Pistachio? Pistachio!

Whenever I swing by my parent’s house, there is a bowl sitting out in their living room filled with roasted, salted pistachios. I can plop myself down in a chair and blow through a handful of the little nuts before I even notice. For some reason, though, I have a certain disconnect with the salty little morsels in the bowl on their coffee table, and the nut so often used in European pastry.

It’s amazing to me that pistachios aren’t a bigger part of the American identity. We produce a lot of them. As of 2005, we were a close second to Iran in production, the majority of which comes from California. The nut, which is actually a drupe, originated in the Middle East, and was introduces to the United States in 1904. It thrives in airid climates, making places such as Iran, the Mediterranean, and southwest US ideal places for pistachios to grow.

Pistachios have a wonderful fruity flavor that is very well suited to sweet applications. While in the US they are generally bought, shell-on and roasted, for consumption as a snack food, there are occasionally places that sell them raw. If you can’t find them in a local store, there are plenty of internet sources that sell them.

Financiers (pronounced Fee-Nan-See-Ay) are another of those French confections that have fallen by the wayside of modern pastry. They are little cakes, generally made with almond flour, egg whites, sugar, and my favorite ingredient of all time: brown butter. Traditionally, they would be baked in little rectangular molds that would make them look like little gold ingots, hence the name financier. The cakes that ensue are enigmatic: light but chewy, airy but moist. Like the macaron, they are something that one can easily get hooked on.

As I said, financiers are traditionally made with almonds, but I don’t see any reason why one couldn’t use another nut in their place. A quick search through Google, and I found that I’m not alone. The only snafu I had was that I needed to make my own pistachio flour. In the end, it may be something that is worth buying pre-ground. In order to get the pistachios ground finely enough, I put them in a food processor to get them roughly ground, and then spread them out on a baking sheet in a LOW oven to dehydrate them for about 6 hours. I then put them in the freezer to get them rock hard before finally mixing them with 50% of the weight of sugar and putting them to the food processor one more time… As I said, it may be worth the investment to just buy the flour pre-ground. In terms of molds, you can certainly find financier molds, but its not strictly necessary. I used a flexipan with diamond shaped cavities, and was happy with the result. Also, mini muffin pans would work well.

Pistachio Financier adapted from Stephane Glacier M.O.F

Yield~ 30 cakes

250g Butter 300g Powdered Sugar 150g Pistachio Flour* 260g Egg whites 100g Flour 25g Honey *If you are making your own, subtract the sugar added during grinding from the total sugar amount

1) Place butter in a small sauce pot over medium heat and brown until golden and nutty-smelling. 2) Add the honey to butter mixture and allow to cool 3) Sift together dry ingredients 4) Whip egg whites to soft peaks 5) Fold in the dry ingredients, followed by the browned butter 6) Place in piping bag and pipe into molds that have been sprayed with baking spray. 7) Bake at 400° for 12-15 minutes, rotating one in between

What would go with pistachio financiers? Well, anything. In fact, it was only sheer willpower that kept me from eating the entire batch. Of course, they would be delicious with a cup of tea, such as Earl Grey, or English Breakfast. They also would be good dipped in chocolate or served with preserves. For me, I used them to sop up the remnants of a tasty coconut rice pudding with a scoop of banana-pineapple sorbet.

Pear

Happy New Year! Again, it has been longer than I would like since my last past, and as a result, one of my resolutions is to pick back up the pace of my posts to at least once a week.

Note: For some reason, the pictures I took of this dessert seem to be missing. Instead of putting off posting, I decided to go ahead, and I will add the pictures in later.

I decided to celebrate the end of fall with a pear dessert since pears are really only worth eating in the fall. I have a bit of a love/hate relationship with pears. When they’re good, they’re great. It’s really easy, however, to get pears that are either too soft, or too mealy. My approach to the dessert was three different pears five different ways.

