Monthly Archives: December 2008

A Show-Stopping Dessert with A Spicy Taste of Winter

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Gingerbread cake that's mmm, mmm good.

This is one of the desserts that award-winning San Francisco Pastry Chef Emily Luchetti says she makes most often.

It’s easy to understand why.

It’s a classic gingerbread cake with an air of elegance and sophistication because of its accouterments — a compote of warm, tender apples, and a rich, creamy sabayon with the added complex kick of Calvados (apple brandy).

Luchetti says she used to slice the cake and build little gingerbread houses out of them. Now, she takes the simpler approach and just cuts the cake into squares. “Tastes just as good,” she says with a smile.

“Gingerbread with Warm Apples and Cider Sabayon” is from Luchetti’s lastest book, “Classic Stars Desserts” (Chronicle Books).

The dark, moist cake looks almost like it’s made of chocolate because of the molasses in the batter. Warm spices including ground ginger, cinnamon, and cloves give it a comforting taste of winter.

The cider sabayon is made by whisking egg yolks, sugar, apple juice and Calvados in a double-boiler until thick and smooth. Then, whipped cream is gently folded into the cooled sabayon for even more luxuriousness. I could happily eat this by the spoonful all on its own. But that would be wrong, wouldn’t it?

You can make the cake, warm apples (I used a mix of Galas and Granny Smiths), and sabayon a day ahead of time. Just reheat the apples before serving.

I made this dessert for my in-laws’ Christmas gathering. Even my husband’s 20-something nephews went wild for it.

The recipe says it serves 6, but that would mean some seriously large slabs of cake. I found that it makes more like 8 servings, even for me, who can’t get enough of this knockout dessert.

Gingerbread with Warm Apples and Cider Sabayon

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Take Five with Pastry Chef Extraordinaire Emily Luchetti, On Leaving the Savory Side for the Sweet One

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San Francisco Pastry Chef Emily Luchetti. (Photo courtesy of Jeff Gleason)

The name, Emily Luchetti, is synonymous with desserts so luscious you want to seriously lick the plate even after swallowing the last forkful. Civility, be damned!

That’s not surprising given her reputation. The 51-year-old Luchetti is executive pastry chef of Nick’s Cove in Marshall; and Farallon, Waterbar, and Epic Roadhouse, all in San Francisco. A veteran cookbook author, she also was named James Beard Outstanding Pastry Chef in 2004.

Recently, I talked with her about why she made the switch from line cook to pastry chef, the one baked good she’s been unable to master, how she stays trim around all that butter, and the incredibly sweet tale of how she met her husband, Peter.

Q: You were working as a cook in the private dining room of Goldman Sachs in New York and Peter was a trader. You dated, and then decided to head to France without him for a year to study cooking. And at the end of the year, he picked you up at the airport, and you two have been together since? That is way too romantic.

A: (laughs) But he didn’t tell you that the first time he asked me out, I said ‘no’!

I had just broken up with a guy. I needed a break. It was nothing personal. But the second time that Peter asked me out, I thought he might not ask a third time, so I said ‘yes.’

Q: So did you court him with your cooking?

A: I was doing savory food then. I was at Goldman’s because I needed a job to pay the rent. Cooking was something I always loved to do, but I didn’t consider it as a career. This was in 1979, back when cooking wasn’t as popular as it is now. But the more I did of it, the more I fell in love with it.

Maybe I did keep Peter interested because I fed him. Plus, I think he liked my enthusiasm.

Q: When did you start doing pastry professionally?

A: I was at Stars in San Francisco then (in the mid-1980s). I knew I wanted to do desserts. The woman who was doing pastries there was pregnant and wasn’t going to come back. I didn’t have pastry training, but I figured I had nine months to convince my boss to give me the job.

Q: What was it about pastry making that you enjoyed?

A: Peeling shrimp or cooking a bunch of salmon fillets didn’t excite me. I didn’t like cooking on the line, not knowing what was going to happen each evening. So much of my destiny seemed out of my control. When you do desserts, you plate them to order, but a large part is done ahead of time.

I’m a day person, too, not a late-night person. Plus, I married a guy who was a trader, and he was getting up really early, too. You can’t have opposite shifts all the time in a relationship or you’d be like two ships passing in the night.

Q: Were you one of those kids who baked all the time?

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Truffle Fudge Bites

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How glam are these? (Photo courtesy of Joe Notaro).

You better have a big sweet tooth — and arms of steel — when you pick up John Kelly Chocolates.

The Hollywood, Calif. chocolatier makes divine gourmet truffle fudge bars that are so dense and heavy that you need to work out before eating them just to be able to lift them. For those with a more dainty appetite and wimpier biceps, John Kelly has just introduced Truffle Fudge Bites.

Yes, these are a mere 2-ounces, compared to the standard 8-ounce bars. They are designed to serve one. But seriously, they can easily serve two. Trust me on this.

Four come in a box for $14. And two varieties are available. Find them at Neiman Marcus, Bristol Farms markets, and online.

I’ll use my patented scale of 1 to 10 lip-smackers, with 1 being the “Bleh, save your money” far end of the spectrum; 5 being the “I’m not sure I’d buy it, but if it was just there, I might nibble some” middle-of-the-road response; and 10 being the “My gawd, I could die now and never be happier, because this is the best thing I’ve ever put in my mouth” supreme ranking.

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Sweet Breams Are Made of This…

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Something fishy is going on...

Who am I to disagree

Travel the world and seven seas

Everybody’s looking for something…

as cute and precious as these.

With apologies to the Eurythmics, I just couldn’t get that song out of my head when I visited this unusual Japanese bakery in San Mateo, Sweet Breams. It specializes in taiyaki — tiny, filled waffles shaped like fish that are made to order.

When I taught a class recently at nearby Draeger’s, Cooking School Editor Cynthia Liu told me I had to stop by Sweet Breams. Good thing I listened.

Owner Tara Wong, who lived in Tokyo for a spell, got hooked on these adorable snacks as a child when she’d visit May’s Coffee Shop in San Francisco’s Japantown, where they also are made.

Traditional taiyaki are about 5-inches long. Wong thought there would be an even greater appetite for smaller ones. Hers are about 2 inches long, and made with waffle irons imported from Japan. There are four waffle irons. Each is named after one of the Beatles. And yes, she laughs, “Paul” is the most consistent one.

Azuki- and Nutella-filled fish.

She opened her shop about six months ago, and word is already spreading about it. Folks have come from as far as Sacramento to get their fix of the dainty, crispy, warm treats made from a smooth batter of both all-purpose and cake flours.

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