant le servir. Personne n'aime manger le napalm, et il sera bien plus facile à découpez en petits carrés ... Cependant il sera difficile de ne pas attaquer directement le plat à four avec une cuillère !

Brown Town Throwdown: Part Deux

Note: This post is back to being only in English because any French person should know how to make crème anglaise or ganache already... Or buy it at Monoprix. :P

Baking several batches of brownies leads to a rather interesting question: What do you do when you've got several kilos of leftover brownies in the house? The first thing, of course, is to unload your chocolate goodness on everyone you know. Then give brownies to them. This week, colleagues, friends, bartenders, neighbors – pretty much anyone in Paris lucky enough to know us – were treated to all three kinds of brownies.

Despite claiming brownie supremacy for our own recipe, nobody seemed to care which one they got. Each sample got ingested quicker than a pile of Colombian "powdered sugar" cookies at a Lohan Mother-Daughter Fundraiser. Real brownies really are that rare in Paris.

However, we still had a good amount of brownie left over, in spite of our sharing spirit. So we took Alannah's classic recipe for bread pudding - and used brownies instead of bread.

Bread pudding is pretty easy. Cut up your bread (or other baked good) into chunks and place in a deep baking dish. Pour a fairly standard custard over it (beaten eggs, milk, cream, sugar, and vanilla - heated moderately so as not to curdle), and place in a medium oven for 45 minutes. Pull it out, let it cool at least a little bit, and voila! Bread Brownie pudding.

This isn't bad on its own, but around this household, we like to push things a bit farther. So it was time for another battle, albeit a little one: How can we best finish off these brownies with a money shot? Is brownie pudding better with the classic crème anglaise? Or Alannah's luxurious dark chocolate ganache?

The ganache-topped brownie was a killer, through and through. A chocolate-sugar rush that would kill that quack Dr. Atkins if his carb-free ass weren't already dead. Something already rich and bold was made richer, bolder, and – we kinda mean it – deadly. The portion pictured above is probably only about 60g. Any more would be like a Mandingo Party in your mouth.

Shifting gears to the one topped with white stuff... Crème anglaise is the French term for runny custard. Which makes this version of the desert rather meta, since the bread brownie pudding is what it is because it's cooked in custard.

If you don't already know how to make a crème anglaise (believe me, one of our friends joked that it's made up from ground up Englishmen, but sometimes I think it's not a joke) and you look it up, you'll see terms like "easy to ruin," "nerve-wracking," or "it's easier just to buy it at the store."

Bullshit.

Beat the ever-loving hell out of two fresh egg yolks with about a cup of sugar and a couple of teaspoons of vanilla extract (or scrape in the grains from one real pod). Bring a cup each of milk and cream to a simmer (not a boil) in a saucepan/pot, remove from heat. Temper your egg mixture with a few spoonfuls of the warm milk/cream. Then pour the mixture back into the pot (again, not on the heat) slowly while whisking. Once integrated, put the pot back over low heat, keep whisking, until everything's simmering again. Pour through a strainer into a bowl to cool. Then, once cool, pour through a strainer again.

On second thought, just go to the store. (Just kidding. Crème anglaise is like meditation. Do it calmly and it's simple and satisfying.)

Beyond the black/white contrast, one thing that makes this version of the brownie pudding great is temperature. Chill the crème anglaise, warm up the brownie pudding. Separately, of course. Then make a small pool of crème in a dish, put a serving of the pudding on top, and drizzle more crème on it.

And that's what makes this one a winner. The contrasting flavors. The differing temperatures. Light versus dark. Cool versus warm.

While Alannah and I both feel that going deep into the dark side of things is great, we're more partial to mixing it up with a little bit of simple vanilla action, to keep things more interesting.

Brown Town Three-Way

This is our first bilingual post, based upon a little challenge I threw out on Twitter the other day. You see, ever since Alannah and I moved to France, I can count on one hand how many good brownies we've had: None.

