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La Macaronicité 3: the more reliable macaron recipe and a few tips

145 Comments

coloured macarons

Macaroniers, Macaronistes et Macaroneurs,

So you want to make better macarons? Welcome to the third instalment of La Macaronicité at Syrup & Tang! If you missed the introduction, click here to read it. And if you want to learn about basic technique, ingredients and method, visit the second article.

La Macaronicité: Advanced technique and knowledge

Main sections:

Ingredients
Fundamentals
Recipe B — macarons au sucre cuit
Background to my recipe

Please remember that this material is copyright. If you want to use any part of it (beyond a very short quote), please contact me for permission.

There’s a lot of information here and it’s possible that not everything applies to your kitchen or experience. I don’t know everything about them (there’s a limit to how many kilos of almond meal a poor writer can buy!). I welcome feedback about other solutions/explanations/ideas, but please don’t submit comments listing other recipes unless it contributes to a better understanding of the actual process and problems. You’re welcome to contact me directly if you prefer and I’ll incorporate helpful info into the article where appropriate.

Ingredients

To summarise the more detailed ingredient information from the previous article, the macaron batter consists of only four ingredients:

  • almond meal (ground almond) – amandes en poudre
  • pure icing sugar (confectioner’s sugar, no starch added) – sucre glace
  • egg whites, preferably old – blancs d’œufs
  • sugar – sucre

On occasion you might also see mention of cream of tartar or salt, both of which strengthen egg white foam.

The batter may be coloured (very common) and flavoured (less common, though not too difficult).

There are three types of recipe:

  1. macarons au blanc monté (1) – a simple eggwhite foam is combined with the dry ingredients; preferred in Pierre Hermé’s books
  2. macarons au blanc monté (2) – a simple French meringue is combined with the dry ingredients; in most other books, including Alain Ducasse
  3. macarons au sucre cuit – an Italian meringue is combined with the dry ingredients; preferred in most professional books

I’ll explain the third recipe type (Italian meringue) here.

The important differences in this style of macaron recipe are as follows:

Meringue: This recipe uses a so-called Italian meringue, made with a hot sugar syrup which is beaten into the whipped egg white.

meringue 'bec d'oiseau'
An Italian meringue gives this beautiful peak, called a ‘bec d’oiseau’ (bird’s beak) in French.

Mixing: As with the simpler recipe, at first the ingredients won’t mix together well. The Italian meringue is slower to pick up the dry ingredients and needs a bit more mixing to achieve a smooth batter. If you find you have lumps of powder in the batter, don’t be scared to smear the batter against the side of the bowl with the spatula. The final batter looks fluffier (some visible bubbles) than for the simple recipe. If the batter sits for any length of time the aeration becomes more apparent. That’s fine. This batter seems a little more tolerant of overmixing. This mixture dries out much more quickly than the simple one, but also remains usable for longer. Just cover the bowl with plastic film until you need it (e.g., if you’re baking multiple batches).

Crusting: I experimented with leaving some macarons to crust for an hour. The surface was actually almost hard after this time! Popped them in the oven and they rose happily, though some air bubbles made the surface irregular. The most striking difference between crusted and uncrusted macarons is that the former have a clearly defined line between the shell and the foot. On the downside, the shell was thicker than desirable. [UPDATE: after more testing, I now recommend permitting the shells to sit for half an hour or so. It helps reduce some problems if your oven has strong heat below the baking tray.]

Sugar syrup: The syrup is made by simmering off moisture until you achieve a certain sugar concentration, which is judged by its temperature. If only making a small quantity of syrup (e.g. for the recipe example quantity below), it’s best to use a small narrow saucepan or even a Turkish coffee pot.

Hot sugar syrup can cause bad burns, so be careful of splashing and don’t feel tempted to stick your finger in it! You need a digital thermometer or sugar thermometer to check the temperature. (Actually, you can check it using the old-fashioned drop test into cold water, but for that I suggest you check out one of your cookbooks — look up ‘firm ball’ stage.) Syrups harden quickly as they cool, so you need to have your equipment and ingredients ready to go.

Oven: Being slightly less touchy, this recipe doesn’t require changing temperatures and leaving the oven door ajar. You should be able to cook the shells at one temperature with the door closed. In general, you’ll lose fewer shells to burning or sticking if you use your first attempt to work out the best temperature for your oven — just cook a few macarons at a time at different temps (or trust me, LOL).

In testing, I found that at 150C the shells came off the paper beautifully, had good feet, but had air pockets. At 160C air pockets were absent, but the bottoms were just a bit sticky. At 170C the feet were more modest (still good) but the bottoms were sometimes too sticky. Permitting the shells to crust before baking gave a good rise (feet) and fairly dry bottoms, but a duller shell.


mixed or overmixed
macarons tops
macarons bottoms
This is what happens with batter at different levels of mixing when cooked at 150C.

air pockets in macarons
Experiment with temperatures: air pockets at low temperature.

Be brave and face the batter!

Recipe B
macarons au sucre cuit; (Italian meringue)

This method is rarely found on the English-speaking internet and is only mentioned in a small number of professional cookbooks. It is fairly reliable, though still requires some practice.

Decide how many eggs you want to sacrifice. Crack and separate the eggs, remembering to keep the whites and all vessels and implements scrupulously free of fat or egg yolk. You don’t need to weigh the egg whites at this point. One egg white will yield about fourteen 3-4 cm macaron shells.

It isn’t necessary to age the eggs (though probably doesn’t hurt).

Formula and method

When you’re ready to start cooking, weigh the egg whites and then scale the recipe appropriately. The formula is below.

‘eggwhite’ refers to the weight of the egg whites in grams. The righthand column provides an example calculation.

Ingredient   Amount   Example (with eggwhite=50 gm)
Almond meal 1.35 x eggwhite 1.35 x 50 = 67 gm
Icing sugar 1.35 x eggwhite 1.35 x 50 = 67 gm
Sugar 1.35 x eggwhite 1.35 x 50 = 67 gm
Water 0.33 x eggwhite 0.33 x 50 = 16 gm
Egg white 50 gm

A batter with 50 gm egg white should yield one baking tray 30 cm x 40 cm or approximately 25 shells.

