how to use a pastry bag, and other things they don't teach you on food media

piping shot by lens envy
Cooks make pastry bags look awfully easy to use, don't they? Cupping giant bags in rounded palms, slapping used bags on the countertop, squeezing miniscule quantities of sauce down the skinny tube...it can't be that hard, right?

It's a lot harder than it looks. Sure, anyone can use a pastry bag. There are lots of little tips you can learn to avoid mistakes...and if you're wondering what could possibly go wrong you've certainly never cut a hole too large, causing the tip of your bag to shoot off across the room, and your sauce/frosting/etc to spill all over the table. Or squeezed a bag too hard, causing it to burst (see above). Or tried to warm an emulsion on top of the oven and broken it (thereby ruining your product).

First off: why use a pastry bag at all? They're impossible to clean if you use cloth ones, and if you're using plastic, you're wasteful.

Any delicate, ethereal macaron you've ever eaten? Piped with a piping bag, and almost always filled with one as well. The prettiest cupcakes and wedding cakes? Ditto. Meringue for lemon meringue pie, or baked alaska? Sometimes. Likewise for hors d'oevres, canapes, and other party snacks.
macaron by acme
If finesse is required, a pastry bag comes in handy. It's classy. Though it sometimes looks retro-chic, yes.

So, should you find yourself in need of a pastry bag, here are some tips:

1. Don't buy a Wilton's one, or whatever brand you find in your supermarket cake-decorating aisle, especially if it's got some sort of plastic screw tip. This will almost certainly fall apart.

2. Less is sometimes more: when you're filling your pastry bag you have a choice between a less-full bag that's easier to handle, and a chock-full bag that you won't have to refill often (if ever). I'm partial to a less-full bag because not only is it easier to control your piping, it's less likely to make your hands cramp up/give you repetitive stress injuries.

3. If you do go for a bag bag, keep your non-dominant hand at the top of the bag, twisting the bag shut. Squeeze the bag 3-4 inches above the tip with your dominant hand. You're turning the unwieldy cone into something manageable; by only working with a small amount of product, you are allowing yourself to have control over how much you release and where. If you've got something that's stiff, like cream cheese frosting or not-quite-tempered ganache, this is almost a necessity. When you run out of product in your zone, squeeze it down. If you've got a big bag of whipped cream, sure, top-down is fine...there's no resistance.

4. Remember, your hands are warm. The heat of your hands will warm up whatever product is in the bag. If it's ganache, be careful it doesn't overheat and separate. If it's ice cream, work fast and make sure you are piping into frozen molds. If you're finished with a product but might need it again, chill/freeze it if necessary.

5. For best piping, even pressure is key. Slow, even movements will get you the best results. If you're nervous, practice on parchment, the counter, or whatever's nearby.

6. In a pinch, you can make a pastry bag out of a ziplock. Fill the bag, pinch shut, turn 45 degrees so bottom edge is pointing directly at floor, then cut a hole.

7. Re: cutting holes: err on the side of smaller rather than larger, and hold the bag upright with one hand and cut with the other to avoid a mess. You can lay it on the table, but it might squirt out.

I personally think my tips are way better than these tips. If you need guidance on filling the pastry bag, go here.

If you need a really small amount of something (chocolate or frosting for writing on a cake) you can make a cornet...also known as "a small cone of parchment paper." But that's a lesson for another day.

mistakes

i accidentally made granola bars today.

i accidentally made granola bars because i was mixing the granola dries with the melted butter/maple syrup in the hobart, because boss 2 prefers it that way rather than by hand. everything incorporated and then she told me to let it hang out, keep paddling. we were commiserating over the color of my meringues (still figuring out the new ovens at job 2,) when she all of a sudden yelled STOP. apparently we'd started creaming the melted butter and the brown sugar in the granola, in the process crushing the oat bits and making something too broken-down to be called granola.

i pouted. she laughed. they've actually been after us to make granola bars, she said. roll it out on sheet pans, we'll bake it. it'll be great, you'll see.