Ceci est notre premier billet bilingue, basé sur un petit defi j'ai lancé sur Twitter il y a quelques jours. Depuis que nous avons démenagé à France, je peux compter sur mes doigts exactement combien de bonne brownie on a mangé : Aucun.

When we arrived, a fellow American transplant at work told me at lunch never to order the brownie. "Here?" I asked, referring to the restaurant. "Anywhere in France," he replied. Ouch!

Lorsque nous sommes arrivés, un collegue aussi muté des États-Unis m'a dit pendant le déjeuner de ne jamais commander une brownie. "Ici ?" je lui ai demandé, au sujet du resto. "Non," il m'a dit. "Nulle part en France." Ai !

He was right, though. Nearly two years later, there's not a good brownie to be found. So imagine my excitement when I saw this tweet announcing that a French person was sharing her recipe for real brownies! Not that I needed such a recipe, but I was excited to see that the French have finally figured out how to make brownies.

Mais il a eu raison. Presque deux ans plus tard, je n'ai jamais trouvé de bon brownie. Donc imaginez mon excitation quand j'ai vu ce tweet, disant qu'une française partage sa recette du vraie brownie! Bah oui, je n'ai pas besoin d'une recette, mais j'étais ravi à voir que les français ont enfin appris comment faire la brownie.

I clicked the link and... Dammit! There's baking powder in there! That's a cake! If there's one hard and fast rule about brownies, it's that they don't contain any leavening.

J'ai cliqué le lien et ... Putain ! Il y a de la levure ! C'est un gâteau ! S'il y a un seul règle pour faire la brownie, c'est qu'elles ne contient pas de levure.

I know the French know what they're doing when they bake. They are undeniably the best bakers in the world. This is because they are steeped in tradition and are not keen on bending rules. And that's the problem. The brownie was born of a mistake. Someone forgot to put in the baking powder when making a chocolate cake and voila! There's your brownie.

Je sais que les français savent bien qu'est-ce qu'ils font avec un four. Ils sont sans doute les meilleurs pâtisseurs du monde - c'est incontournable - parce qu'ils sont trempés dans la tradition et ils ne sont pas accoutumés à casser les règles. Et ça c'est le problème. La brownie était née d'une betisse. Quelqu'un a oublié de mettre de la levure dans la pâte d'un gâteau au chocolat, et voila ! La brownie !

@ParisLovesMe said that I, then, should give her a recipe. And I said I'd make some this weekend and even take pictures. The only trouble is... I don't bake, and I rarely use recipes.

@ParisLovesMe m'a dit, donc, que je doit lui donner une recette. Et j'ai dit que je vais faire des brownies ce week-end, et je même prendrais des photos. Le seul problème est ... Je ne fais pas la pâtisserie, et j'utilise rarement les recettes.

So I turned to a couple of my go-to cooks for inspiration: Alton Brown for his scientific, purist approach to American classics, and Thomas Keller for his refined technique. Both offer what I would call an "ultimate" brownie recipe, so I would take the best of both and create my even more ultimate recipe. The figures below are extrapolated for use with an 8.5" round cake pan (because that's what Alannah brought from the US), from Brown and Keller's original recipes for 8" and 9" square cake pans, respectively.

Alors, j'ai cherché l'inspiration de deux cuisiniers : Alton Brown pour sa méthode américaine puriste et scientifique et Thomas Keller pour sa technique raffinée. Les deux proposent ce que j'appelle les recettes "ultimes", et je combinerais toutes les deux dans notre propre recette plus ultime. Les chiffres ci-dessous ont été extrapolés pour utiliser un moule de gateau rond de 8.5"/22cm (car c'est ce qu'Alannah a apporté des USA), contre les recettes originales de Brown et Keller pour les moules carrés de 8"/20cm et 9"/20cm respectivement.