Preheat your oven:
Conventional oven: centre rack, 160C. Convection oven: 140C

  1. Stack two or three heavy baking trays. Line the top tray with non-stick baking paper. If you’re well organised, mark the paper with 2 or 3 cm circles, spaced about 4 cm apart (the piped batter will spread about 1 cm).
  2. Place the sugar and water in a small saucepan and leave to stand.
  3. Divide the total egg white into two equal amounts, placing one half in a small bowl or glass and the other half in the bowl which you will use for making the meringue. It is preferable to weigh the amounts, not do it by volume or eye.
  4. Process the almond meal and icing sugar at high speed to achieve a fine powder. Sift (or whisk the powder by hand) to break up any lumps of powder and place in a large bowl.
  5. Place the saucepan for the syrup over low heat and bring to a simmer. Stir once or twice to help dissolve the sugar, but once it’s simmering you shouldn’t stir it again. As the syrup boils it will splash the sides of the pan and you should use a wet basting brush to dissolve the dried sugar so that it runs back into the syrup. Start to measure the syrup temperature after it has been simmering for a minute or two.
  6. If you are using an electric hand beater rather than a kitchen machine, beat the egg white until it makes soft peaks. If you are using a kitchen machine you can start the machine when the syrup is a few degrees below the final temperature (see below).
  7. The final temperature you want the syrup to reach is 118C (no drama if you overshoot slightly). Beat the egg whites to firm peaks just before the final temperature is attained.
  8. Set the beater/machine to slow speed and slowly pour the hot syrup into the bowl of beaten egg whites in a thin stream. The syrup may splash a little. If you are too slow to do this, the syrup might harden in the saucepan… there is always some wastage.
  9. As soon as all the syrup is in the egg whites, increase the beating speed to maximum and beat for several minutes until the meringue is just warm to the touch. If there was lots of splashing when you poured the syrup on, you can stop beating briefly at the start to scrape down the sides a bit. The final product should be a stiff, white, compact meringue with a lovely satiny consistency.
  10. Pour the unused amount of egg white (see beginning of this recipe) onto the dry ingredients. Then scoop the meringue on top of that. Mix the ingredients with a spatula using a circular motion around the bowl and under the batter. The mixing process for this recipe takes a little longer than for the simpler recipe in the previous article. You don’t need to be gentle, but the goal is to incorporate the dry ingredients quickly to avoid overmixing. It’s better to undermix than overmix. You can add colourings or flavourings during this mixing.

    11. meringue bowl of ingredients macaron batter almost ready

  11. The final batter should be the colour of pale ivory (if you haven’t coloured it) and smooth and thick but flowing (typically referred to as being ‘like magma’, but as few of us have visited an active volcano or been to the centre of the Earth…). A ribbon of batter dropped from a spoon onto the top of the remaining batter should take about 30 seconds to disappear.
  12. Dab a little batter under each corner of the baking paper on the tray to anchor it (otherwise it’ll slip).
  13. Spoon the batter into a piping bag/gun with a 8-10 mm nozzle and pipe evenly onto the baking paper. Mild peaks should settle back into the batter eventually. If they don’t disappear, tap the tray repeatedly on a table until the peaks have largely disappeared. Usually the batter will spread a little and any bumps will disappear. Sometimes the batter is quite runny and will rapidly flatten out. (It might be overmixed.) This consistency will often yield irregular shells. If the batter never stops spreading then you should probably scrape it all back into a bowl, gently add some more almond meal and try again.
  14. If you want, you can leave the piped batter to dry for anywhere between 20 mins and two hours.
  15. Place the tray in the oven. If you’re using a conventional oven, cook as normal (ie, with the door closed) for the entire time. For a convection oven, you will need to experiment a little, possibly leaving the door ajar for part of the time.
  16. At the 5 minute mark the shells should have lifted and developed ‘feet’. At the 6-7 minute mark they should be starting to colour just slightly. Rotate the baking sheet if the colouring is uneven. The outermost shells often have to be sacrificed in order for the centre ones to be cooked, but the majority should be no more than the palest cream colour. They are probably ready if a shell moves only reluctantly on its foot when you lightly nudge it with a finger.
  17. Remove from the oven and leave on the tray for a minute or two. Gently try to lift one of the outermost shells. A slight twisting motion or a peeling motion can help. If the shells stick badly, but are firm, try spraying or brushing a little water under the baking paper. This will moisten the paper and soften any stuck bits after 1-2 minutes. Don’t use too much water or the shells may start to dissolve around the edges. Remove each shell by gently peeling away the baking paper or with the aid of a thin palette or paring knife. Another solution to the sticking problem can be to place the paper or Silpat (with stuck macarons) in the freezer for a while.
  18. Once removed from the sheet, leave the shells to cool on a wire rack, face up.

    19. unhappy macaron
    Very sticky macarons leave their bellies behind 🙁 Don’t try to peel the macarons off. Just put the paper with stuck macarons on a rack for a few hours and then peel carefully.

  • If you haven’t already made a filling, do so now.
  • The plain shells can be frozen for a few weeks quite well. Complete macarons store well in the fridge for two to three days. After that they become softer. Eat macarons at room temperature.

Background to my recipe

There’s only really one formula for the Italian meringue style of macaron recipe, as illustrated here. Alain Ducasse (in his Grand Livre de Cuisine: Alain Ducasse’s Desserts and Pastries) is approximately 1.4:1.4:1.0:1.4 (almond:icing sugar:egg white:sugar). My favourite book, by Christophe Felder (Les Macarons de Christophe), uses a ratio of 1.33:1.33:1.0:1.33. I’ve used both successfully, but settled for a compromise of 1.35:1.0. I don’t know how much impact these minor variations will have in your kitchen.

If you have any doubt about the preferability of the Italian meringue approach, read what talented Joycelyn at the beautiful Kuidaore site has to say, or see what Kitchen Wench has written about her macaron adventures.

For troubleshooting and additional info on technique, remember to read the previous article.

coloured macarons raw  coloured macarons cooked

Pause for breath

I’ll leave everyone who is so inclined to play with their delicious divas over the weekend. Next week I’ll write about fillings and flavours, amongst other things.

My piping gun has cracked, my piping bag is torn, and I have fourteen neglected egg yolks in the fridge, clamouring for use!

macaron shell with ganache
Naked shell with chocolate ginger ganache. My midnight snack.

You can read La Macaronicité 1: an introduction to the macaron.
La Macaronicité 2: basic technique and simple macaron recipe.
La Macaronicité 4: fillings, flavours, frippery.
La Macaronicité 5: Macawrongs and macarights, macarons day and night.

– DM

cooking, food, hl, macarons, recipes

La Macaronicité 2: basic technique and simple macaron recipe

111 Comments

making art with the reject macarons

Mesdames et messieurs, enfants et français charmants,

So you want to make macarons? Welcome to the second instalment of La Macaronicité at Syrup & Tang! If you missed the introduction, click here to read it.

La Macaronicité: Technique and knowledge

Main sections:


Ingredients
Fundamentals
Recipe A — macarons au blanc monté
Background to my recipe

Please remember that this material is copyright. If you want to use any part of it (beyond a very short quote), please contact me for permission.

There’s a lot of information here and it’s possible that not everything applies to your kitchen or experience. I don’t know everything about them (there’s a limit to how many kilos of almond meal a poor writer can buy!). I welcome feedback about other solutions/explanations/ideas, but please don’t submit comments listing other recipes unless it contributes to a better understanding of the actual process and problems. You’re welcome to contact me directly if you prefer and I’ll incorporate helpful info into the article where appropriate.