It Will Be Great Tonight When I'm Not Here Anymore, I said. Yeah I'll Laugh About It Then.

we didn't have oven space to bake them off till right before i left, so i'll see them in a couple days. it was that sort of a day. the sort of day when every diner decides to order the same dessert that you have, oh, eleven of, because you have thirteen ramekins all day. the sort of day when you're baking extra cookies in the middle of service, when you're peering at meringues that have spent all of ten minutes in the oven saying are they brown? do these looks brown to you? how could they, how could they possibly, the oven is BEYOND low it's basically OFF.

i ping pong between a restaurant with a weekly rotating menu and a new (like, bauer-spotting time) restaurant and so every day is a new calibration of what/where. it has been an interesting if thoroughly exhausting couple of weeks thus far.

things to look forward to:
doughnuts. soon-ish.
day off!
actually having time to go return my library books at the library
delicious banana bread for breakfast

well, brandade it ain't but...!

I tried bacalaitos tonight.

All my life, I have never understood eating things that smell bad. (Or are raw, or rotten, like cheese or sushi or so many gourmand items). And there's not much that stinks more than salt cod someone's rehydrating. I'm reading Mark Kurlansky's Salt at the moment, so I'm learning historically about why salted fish was/is important economically and to the survival of human history, but still, salt cod is a white leathery piece of fish that's wooden and dried out, and when you cook it to rehydrate you get this briney, sea smell. Not a beach smell (god, I've really been missing the beach lately.

At Sonsie the guys used to make brandade, and they'd always end up pureeing the cod with potatoes right near me, and it just smelled like bad fish that washed up on the beach somewhere.

But somewhere along the line of eating things in general and fish in particular, I owned up to brandade curiosity. I didn't expect to like it. I didn't expect to get near it anytime soon with any adventuresome friends. But they had bacalaitos at this Puerto Rican restaurant I was getting takeout from tonight, and I did it. I was going to get a filled churros from the lady by the BART, too, but decided salt cod was more of a challenge. How was it? Bizzarely, the texture was like fried eggplant in my mouth, only I could see the little fishy protein fibers. It wasn't overwhelmingly salty; it didn't taste like it smelled while cooking. It didn't taste like much I could pick out, more like a salty, deep undercurrent. Like something I'm not smart enough to know. It had gotten soggy, too, in the takeout container. Probably not the best salt cod.

Certainly the maduros and the pollo guisado were really not impressive. Which is to say, I guess, I miss Cuba, because their stewed meat dishes are much more flavorful (mine was a little congealed, too, from sitting there, even though the chicken was very moist), and the maduros really weren't ripe enough or else not cooked long enough to let the sweetness bleed out.

Work today was:
blackberry financiers w/browned butter, tasting pleasantly of almonds
more upside down cakes, again with rhubarb and blood orange, this time with the chez panisse fruit book recipe
orange chocolate meringues, to be filled with orange jam
strawberry-mascarpone filling for strawberry tiramusi a la olivetto
more fresh fruit tarts
more strawberry lavender tarts
shortcakes, maybe, blackberry-strawberry?
butter cookies

I burned myself again, once on each hand actually. Did not sleep well last night. I was wondering about a lot of things today. The physics of pastry, and such. Where to find something to make my rhubarb tarte tatin in. How lemongrass would taste with rhubarb. How substituting honey for sugar would work in cakes and what spice would rough up those blackberries in the financier (pepper. cinnamon. citrus. berries.), and what made Cheffy's financiers so much better than the David Lebovitz recipe I tried because I'd rather make a dozen of something that 50.

I tried almond extract plain today. Last week, I tried raw rhubarb. I need to learn bitterness. And then sweeten appropriately.

beard awards

Ana Sortun's Spice cookbook is nominated for a Beard! I didn't realize that...I hope they get it because I really love that cookbook. But it's up against Claudia Roden's book Arabesque and it's sort of weird, they have one category for Asian food and then a whole other category that's just International.