	Brown	Keller	Tavallai
eggs/oeufs	215g	125g	170g
sugar/sucre en poudre	190g	260g	150g
brown sugar/ sucre foncé	130g	–	140g
butter/beurre	200g	240g	220g
cocoa powder/ cacao en poudre	125g	80g	100g
chocolate/chocolate (60% cacao)	–	120g	100g
vanilla extract/ extrait de vanille	6.5g	1.5g	4.5g
flour/farine	70g	75g	70g
salt/sel	2.5g	4g	3g
cooking/cuisson	45 min @ 300ºF/ 150ºC/th. 5	40-45 min @ 350ºF/ 180ºC/th. 6	40 min @ 325ºF/ 160ºC/th. 5.5

All three recipes ways require that you beat the hell out of the eggs and fully integrate with the sugar until creamy.	Toutes les trois recettes demandent que vous fouttez les oeufs vigoureusement, et les integrer compètement avec le sucre, jusqu'à il soit crémeux.
Alton Brown's recipe is incredibly simple: Melt the butter and mix in with all of the wet ingredients. Sift together all the dry ingredients, then fold in all of the wet.	La recette d'Alton Brown est incroyablement simple : Fondez le beurre et mélangez-le avec les autres ingrédients humides. Tamisez ensemble les ingrédients secs, puis ajoutez tous les humides.
Thomas Keller's approach calls for melting half the butter, then pouring the melted butter over the solid butter and working it into a mostly consistent, creamy mixture, with lumps of solid butter throughout. The butter mixture is then added - alternating with the sifted dry ingredients - into the egg/sugar/vanilla bowl. Chopped up chocolate chunks are added at the very end.	La méthode de Thomas Keller exige que vous fondez la moitié du beurre, et mélangez-le avec le beurre solide à faire une crème assez consistent, mais avec des petites morceaux de beurre partout. Le mélange est puis ajouté - alterné avec les ingrédients secs - dedans le bol des oeufs/sucre/vanille. Le chocolat - haché en morceaux - est ajouté à la fin.
For the Tavallai version, we went with Keller's more professional technique of folding dry goods and butter into the egg/sugar/vanila mixture. However, I used a whisk to cream the melted and solid butter together - almost whipped - for a smoother butter that marbled into the bowl. Again, the chocolate chunks are added at the end.	Pour la version Tavallai, nous avons suivi la technique plus professionelle de Keller, en mettre les ingrédients secs alterné avec le beurre dans le melange oeuf/sucre/vanille. Cependent, j'ai fouetté le beurre fondu et le beurre solide, comme une crème presque montée, pour un effet marbré dans le bol. Encore, les morceaux du chocolat sont ajoutés à la fin.

As expected with its cocoa-heavy recipe, the Brown version came out very dark, and was difficult to set in the pan because of its concrete-like thickness. The Keller batter was much more fluid, and in every step of the way, much lighter in color. Our version was exactly in the middle.

Comme prévu avec sa recette pleine du cacao, la version Brown était très foncée, et c'était un peu dificile à mettre carrement dans le moule à cause de son épaisseur bétonesque. La pâte lisse Keller était bien plus fluide, et à chaque etape, plus claire en couleur. Notre version restait precisement au milieu.

After cooking, the Brown version was expectedly dark and dense, the Keller version lighter in both color and consistency with a beautiful craquelure, and ours again in between with a mild craquelure but a beautiful two-tone coloring. The chocolate chunks remain solid and visible.

Après la cuisson, la version Brown était foncée et dense comme prevue, la version Keller plus légère et plus claire avec une belle craquelure, et le nôtre encore au milieu avec un effet craquelure bien plus doux, mais avec un effet marbré. Les morceaux de chocolat restent solides et visibles.

I "fileted" each brownie round, and we filed the rest into plastic tubs with labels. This way, we can share each kind of brownie with our friends this week to get their opinions. Don't you wish you were in Paris?

J'ai fait des "filets" avec chaque rond de brownie, et puis nous avoins classé les restes dans des boites en plastique avec des étiquettes. Comme ça, nous pouvons partager chaque genre de brownie avec nos amis cette semaine pour prendre leurs avis. Souhaitez-vous que vous étiez sur Paris ?