Ingredients

The macaron batter consists of only four ingredients:

  • almond meal (ground almond) – amandes en poudre
  • pure icing sugar (confectioner’s sugar, no starch added) – sucre glace
  • egg whites, preferably old – blancs d’œufs
  • sugar, preferably caster sugar – sucre semoule

On occasion you might also see mention of cream of tartar or salt, both of which strengthen egg white foam.

The batter may be coloured (very common) and flavoured (less common, though not too difficult).

There are three types of recipe:

  1. macarons au blanc monté (1) – a simple eggwhite foam is combined with the dry ingredients; preferred in Pierre Hermé’s books
  2. macarons au blanc monté (2) – a simple French meringue is combined with the dry ingredients; in most other books, including Alain Ducasse
  3. macarons au sucre cuit – an Italian meringue is combined with the dry ingredients; preferred in most professional books

I’ll explain the second recipe type (French meringue) here, and introduce the third type in the next article.

Fundamentals

Almond meal is a fine cream-coloured powder made from ground blanched almonds. If it is very fresh it might be a little damp, so you could dry it very gently in a barely warm oven. You can make your own almond meal, but it will be hard to grind fine enough and will be damp.

Icing sugar (confectioner’s sugar) is often sold with starch added (then called ‘icing mixture’ in Australia). This prevents it from clumping, but can leave a pasty mouthfeel if used in icing and is undesirable (though not fatal) in macarons. Use unadulterated (pure) icing sugar if possible.

The almond meal and icing sugar should be put through a high speed food processor or a (clean) blade coffee grinder to obtain a very fine powder (about 10 seconds on highest speed should suffice). Most almond meal is more like sand than flour, so if you leave it unprocessed the macarons will have a coarser surface. No big drama, but we’re looking for perfection, right?

Egg whites consist of proteins and quite a lot of water. The water can make the final batter unmanageably wet, either in the making or in the oven (where the macarons refuse to dry adequately). Old egg whites have lost some of their water content through evaporation so can yield a more successful batter, though this is by no means guaranteed (from personal experience, even evaporating 15% of some egg whites didn’t help). There are also changes in the composition of the proteins with time, but I haven’t seen any analysis to explain why this might be better for macarons. It is also said that older egg whites yield a thicker meringue shell. Many professional recipes use dried egg white (egg white powder) to bolster the protein content.

Bottomline: do not fret about a few hours of ageing here or there; if you have time to age your eggs that’s good. If you don’t, then just use the oldest eggs (ie, not the newest carton) in your fridge that haven’t gone rotten yet.

Oven temperature is a big problem. Very few recipes specify whether the author uses a conventional or a fan-forced (convection) oven. This difference has implications for (1) even temperature, (2) speed of temperature recovery after putting the tray in the oven, (3) actual temperature appropriate for your oven, (4) humidity.

It would seem that a fan-forced oven sometimes offers greater success (though others say the opposite), but I haven’t been able to test this firsthand, as I live in renting-with-old-gas-oven land. Many recipes that explicitly mention a conventional oven recommend starting the macarons at a high temperature and then leaving the oven door ajar and dropping the temperature. There are two possible reasons: (1) this gives the initial lift that the batter needs and then permits drying and firming without burning (propping the door open helps lower the temperature quickly), and (2) this seals the surface of the macaron quickly, preventing cracking and helping it lift as the foot forms. Of course you could take the Roux brothers’ (Roux Brothers on Patisserie) approach and just have two ovens at different temperatures. Yeah, right.

To ensure slow, even heat distribution underneath the macarons, it’s desirable to use two or even three baking trays (cookie sheets) on top of each other. Again, many authors fail to mention that they’re using (and stacking) professional-grade aluminium sheets which are considerably thicker than the cheapo homecook type. I’d probably need six of my flimsy baking trays stacked together! I recently tried using an insulated baking sheet for the first time and found that my previous problems with sticky-bottomed macarons were greatly reduced.

Baking on non-stick baking paper is the best approach. Silicone sheets and Silpat are fine for a successful batch, but just try removing tenaciously sticky, fragile, failed macaron shells from one of these and it will end in tears!

Meringue: when you incorporate it into the almond mixture, you don’t want any pussyfooted folding (e.g., as for mousse or sponges) but nor are you allowed to beat the shit out of it. You need to work quickly and efficiently, incorporating the dry ingredients smoothly but without excessive mixing. At first the ingredients won’t mix well, but it comes together quickly. The final batter is pale and smooth, with no visible aeration.
macaron batter looking good

Piping: if you’re confident at piping, pipe from the side, pulling the tail up over the macaron so that it disappears quickly. However, it’s easier to pipe vertically over the centre, about 5 mm above the tray surface. Flick the nozzle towards the edge as you pull away to finish.

Crusting: more than half of the world’s macaron recipes mention leaving the piped macarons to rest so that they form a ‘skin’ or ‘crust’. There seems to be very little evidence that this makes any difference in the final product. For some batters it will actually cause a duller shell. Maybe resting is necessary for some people’s kitchens, but I didn’t observe a benefit across four tests. It does, however, seem wise to let the batter settle for just a few minutes on the baking tray (see ‘cracking’). [UPDATE: after more testing, I now recommend permitting the shells to sit for half an hour or so. It helps reduce some problems if your oven has strong heat below the baking tray.]

Humidity: I doubt that humidity in the oven is an issue for anyone, but do avoid making macarons on a very humid day as the mixture will tend to be too damp or require adjustment.

Cracking: a few minutes after going into the oven, some macarons batters will develop fissures. In my experience this is the result of (1) overmixing, or (2) rushing the piped batter straight into the oven.

Maturing/ripening: the shells are not at their best when fresh. They will be slightly chewier around the edges than expected. Usually the macarons are assembled and then stored in the fridge for one to two days, after which they are heavenly.

For your edification, here are some useful photos:

good and bad macarons - low temperature
good and bad macarons - mid temperature


freshly piped batter - goodfreshly piped batter - overbeaten
Freshly piped good batter is on the left. Note how the overbeaten batter, on the right, is darker and looks slightly translucent. (The specks in the batter are vanilla.)

If you’re not scared yet, still ready to face the batter, congratulations!

Recipe A
macarons au blanc monté (2); (French meringue)

This method is the one you’ll find almost everywhere on the internet and in most cookbooks. It is simple but fraught with disappointment. In my experience (dodgy ovens, no fan, domestic trays), this style of recipe can yield less than 50% success rate. If you possess a digital probe thermometer or a sugar thermometer I’d recommend waiting for Recipe B. But there are perfectly happy people out there with, presumably, better kitchens than I. (You can see a charming fella explaining it (in French) on video here, and one of the clearest shorter explanations in writing is by Coco&Me. One brave experimenter, Veronica’s Test Kitchen, may also have useful tips for you if you prefer this style of recipe.)

Regardless of what the recipes say, I suggest first deciding how many eggs you want to sacrifice. Crack and separate the eggs, remembering to keep the whites and all vessels and implements scrupulously free of fat or egg yolk. You don’t need to weigh the egg whites at this point. One egg white will yield about fourteen 3-4 cm macaron shells.