I'm going to make reservations at one of the local nominated places for when my mother comes out, and I think I'm going to take my friend to Delfina when she comes in June. The chef at A16's nominated for Rising Star (and is up against David Chang, and Patrick Connolly from Radius and the guy from Eleven Madison Park). So we could go there or Jardiniere (has Traci des Jardins really not won a Beard yet?), or Quince, or Delfina which I'm saving for Leah because I think she'd like to go there and then go to the Lex afterward. Still want to go to Boulevard and Slanted Door and...and...

I made this weirdly disappointing strawberry ice milk yesterday. I made a giant base which only called for 4 yolks per 4.6 c. milk (which I boosted up to 6 yolks), and 1 c. sugar. Split the base in half, made half strawberry with some sugared and pureed strawberry and it came out kind of grainy. So, was it the liquid in the strawberries that made it grainy, or was the base not fat enough or was it not sweet enough, because one cup of sugar seems low for all that dairy plus there isn't a lot of fat from the eggs. The rest of the batch is going to be peppermint cookies and cream and I have some peppermint schnapps here, so the alcohol could help make it not come out grainy, or there's some rosemary simple syrup kicking around the fridge. Double checked my baking book and it could be any of those things--not enough sugar, milk fat or yolks, but which one? Oh, ice milk. According to wikipedia, it has the same sugar content as ice cream but less dairy fat. But I assume ice milk is not supposed to be grainy. The Gourmet recipe also called for 2 T cornstarch which I guess is what, a preservative to keep it from turning grainy? Maybe the containers are just really not airtight and so ice crystals are getting in. All I know is Claudia Fleming's ratios work just fine for me, so maybe this is my first and last experimentation with ice milk and I'll just go back to my 3/4 milk and one dozen yolks, and one of these days buy the Gramercy Tavern cookbook (along with the Tartine cookbook, and the Citizen Cake cookbook whenever it comes out).

Hopefully the schnapps will boost up the second batch but if not I'll be on hand with the simple syrup and with any luck it's be smooth thin mint ice cream!

Tomorrow at work I'm rolling out the David Lebovitz orange poppy cookies, and making strawberry meringues with lemon marmelade, doing more strawberry lavender tart prep and pastry cream and new upside down cakes, and working with tart shells.

strawberry meringues

Just made strawberry meringues this afternoon. Aside from being a good way to make sure I never leave the house (takes a long time for meringue to dry), they were wicked good.

Whip:
3 whites
1 1/4 c. 10x

to stiff, shiny peaks. Fold in 2 mashed up strawberries. Plop out in tiny cookie-cups. Bake.

I tested them to see if I want to make them for Frog Hollow and fill them with lemon marmelade. I think I do. I think the marmelade will be tangy enough to counteract the sweet, saccharine meringue taste.

It also brought back Oleana for me. I never liked meringue cookies (macaroons, exception, though so similar in texture and taste). Mostly because they're always cooked to the point of being brittle and crackly and then they taste like dust. The chocolate chip vacherins that we made at Sonsie were that way. Dusty chocolate fingers with an ugly, cracked texture. But when you make them with confectioners' sugar, and if you don't overbake them as I did just slightly, they taste like cotton candy clouds when you bite down on them, the sugar all hot and caramely, and they don't turn dusty and dry. So, mine somewhat dry, but still way better than most meringues, and upon my roommates' suggestion, I dipped the bottoms in chocolate, which ended up being really yummy. That's the good thing about living with people who tell you: we have this discolored, white-streaked chocolate you can totally use.

This weekend went really well at the market. I made strawberry lavender tarts with giant quenelles of lavender whipped cream, all luscious on top. Cute kiwi strawberry fresh fruit tarts. And the quince rhubarb upside down cakes sold really well also. Do I want to find a moister cake for those, or do I just want to soak them in a brown sugary syrup? Both maybe, Cake is so difficult. It's so rarely moist and good. Why I always end up making the 1234 cake from Joy. I think Gourmet just had an upside down cake recipe though, maybe I'll look it at. Or just try subbing half cake flour in my recipe.