The focal point of the of the dessert is the sake poached bosc pear. Bosc pears are good for poaching because they don’t let go of their water as much as many other varieties, so they don’t shrink during the cooking process. I took a bit of a gamble by poaching them in sake as opposed to wine, because despite the fact that sake is called “rice wine,” the flavor it brings is far different. The result, happily, was a pear that kept its delicate flavor, while picking up some of the dryness of the sake.

For the second iteration of pear, I took the poaching liquid from the pears, reduced it down, and made a caramel out of it by adding some extra sugar, bringing it up to around 320°, and adding scalded cream and sake to make a complex caramel sauce that has a strong taste of sake and also a slight fruitiness that is distinctly pear.

The third variety of pear is a pear galette, which is simply puff pastry, topped with sliced pear, brushed with butter and sprinkled with sugar. When they bake, the pears –bartlet this time—wilt down a little bit, but keep all of their flavor. I chose bartlet pears for the galette because I think they have the fullest flavor, and are [fairly] consistent.

The fourth preparation for the pears is another taken from the pages of Keegan Gerhard: a sweet-and-sour roasted pear (though I don’t know if he would necessarily describe it that way). For this I used the little Forelle pears, which taste similar to a bartlet, but are only about a third the size, and made sure that they were a little on the hard side. I roasted them in palm sugar and butter in a 300ish oven, cored and skin on, but with a few slits poked in the sides, moving them around the pan every 20 minutes or so. After about an hour and a half, I added a sprinkle of yuzu juice, to add that distinct tartness.

The final style of pear is a simple pear chip (you will notice that it is missing in the picture). To make the chips, I took the left over Bartlett pears, sliced them very thinly, and lay them out on a silpat. They dry out in a low oven (150°) for 2-3 hours, and then are ready to go.

Of course, in keeping with my obsession over brown butter, the dessert wouldn’t be complete without the addition of a scoop of brown butter ice cream.

Beurre Noisette

Its official. My new site is up: Mcswiggenconfections.com

Interestingly enough, I tried importing this blog onto the site, in the interest of consolidation, but it doesn't sync up, and I'm not willing to keep up with two blogs, to I decided to just keep this one up.

All the chocolates I'm offering are surprisingly good. Even I'm satisfied with them, which is unusual indeed. I think there's something to the whole "practice makes perfect" thing.

I think that the chocolate that I'm proudest of, personally, is the Brown Butter truffle. What is brown butter? It’s a result of the Maillard reaction. Simply put, it’s the caramelization of the milk proteins due to heat. It’s the same idea as toasting bread, just a different protein that caramelizes. There's something about brown butter that makes everything better, whether sweet or savory. In the past few months I have played with incorporating brown butter into a couple different things. I started with a recipe that I saw in a magazine for brown butter sorbet. It was delicious, but even better as brown butter ice cream. I've also used it in my molten chocolate cakes, to great success.

About the same time that I was making my little brown butter discoveries, I was reading about caramelizing white chocolate. It’s a concept that has seemingly sprung up in the past few years simultaneously in a couple places. At D Bar, they had just introduced a pear dessert with a caramelized white chocolate mousse; Michael Laiskonis, on his blog, talked about the possibility of using it in a dessert as well. It’s pretty much the same idea as brown butter. If the chocolate gets too hot, the milk solids start to caramelize and color. This can happen accidentally just by having your water bath too hot, or intentionally by roasting the chocolate in a low oven. In my few experiments, I’ve decided that the slower you caramelize the milk solids, the smoother the end chocolate will be (the chocolate will begin to seize if roasted too hot or too long). I recommend keeping the oven at about 200° for about 2 hours, but it may take longer if you want the chocolate darker. In the end, you will have some beautiful golden white chocolate that tastes, unsurprisingly, a little like a deeper brown butter.

After that, it was just a matter of making a ganache and rolling them in milk chocolate. It’s amazing how much the Maillard reaction cuts the sweet taste and leaves a rounder, bolder flavor. Delicious.