This recipe will benefit most from aged egg whites or egg white powder. You can age the whites by leaving them uncovered at room temperature for 24-72 hours in a shallow bowl. This allows some of the moisture to evaporate. Cover the bowl with gauze or kitchen paper (not plastic) if you want to avoid any dust or other surprises. People are often apprehensive about leaving egg whites at room temperature, but the final cooked product will be safe even if the raw egg white might have been contaminated.

Formula and method

When you’re ready to start cooking, weigh the egg whites and then scale the recipe appropriately. The formula is below.

‘eggwhite’ refers to the weight of the egg whites in grams. The righthand column provides an example calculation.

Ingredient Amount Example (with eggwhite=50 gm )
Almond meal 1.3 x eggwhite 1.3 x 50 = 65 gm
Icing sugar 1.6 x eggwhite 1.6 x 50 = 80 gm
Castor sugar 0.8 x eggwhite 0.8 x 50 = 40 gm
Egg white                 50 gm
Total weight _______ 235 gm

A batter with 50 gm egg white should yield one baking tray 30 cm x 40 cm or approximately 25 shells.

Preheat your oven:
Conventional oven: centre rack, 180C. Convection oven: 160C

  1. Stack two or three heavy baking trays. Line the top tray with non-stick baking paper. If you’re well organised, mark the paper with 2 or 3 cm circles, spaced about 4 cm apart (the piped batter will spread about 1 cm).
  2. Process the almond meal and icing sugar at high speed to achieve a fine powder. Sift (or whisk the powder by hand) to break up any lumps of powder.
  3. In a clean bowl, beat the room-temperature egg whites until foamy and just at soft peaks. Gradually beat in the castor sugar, adding a little at a time. Beat on medium speed for a number of minutes until you have a firm, glossy and compact meringue.

    4. whipped egg whites at soft peak stageshiny, compact French meringuebatter falling from spatula

  4. Sprinkle half of the dry mixture over the meringue and fold in with a spatula using a circular motion around the bowl and under the batter. Repeat with the remaining powder. You don’t need to be gentle, but the goal is to incorporate the dry ingredients quickly to avoid overmixing. It’s better to undermix than overmix. You can add colourings or flavourings during this mixing.
  5. The final batter should be the colour of pale ivory (if you haven’t coloured it) and smooth and thick but flowing (typically referred to as being ‘like magma’, but as few of us have visited an active volcano or been to the centre of the Earth…). A ribbon of batter dropped from a spoon onto the top of the remaining batter should take about 30 seconds to disappear.
  6. Dab a little batter under each corner of the baking paper on the tray to anchor it (otherwise it’ll slip).
  7. Spoon the batter into a piping bag/gun with a 8-10 mm nozzle and pipe evenly onto the baking paper. Mild peaks should settle back into the batter eventually. If they don’t disappear, tap the tray repeatedly on a table until the peaks have largely disappeared. Usually the batter will spread a little and any bumps will disappear. Sometimes the batter is quite runny and will rapidly flatten out. (It might be overmixed.) This consistency will often yield irregular shells. If the batter never stops spreading then you should probably scrape it all back into a bowl, gently add some more almond meal and try again.
  8. If you want, you can leave the piped batter to dry for anywhere between 20 mins and two hours.
  9. Place the tray in the oven. If you’re using a conventional oven, cook as normal for two mins and then open the oven door about 2.5 cm and place a wooden spoon between the door and the jamb to permit hot air to escape for the rest of the cooking time. (Your spoon might get a bit singed, so soaking it in water briefly beforehand is a good idea.) For a convection oven, you will need to experiment a little, possibly leaving the door ajar for the whole time.
  10. At the 5 minute mark the shells should have lifted and developed ‘feet’. At the 6-7 minute mark they should be starting to colour just slightly. Rotate the baking sheet if the colouring is uneven. The outermost shells often have to be sacrificed in order for the centre ones to be cooked, but the majority should be no more than the palest cream colour. They are probably ready if a shell moves only reluctantly on its foot when you lightly nudge it with a finger.
  11. Remove from the oven and leave on the tray for a minute or two. Gently try to lift one of the outermost shells. A slight twisting motion or a peeling motion can help. If the shells stick badly, but are firm, try spraying or brushing a little water under the baking paper. This will moisten the paper and soften any stuck bits after 1-2 minutes. Don’t use too much water or the shells may start to dissolve around the edges. Remove each shell by gently peeling away the baking paper or with the aid of a thin palette or paring knife. Another solution to the sticking problem can be to place the paper or Silpat (with stuck macarons) in the freezer for a while.
  12. Once removed from the sheet, leave the shells to cool on a wire rack, face up.
  • If you haven’t already made a filling, do so now. A simple chocolate ganache is one of the easiest quick fillings. (Break 50 gm dark chocolate into a bowl. Bring 60 gm cream to a gentle simmer and then pour over the chocolate. Leave to stand for two minutes, then mix together with a spatula. Allow to cool slowly, stirring occasionally. When completely cool, apply a small blob to the underside of one shell and gently press another shell on top. Refrigerate for 24-48 hours if you are the patient type.)
  • The plain shells can be frozen for a few weeks quite well. Complete macarons store well in the fridge for two to three days. After that they become softer. Eat macarons at room temperature.

Background to my recipe

A very standard formula for the French meringue style of macaron recipe is approximately 1.25:2.3:1.0:0.3 (almond:icing sugar:egg white:caster sugar). Variants of this are used by Alain Ducasse, Christophe Felder, J.M.Perruchon & G.J.Bellouet and Dean Brettschneider. Pierre Hermé’s formula is similar, though not using a meringue. Each of these authors has a different approach to temperature and crusting. Popular American writer David Lebovitz published a chocolate macaron recipe on his site which many people found reliable (and is the one I made without trouble and showed a picture of in the first article in this series). His recipe is, however, much sweeter and uses a stronger meringue. I noticed, too, that Pascal Rigo’s popular recipe also takes this approach, as does Sydney chef Justin North in his recent book French Lessons. I didn’t want the sweetness, but tried adapting the approach, with the result presented above (formula of 1.30:1.60:1.00:0.80). The total sugar is only slightly higher than the most common formula and the slight increase in almond meal seems to make it less wet.

Famous internet recipes: if you go surfing you’ll find many recipes. Some are useful, some are rubbish, and many are unattributed. There’s a very popular online recipe which has spread far and wide but is rarely correctly attributed to Pascal Rigo (from his wonderful book American Boulangerie). The majority of the remaining recipes are from Pierre Hermé’s various books.

Famous chefs’ recipes: even Hermé has occasionally underdescribed his recipes, but real disapproval should be directed at those who have blithely provided poorly explained recipes for a product as temperamental as this. I greatly doubt that most restaurants make their macarons using the first style of recipe I discuss (unless they have access to egg white powder), so why foist it on the uninitiated? Note, too, that French pâtissiers readily admit that it can take some time for a macaron-maker to get used to a new kitchen if he/she changes jobs.