For the tasting, we had all three of the brownies presented in each of the ways typical of the respective chef. The Alton Brownies plain, the Thomas Keller brownies dusted with powdered sugar as they are at his Ad Hoc restaurant (and in the Ad Hoc at Home cookbook) and ours with Alannah's trademark dark chocolate ganache, which has already been titillating Parisians with its few public appearances... A total of nine different brownies!

Pour la dégustation nous avons présenté tous les trois recettes à la façon de son chef respectif. Les Alton Brownies nature, les brownies Thomas Keller époussetées du sucre glace comme servie à son resto Ad Hoc (et dans son bouquin Ad Hoc at Home) et le nôtre avec sa fameuse ganache au chocolat noir, qui a déjà titillé plein des parisiens pendant quelques apparitions au public ... un total de neuf brownies différentes !

The Alton Brownies were a dense chocolate bomb. Like having your mouth raped by a giant chocolate wang... Only you can't rape the willing. Delicious, but overwhelming.

Les Alton Brownies étaient une bombe de chocolat. Comme faire violer ta bouche par une grosse bite à chocolat ... Seulement c'est impossile de violer les disposés. Delicieux, mais saissisants.

Keller's brownies are near perfect, as you'd expect from a 3-Michelin starred chef, reminiscent of the amazing chocolate Bouchon from his bakery of the same name. However, Alannah found the powdered sugar to simply get in the way of the chocolate, and we both thought the chocolate chunks were a bit too much. Otherwise, the texture is perfection.

Les brownies de Keller sont presque parfaites, comme prevu pour un chef étoilé (3x), réminiscent de son Bouchon de chocolat de sa boulangerie-pâtisserie éponyme. Cependant Alannah a trouvé le sucre glace interférant du goût de chocolat, et nous avons pensé que les morceaux de chocolat étaient un peux trop. Autrement, la texture est la perfection.

And our version? Let's say this is the first and only time that you will hear of Tavallai trumping Keller. Our recipe truly combines the best of both, delivering the dark chocolate punch of Alton Brown's recipe, and nearly matching the excellent texture of the Thomas Keller recipe. And Alannah's ganache just puts it over the top, though it's a wholly unnecessary luxury. The flavor and level of chocolate are perfect, and a dozen grams of tweaking the butter (more) and brown sugar (less) should yield the velvety texture of the Keller brownies.

Et notre version ? Disons que c'est la première et seule fois que vous entendez que Tavallai a battu Keller. Notre recette combine le meilleur des deux autres recettes, livrant le coup de chocolat de la version Brown, et presque appariant l'excellente texture de la recette Thomas Keller. Et la ganache d'Alannah est vraiement extra, mais c'est un luxe complètement inutile. Le goût et le niveau de chocolat sont parfait, et un dizaine de grams de bidouille du beurre (plus) et sucre foncé (moins) devrait rapporter la texture veloutée des brownies Keller.

Little Cream Filled Pies

I'm a big fan of Alannah's pie.

Mostly because of the crust. Part lard, part butter, all decadence. Flaky but not overly so, rich but not so much it overshadows the filling. Tonight, the filling was rhubarb and custard. This has been one of Alannah's traditional go-to pies for years.

Not so traditional is the form. If you look at the picture there, it's barely much bigger than a cup of espresso. That's because she baked it in a muffin tin, filling each hole with a pint-sized sheet of dough, filling the mini-pies with rhubarb and custard, then even doing the lattice-work to make them look like real pies.

She was a little worried about overcooking and undercooking the whole time it was in the oven, and although the custard solidified a bit more than we'd like (we're into dripping, creamy fillings that you have to lick off your fingers and lips), it still came out fantastic for a first-time experiment. A bit messy, a bit awkward, but in the end, totally worth it.


We're going to do it again, and we hope it catches on. Now that the overblown cupcake fad seems to be coming to its ebb, we hope to spark a revolution of cupcake-sized pies. Pies, by virtue of having filling, are better than cakes. Or as we like to say: Less fluff, more stuff.