Troubleshooting

My macarons are delicate and sticky. They fall apart or lose their insides when I try to lift them off the baking paper. Solution: Don’t wet the paper. Instead, place the sheet of paper (with stuck macarons) on a drying rack and walk away for a few hours. In my experience the shells will be fairly easy to peel off once they’ve cooled and their bases have dried a little. These shells will usually be too damp for use for proper macarons. Save them for one of the alternative uses listed below.

My macarons are firm and chewy. Solution: Cook them for less time or at a lower temperature.

My macarons brown too quickly on top. Solution: Try covering a spare oven shelf with foil and place it on the rung above the macarons in the oven.

My macarons have a big empty space under the shell. Solution: Cook them at a higher temperature. (There may also be other causes.)
air pocket in macaron

My macarons have frilly feet which extend sideways from the shell. Solution: This is often a problem with the simple recipe, but seems worse at low temperatures. Try letting the piped batter rest for a while before baking.

Alternative uses

Whilst I wish everyone success, it’s worth having a backup use for any abortive macaronic adventures.

Dessert 1: break up the macarons and place a number of pieces in a tall glass. Add morello cherries. Pour on some port. Leave to stand for 15 minutes. Top with whipped cream. Pour a little cherry juice over the cream. Serve.

Dessert 2: make a trifle-like dish with berries.

Dessert 3: give to unsuspecting friends or neighbours as ‘soft almond meringues’.

Phew!

You can read La Macaronicité 1: an introduction to the macaron.
La Macaronicité 3: the more reliable macaron recipe and a few tips.
La Macaronicité 4: fillings, flavours, frippery.
La Macaronicité 5: Macawrongs and macarights, macarons day and night.

– DM

cooking, eating, food, hl, macarons

La Macaronicité 1: an introduction to the macaron

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fancy large macaron with raspberries and rose petal
The Rosier from Maison Stohrer, rue Montorgueil, Paris. Source: Harry.

Ladies and gentlemen, small children and furry Frenchmen,

Welcome to La Macaronicité!

This is the first article in a special series about one of the world’s favourite petit fours. Two delicate almond meringue domes are sandwiched together with a flavoured filling to become le macaron.

Macaron. Note the spelling. Not macaroon. Note the spelling. I am a snobby Francophile pedant. Normally I spit on linguistic affectation (except for humorous effect, bien sûr), but when it comes to my beloved macarons, no ‘o’ shall interlope. Macaroooons can designate heavy, almondy, nay perhaps coconutty, creations which have their place in the world but most often pale into proletarian insigcookieness next to a macaronic beauty. The macaron is the diva of the biscuit baking universe.


Diva? It’s just bakedgoods. Indeed, but such a fickle, frustrating, fabulous good! While the eater may delight in flavour, texture and the creator’s artistry, the same creator must often experience heightened blood-pressure and many wasted egg whites.

Enlightenment

If you haven’t yet experienced the world of the macaron, I present here an analysis of this shapely beauty.

chocolate macaron
Chocolate macaron. (c) Duncan Markham.

Within the shell is soft — not wet — almond meringue. When you bite into the delicate shell, it gives way with the slightest crunch and compresses to yield a mouthful of delicate, rapidly dissolving meringue and filling.

Macarons come in approximately three sizes: tiny 2-3 cm (often restaurant petit fours), small 3-5 cm (most popular, also referred to as gerbets), and large/standard 5-8 cm. You can go larger, but then you’re making gâteaux! The smaller sizes are filled with various flavoured creams or other fillings, while the larger often include pieces of fruit, jellies or other firmer elements and decorations.

Background

For Parisians, the French and the travelling rich, the macaron de Paris has been a familiar friend for many a year. The Parisian salon de thé (tea salon) Ladurée claims this macaron as its own, attributing its invention to Pierre Desfontaines in the early 20th century (although there are many other macarons in France, it seems that none resemble the smooth, delicate, fragrant beauty of Desfontaines’s creation).

What path the proto-macaron took to reach its apogee is hard to establish. The Larousse Gastronomique (1996) pays them no heed. Culinaria France (1998) mentions them only in passing, as caterers’ petit fours. It’s as if no-one cared about them until the turn of this century when, suddenly, pâtissiers like Pierre Hermé gained renown as very special culinary artists (I believe he is also responsible for the food-in-glasses phenomenon which is all the rage in France but, thankfully, doesn’t seem to have spread). American writer Dorie Greenspan also attributes the macaronic wave to Hermé (read here).

Hermé’s small, sleek boutique on rue Bonaparte (6th arrondissement) is home to perhaps the most revered meringues on the planet. Queues snake out the door on Saturdays as connoisseurs (and others) wait to try Hermé’s latest flavours or to taste his famous Ispahan (a rose macaron with rose/lychee cream and raspberry jelly). Some of his creations are displayed and described by Fanny at the wonderful Foodbeam blog.

If Hermé is the artist, Ladurée is the classic purveyor. Located closer to the upmarket hotels and monied arrondissements of the Right Bank, here the queues seem to grow longer and longer every spring. Recent reports told of American tourists (and it really does seem to be mostly them) queuing 100 metres down rue Royale (8th arrondissement). Sensible Parisians probably flee to one of Ladurée’s other salons or other excellent purveyors. In fact, there are so many macarons to be seen in pâtissiers’ windows that I feel a recurring sense of trepidation that saturation point will be reached and, like the fickle batter they start out as, they will vanish, supplanted by something less stylish, less delicate, less diva.

Already, the proliferation of macarons has produced many a poor imitator. It pains my heart to throw one in the bin, but there has been cause. I was amazed at a window full of overcooked (brown!) macarons in a shop in Chartres, and have chewed my way through large macarons filled with hard, cold, greasy buttercream in both Paris and Melbourne. I’ve seen lumpy things sold for premium prices and have heard tell of a restaurant serving macarons filled with split crème pâtissière.

Awareness

In the gourmet internet, English-language discussion of macarons commenced in late 2002. The mainstream media started writing about them. Guidebooks mentioned them. And, to my horror, Donna Hay magazine actually ran a small article and recipe in 2005, even though nary an Australian had yet seen these little divas in situ. As time has passed, they’ve popped up as tiny petit fours in fine-dining restaurants in Sydney and Melbourne and, slowly but surely, in Francophile pâtisseries. The decreasingly impressive Laurent boulangerie chain has sold macarons for at least a few years, but a recent visit revealed a display of garishly coloured, misshapen, broken mistakes. Other places do a much better job. Nowadays, with the grands maîtres of the macarons having boutiques in many Asian metropoles, you don’t have to travel far to see what the hype is about (and oh how the Japanese and Singaporeans have taken to them!).

various chocolate macarons
Macarons from Jean-Paul Hévin. (c) Duncan Markham.

I haven’t yet met someone who would poo-poo the macaron, though certainly some are shocked by their sweetness and may experience saccharine traumas at the hands of poor bakers. Of greatest interest for me has been the phenomenon of homecooks attempting macarons without ever having experienced the original. It goes against the modern trend of people only working from recipes for dishes they’ve already experienced (though this is not the case with many online cybernauts), and shows the strength of public enthusiasm for these little gems. The experimentation is wonderful but in, for me, a rare moment of anti-experimentation, I have to say that some of the marathon discussions to be found on the internet suffer from the fact that the cooks needed to know what the final goal really was. Macarons are tricky creatures and knowing the final goal gives a better sense of when things are going awry. (No other dish comes to mind as a parallel case right now.)

So here we have it; the scene is set. If you want to make some yourself, I’ll attempt to guide you through the process. Stock up now on egg whites, almond meal and icing sugar. You’ll need a kitchen machine or a good electric beater, a high-speed food-processor or a coffee grinder, and it would be wise to have good kitchen scales and a probe or sugar thermometer.

Please remember that this material is copyright. If you want to use any part of it (beyond a very short quote), please contact me for permission.

You can read Part 2 — La Macaronicité 2: basic technique and simple macaron recipe.
La Macaronicité 3: the more reliable macaron recipe and a few tips.
La Macaronicité 4: fillings, flavours, frippery.
La Macaronicité 5: Macawrongs and macarights, macarons day and night.

– DM

books, cooking, eating, hl, reviews

Review: Maggie’s Harvest, by Maggie Beer

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cover of book

Beautiful. Beautiful. Beautiful. This is a stunning production imbued with the personality of the author, local context, and an appealing warmth, packaged with style and a sense of understanding of the author’s values.

pattern detail

Maggie Beer, one of the three modern icons of Australian food (the others being Gay Bilson and Stephanie Alexander), has written a book to weigh down your lap as you browse, read and cook from its pages. It’s a hefty tome, similar in size to Stephanie Alexander’s Cook’s Companion, though marginally thinner. The padded fabric cover is beautifully embroidered (!) with the image of a tree laden with fruit, presumably evoking the grand old pear tree Beer writes about on her property (farm), even though the fruit don’t seem to be pears…. A lone pheasant sits on the end of one bough — a reference to Beer’s Pheasant Farm Restaurant in South Australia’s Barossa Valley, which closed in 1993. Unusually, the book has been printed on good weight, smooth, cream coloured paper. Most cookbooks on the market using cream or yellow paper come from North America, using stock that is often rough and cheap, not lending itself to photographs. Maggie’s Harvest features numerous colour pictures, even though this is not the typical, glossy paper for colour book images. Following the increasing trend of printing pictures onto matte stock (Movida, Secrets of the Red Lantern, Jamie at Home), this book takes things one better: the quality of paper is good enough to produce wonderfully vibrant, slightly contrasty colour images. And even better, many of these images capture the essence of Australian rural life.

apricots excerpt

Maggie’s Harvest is, in keeping with the author’s own philosophy and the prevailing food ideology, organised by season. And in what feels quite Australian, it starts with summer and ends with spring (take that you northern hemispherics!). Within each season are entries for a range of ingredients (22-26 in each), with one exception: Christmas gets a special mention, and tasty it is too! And for each ingredient section there’s a large dose of enjoyable narrative, culinary knowledge and a handful of recipes. I’m often a little sceptical about books which organise by season or ingredient because they can end up as a mish-mash of insipid blurbs about this or that followed by illustrative recipes. That is not Maggie’s Harvest.

partridge excerpt

First I read about anchovies, then I became immersed in the apricots. I extracted myself only to fall headlong into the capers and capsicums. And here and there are memories and experiences which will resonate with many readers, Australian by birth or by adoption. My heart thumped a little harder when i saw sections on loquats (nespoli) (childhood backyard), quandongs (Aeroplane jelly!), kangaroo (abandon beef; eat Skippy!) and crabapples (Mum’s jelly). That’s not to say that overseas readers would find it too parochial — the wisdom about ingredients and cooking to be gleaned from the book is immense. Cultural enlightenment is an added bonus.

Maggie Beer has achieved something quite enviable. She tells stories, reminisces, mentions friends and shares enthusiasms all without developing the rather supercilious or pretentious tone that others often do (I mention no names!). There’s no self-aggrandising and it’s written with an air of warmth and openness which just pulls the reader in. This is not a book you can skim through.

Come Christmas, I can see many a scrawny pine tree or glowing fibre-optic masterpiece with a Maggie’s Harvest nestled beneath it. Perhaps it will still be sleeping in the brown paper it comes wrapped in from the publishers (the fabric is wont to mark, alas), but hopefully not the tacky shrinkwrap that some booksellers have been suffocating it in.

I’ve been reading Maggie’s Harvest for the last three days and haven’t yet found a flaw (except for the very occasional mention of her own products which I find a little irritating). Unlike the last book I reviewed, the text is literate, strong and flowing, and Beer acknowledges the work of her editors in shaping this wonderful book. At the risk of exhausting you with one last burst of effusive gush, this is what a good book about food and cooking can be!

Maggie’s Harvest is published by Penguin Books (under the Lantern imprint). 736pp. ISBN-13: 9781920989545. RRP A$125.

bottom of cover

Phew, I’m all worn out by this positive energy. Like my review of Interlude (restaurant), I’m just not recognising myself anymore!

– DM

cooking, food, hl

Tarte aux framboises (raspberry tart)

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frosted raspberries on tart

Here you have my first straight food-porn post. Um, I mean the first unabashed food-porn post. A birthday nearby was the occasion for making my first tarte aux framboises.

These raspberry tarts (on a smaller scale) are one of my staples when in Paris (alongside religieuses, tartelettes au citron, mille-feuilles, tartelettes au chocolat, macarons, umm… you get the picture, n’est-ce pas? And the occasional vegetable.

No recipe for you today, just pictures. The tart was made using:

  • 250 g pâte sablée (rich sweet shortcrust pastry)
  • 250 ml crème pâtissière (good pastry cream with vanilla bean and a touch of kirsch, in this case)
  • 120 g of fresh raspberries (at A$8/120 grams, I wasn’t going to bedeck the tart entirely with berries! If there’s a French(wo)man in the audience, I beg forgiveness for the berry-paucity)

Voilà:

empty pastry case

pastry case full of custard

naked raspberries on top of tart

frosted rasperries

full view of tarte aux framboises

It took three people a mere ten polite minutes to reduce this to crumbs.

– DM

books, cooking, hl, media, reviews

Review: Secrets of the Red Lantern, by Pauline Nguyen

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Secrets of the Red Lantern - cover

The recently released Secrets of the Red Lantern is a beautiful book. The photography is warm, despite a muted palette. Decorative patterns add a great deal to the appeal of every recipe page. The fabric cover of the book reproduces a silk image of a tree’s branches and blossoms in the upper half, and the handwritten name of the author (and family) on a red background in the lower half.

I had seen pre-release promotional materials for Secrets of the Red Lantern and was more than a little enthusiastic about seeing the final product. When I finally saw the real thing I grabbed it immediately. Beautiful.

I’ve spent the last few days reading it; I’m sad and frustrated. Despite the visual attraction and the promise of delicious food, Secrets of the Red Lantern has some profound flaws which could greatly mar the experience for some readers.

More about that below, but first a brief description of the content.

Overview

The blurb on the back of the book says:

Secrets of the Red Lantern overflows with sumptuous, traditional recipes, perfected and passed down from Pauline Nguyen’s parents and presented night after night to great acclaim at the successful Vietnamese restaurant Red Lantern.

Much more than a cookbook, it is the honest, revealing story of the Nguyen family – starting with their escape from Vietnam during the war and their eventual settlement in Australia.

At the heart of this book is a love for food – it helped to ease homesickness, became central to their early success in Australia and, in the end, reconciled the family and helped create Red Lantern’s success.

Lavishly illustrated with personal and food photography, Secrets of the Red Lantern now unlocks the Nguyen’s secret recipes so that we can understand their creation and share the family’s passion.

A large part of the book is devoted to Pauline Nguyen’s personal narrative of her family’s experience, with many interesting photos to add life and colour. Each section of the book begins with a number of pages of text and photos, and is then followed by a handful of recipes. The story is not a pleasant one. Few Australians have much understanding of the refugee experience or, more to the point, the Australian Vietnamese experience. It is good to see an attempt to recount the conditions under which people escaped Vietnam to seek a new life, how they were treated as refugees in camps and then in Australia, and how they and their community have struggled and changed over the last thirty years here.

Combining this narrative with the theme of food is logical for this family, and many of the most evocative books on food combine personal adventure, experience, or suffering with the web of memory and emotion sustained by food. However, the story of this family involves so much suffering — much of it in Australia and at the hands of the writer’s father — that I found it uncomfortable to be reading their story in the context of what is clearly meant to be a cookbook. By ‘uncomfortable’ I don’t mean confronting or disquieting to my sensibilities; instead, I felt that the narrative was out of place for the type of work that this volume represents. This should quite possibly have been two entirely separate books: the family story, and a cookbook. A raw, unhappy description of — in part — a group of children’s experiences at the hands of a tyrannical father is difficult to squeeze comfortably between the covers of a cookbook.

Naturally, this is a subjective issue and others might not mind it. However, there are other significant objective issues that spoilt it for me, but I think the human interest focus will leave many readers reluctant to criticise the story and tolerant of the flaws.

recipe 1

The publishers know their marketing requirements and created a package that would sell itself. You are, after all, pretty much guaranteed a winner in the soft lifestyle market if you bundle (1) excellent production values, (2) beautiful pictures of food, (3) a strong human interest story, and (4) a cuisine that many people like but few know much about.

If you just want a book that looks great, has interesting recipes and delicious photography, then this is certainly a good book. The food is a modern, personal perspective on Vietnamese cuisine, as served at the Red Lantern restaurant, and the book successfully communicates the concept of Vietnamese food being about individual tastes and preferences.

If, on the other hand, you expect some fairly basic standards of writing and editing in something that aims to be much more than an unpretentious recipe book, then reader beware!

My commentary below is fairly unflattering (but don’t doubt my enthusiasm about the food). In criticising Secrets of the Red Lantern, I run the risk that some readers who focus on the symbolic value of the book will be unaccepting of the analysis that follows. They have the choice of not reading further, or of reading and then commenting at the end if they so wish (but please keep it reasoned and civil).

[UPDATE: In an email from Murdoch Books received as I was finalising this review, they confirmed that sales had been excellent and that my views weren’t ‘widely shared’ among the media reactions so far.]

Recipes and food

If you want to skip the detail about the editorial flaws in the recipes, click here to go to the next section.

Attractive and tasty, the range of recipes is interesting and promising. Many start with comments from chefs Luke Nguyen or Matthew Hansen. If you cook from this book I think you will enjoy many pleasurable meals.

The recipes have been written/edited with an international audience in mind, meaning that many amounts appear in metric, Imperial and cups. Many ingredients also have alternative names in parentheses. This is thoughtful, though at times makes for cumbersome text. There are also some inconsistencies and omissions.

Yields for soups and stocks are stated in litres, fluid ounces and cups, and here things give a clue to the strange approach to this book.

250 ML (9 FL OZ/1 CUP)
15 LITRES (525 FL OZ/60 CUPS)

It would seem that the Imperial measures are for a UK audience, despite the USA being the place that is most clearly unmetricated. This matters only a little bit if converting small amounts, as a ‘US customary unit’ fluid ounce is 29.6 ml, while the old Imperial fluid ounce is 28.4 ml, but is nonetheless a curious choice.

Restating 15 litres of stock as 525 fl oz is more than a little idiosyncratic (not to mention incorrect). Never heard of pints? The cup measures are Australian (though this is never mentioned) rather than American, contrary to what you might expect from the mention of ounces immediately preceding them.

It’s odd, again, to choose UK Imperial measures when the majority of the parenthetic renaming of ingredients is for an American audience (e.g., shrimp, cilantro), though with the occasional UK accommodation (aubergines, mangetout).

Then we have a few instances of brand-specified products – something that makes life difficult for anyone who doesn’t have access to that particular product:

red curry powder (‘Ayam’ brand)
crabmeat paste with soya bean oil (‘Pork Wan’ brand)

And there’s the curious choice of specifying ‘makrut (kaffir lime) leaves’ in a recipe. The number of Australian readers who will recognise the term makrut is miniscule. So why prefer it over the common one (kaffir lime)?

Here, in the ingredients, is where the book fails to live up to a cook’s expectations: a gorgeous volume about Vietnamese food, one of the few available anywhere, yet it fails to explain less familiar ingredients (no glossary or explanation for rice paddy herb, sawtooth coriander, perilla, ‘Vietnamese basil’, rau kinh gioi, ‘nem powder’ and more) or to provide a coherent picture of how everything should come together in Vietnamese cuisine.

The recipes seem, thank goodness, to work.

recipe 2

The narrative and the lack of an editor

Pauline Nguyen has a sad, valuable, and at times fascinating story to tell. Like the majority of authors, her prose would normally have gone through an editorial filter to produce something fairly tight, reasonably well expressed and mostly interesting. It’s a pity, then, that this work is modern Australian English, blog style, ranging from stylish description to jarring officialese to clichéed emptiness to rambling diarising and back again. I wrote to Murdoch Books to ask if there is a new philosophy of ‘raw author’s voice’ taking hold.

I doubt — without even a pinch of exaggeration — that a copy editor laid eyes on the manuscript, as the problems in the text are consistent throughout. And not just trifling matters that an uptight editor might carp on about (split infinitives, starting sentences with ‘and’, misplaced commas, etc). No, this is undisciplined text which needed help. At times it looks like someone writing a bit above the linguistic ‘register‘ they are comfortable with, and sometimes it’s just modern ignorance about language (malapropisms, agonised metaphors, etc). And there’s almost certainly a good dose of non-native speaker in the prose as well. I don’t mean that patronisingly — many of the register problems, mismatching tenses and malapropism/confusion phenomena can be found in non-native speaker writers and weak native speaker writers alike. Making editing decisions about this kind of text is important and sensitive. (I won’t go into the linguistic background to this, as I think that’s probably a distraction.)

Editors are meant to iron out these bumps whilst retaining the author’s underlying voice. Perhaps because this is such a skilfully packaged cookbook, Murdoch Books couldn’t be bothered doing the extra work?

[UPDATE: The email from Murdoch Books indicated that there had indeed been editors and proofreaders involved. I bite my tongue.]

I also feel there is a lack of depth to the food theme. It’s fine to use gastronomic metaphors and to recount meals or dishes and their occasional symbolism, but there is little explanation, cultural history or context for the food — the narrative will leave the uninitiated only a little wiser as to what most Vietnamese food is.

Meanwhile, statements like the following are bland and dismissive:

There is great fondness and respect dedicated by food writers and pho obsessives alike to the national soup of Vietnam. … Pho has integrated so completely into Australian society that there is no longer the need to refer to it as ‘beef noodle soup’ – everyone knows what pho is. p191

Sure, as long as they live in a major metropolitan area and have actually been to a Vietnamese restaurant.

I started reading this book with enthusiasm. At first I was irritated by the poor quality of the prose. Then I gradually found myself angry with the publishers for mistreating an author in this manner. I’ve criticised Pauline Nguyen’s writing here, but the important point is that it’s probably not her fault that it made it into a book in this way. The publishers seem to have let down both the author and the readers.

I haven’t included examples in most of this critique. Some can be found below, without any commentary from me. If you don’t find anything jarring in them, then you will probably find the narrative less distracting than I did, in which case I encourage you to enjoy the book and its recipes.

– DM

Examples

In the mornings, Lewis, Luke and I would wake up weary-eyed to the smell of old alcohol, dirty dishes and stale cigarettes, and knowing a big job laid waiting for us. p76

The United Nations representatives gave him the occasional job of translating menial documents. p107

He had received such a beating that blood poured freely from his nose and his once slanted eyes swelled like two bloated goose livers. Then the soldiers declared that Linh be thrown into the gaol cell, the Vietnamese surged forward in uproar, only to be stopped dead in their tracks by ten heated rifles. p110

The soldiers lowered their arms when Paul Jones, the program director of the camp, summonsed my father for a private meeting. p110

She was an American who spoke the Queen’s English and liked to elongate her words by curling her ‘r’s and rounding her ‘o’s as though her mouth and lips were permanently wrapped around a tight cumquat. p113

In the kitchen, I helped my mother set up the mis en plus while my father greeted his regular breakfast customers. p182 [original emphasis]

Over time, the wounds healed and the bruises faded as the entire community banded together, determined to fix the issues affecting it. Residents walked the streets with members of the local government, pointing out areas that needed attention. The state government’s participation saw the installation of closed circuit security cameras, improved street lighting, widening of footpaths, removal of vegetation and the increase in pedestrian police. p189

I can still recall the stench of my fear when I stepped onto the wrong train going home from school one day. It was overcast – the claustrophobic clouds had already descended with an air of nervous anxiety. In a flutter of lateness, I had mistakenly caught the express train … p223f

How it aches my heart that your tears are dry. How my body trembles that you cry only deep inside. p225

The Parisian daylight had yet to become night, even at the late hour of half past eleven in the evening. An unnatural stillness filled the air as the city waited for darkness to truly fall before the night-owl activities commenced. The sun, in its mysterious glory, had cast a warm majestic hue over the city’s beige limestone walls, setting her aglow in magical pink-orange luminosity. p285

books, cooking, hl, local, reviews

Review – Botanical, by Paul Wilson

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Botanical front cover

Botanical: Inside the iconic brasserie. Recipes by Paul Wilson. Photography by William Meppem. (2007: Hardie Grant Books, Melbourne.) RRP AUD 85

Overview: An impressive ‘chef’s book’ by respected Melbourne chef Paul Wilson, Botanical is both a serious cookbook and a self-congratulatory piece about the restaurant (the Botanical). Intended for serious home cooks or other chefs, this is perhaps the first local heavy-duty ‘chef’s book’ Australia has seen, with recipes often encompassing many steps and long lists of ingredients. (It’s possible Tetsuya competes in detail — I haven’t been able to look at a copy to compare.)

Botanical photography 1

Good bits: The recipes are interesting and span an impressive range. Emphasis is placed on local ingredients. Excellent design and photography. Another feather in the hat of the publishers Hardie Grant.

Recipe examples: wood-roasted calamari with chorizo sausage, olives and smoked paprika; gingerbread hotcakes with caramelised pineapple; slow-roasted beef blade over organic baby beetroots with red wine and beetroot sauce; grapefruit tart with sauternes jelly.

Botanical photography 4Botanical photography 3

Bad bits: One clanger: the ‘Conversions’ page (p18) lists a tablespoon as being 15ml, which it definitely isn’t in Australia (20ml). The publishers assure me that the error will be fixed in the next print run. Australians can ignore the typo, while overseas readers will just find some things a little underflavoured.

I feel the book needed tighter editing. The introduction, history of the restaurant, etc, are overly long and a touch repetitive, reading too much like a piece of untempered self-congratulation. Chris Lucas (the owner former owner) gets to write a recommendation of Riedel glassware in the section on wine and that seems out of place in this sort of volume.

A set of ingredient notes makes clear that flat-leaf parsley is the variety to be used in all recipes, but then every recipe with parsley re-states that it is ‘flat-leaf parsley’, making the original note unnecessary.

Wilson’s passion for the best produce is admirable, but comments like ‘make a worthwhile investment by buying real buffalo milk mozzarella’ overlook the fact that the variable quality of Australian mozzarella (shaggy moo or normal moo) can make it an extremely bad investment on some days. Commentary on the recipes is also too loose sometimes.

Botanical photography 2

Comments: Most of my negatives are unimportant when it comes to the cooking itself, thankfully. It’s about time we saw a local book of this calibre in Australia! It won’t be for everyone (because of the ambition it requires), and it certainly reflects Paul Wilson’s style — solid classical cookery with modern flourishes, complex restaurant dishes, frequent nods to cuisines of the Mediterranean, and an affection for quail eggs, truffles and local seafood. This is an attractive large-format volume (almost 30x30cm) and I dread to think how many people will use it as a coffee table piece rather than actually cooking from it.

– DM

Links:

to order Botanical, by Paul Wilson Books for Cooks AU | Amazon UK