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.

walking sleep

so michael laiskonis just wrote

I've often said that the day you don't feel that pit in your stomach as you walk into work, that's the day to start looking for a new job.

and it seems that several of us are taking such stock lately.

where am i? what am i doing here? is this the right time? how exactly did i get here anyway? what can i do next? how could i have made this better? how can i make [this person] do [this necessary thing]? these are the questions that plague us while we dice, saute, roast, bake, hunt for the chinois.

is it best to cook wholly focused on that one thing. or five things, should you be capable of managing cookies and custards in the oven, a pot of dairy infusing and a caramel at the same time. {this of course implies that you have oven space and working burners for multiple projects, nevermind pots} when you are not focused you make mistakes. your pot of milk boils over and while cleaning up the spill you burn your tuiles in the oven. i find myself working with some people who can only do one thing at a time and it reminds me of when i used to work that way.

and i am so glad that i do not work that way any longer.
and i am so glad that i have the presence of mind to multitask and still hold it down (not only the what/where but the what/now).
and, yes, i still do stupid things but i admit them freely. today my pot of cream boiled over while I was organizing my jars for pot de cremes, and i was pissed that it boiled over, because i had been keeping my eye on it, but i had the presence of mind to taste the cream (was it scalded? did it taste burned in any way? no, so continue) and then measure it (7.5 cups is no longer 8 cups, so correct and proceed).

in a way i'm glad my cream boiled over a bit. i'm somehow in the position currently of trying to teach several people lots of things. it's challenging enough to be mindful of what their backgrounds all are and their skill sets, and then temper my tone or advice accordingly (like, please don't ruin that dessert for service, k thx). if i can see where i came from (yes and sometimes we need a reminder) then i can hopefully be compassionate with these people i am guiding.

because i want to be compassionate. underneath the crusty exterior. and it's hard when service is coming on or when someone commits to making a mistake and fesses up afterward (because there's that moment when you're looking your your mise, and you're thinking something isn't right, and you can decide to go ahead or you can decide to ask a question, and you don't wanna ask a question cause you made this yesterday and you've asked 20 questions today already, and so what are you sposed to do?).

it's hard when you want someone to tell you your impulse is right. it's hard when you have to tell someone their impulse is wrong, that you know they thought about it but they could have made a more informed choice. because you know they can't just think like you. because you know the reason they ask the 21st question is that they want to think like you. i've been the one so many times, saying but...but...but as if my logic, wrong though it be, is going to win me brownie points for having given a second's thought to the matter at hand.

i'm not saying i don't get it wrong any more. no, not at all. but i am glad to be where i am.

what is a chef?

What do chefs look like? What do they do?

Today in Sur La Table I presented my fancy dish towels and OXO cherry pitter to the cashier and asked for the professional discount. Yes, certainly, he replied, asking for my name and punching away loudly at the computer. Then he asked me if I could verify where I was working, because they had me in the computer but not as professional level. Hmmm, I said. I had business cards in my wallet with proof of Boston-area pastry professionalism, but nothing out here. I work in the Ferry Building and they know me so they just give me the discount I said. I didn't add that I'm usually wearing whites at the time, so (clearly) a chef. I flashed him my business card and he upgraded me in the computer.

Then I went across the street to Stonehouse to get some fancy olive oil and balsamic vinegar for my mother's birthday, because their dark balsamic is so good it's going to make me have to stop pretending I don't like balsamic vinegars (well okay I like them reduced down, with cream, such a baker, sheesh). And the cute fag behind the counter tells me he thought I was here for the bike shop and not the Stonehouse products. I tell him about Sur La Table.

While at Ici having lovely ice cream--chicory chocolate chip and gingersnap which was lemony and bright if a touch too grainy on the mouth--I thought about my day. (And it's a good thing I'm moving to SF soon or I'd go to Ici every day. I LOVED it.)

When I was a kid I fell in love with a profession with no money, vague hints of success, and no clear career path. I was going to be a writer! It was marginally better than what I'd hit on before, an actress. As I finished high school and put myself through the best college I could get into, I still thought I'd be a writer. I thought it would happen if I read the right books, if I made friends and mentors of my teachers. One day it's just happen and then there I'd be, a writer. If I worked on lit mags, if I tried to get published, if I stayed up till three a.m. writing a story. All of these more benchmarks on the way to writer-dom. But if I went ahead and got my MFA, then I'd be one leap closer to the real thing. If I got a job as an editorial assistant and lived in Brooklyn or Queens, commuted to Simon and Schuster or Scholastic or Penguin Putnam or, my favorite, Vintage Contemporaries (division of Random House), I'd also be on my way. I collected books and authors, kept (and still keep) annual reading lists. I read the writing guides. I sought out queer writers and invited one of them to read at my college. Then I got out of college. I lived in New York. I worked a desk job, 9-5 and struggled severely with all of those questions you have when you're 22. I wanted all these things in life, but how was I supposed to get them doing this? Here? No one I knew in New York was really happy...or doing anything we wanted to be doing...we were all just sort of hanging on and trying to get ahead.

I was accepted into the MFA program at Emerson College and moved back to Boston.

I learned a few things at Emerson, but one of the main ideals that became my practice during my time there was this: claim yourself. Claim yourself as a writer because the world isn't going to do you any favors. All hundred-plus of us at Emerson were geeks, nerds, budding poets or screenplay writers, essayists or novelists. Most of us worked full or part time. Most of us were female, and white, and though this has changed since I began, only a handful of us were queer. It was challenging enough to write stories with a different voice and from a different place than my peers, but while living out the MFA dream I realized it wasn't going to get me where I wanted to go. It might land me an editorial assistant gig, if I took some publishing classes. It would let me teach as soon as I published something hot and earned a reputation. But the MFA wouldn't make me a writer. It gave me time, and a room full of peers. But I was still going to have to make my way as a writer alone.

Halfway through my MFA I decided to go to culinary school, because I was getting old enough to realize I wanted a real, steady career and I didn't want to graduate and sit behind another desk. A couple weeks later there I was, in my first professional kitchen. In school, the pastry girls didn't really understand what I was doing, dashing from cooking class in Cambridge across the river to writing class in Boston. At Sonsie, during my last semester of grad school, no one got it either. I handed in my thesis, I'd say. I'm finished. I have my masters. I'd only get stares. They didn't have to ask me why I was getting my masters if I was a pastry cook...or why I was being a pastry cook if what I wanted was to write books. The duality was outside their comprehension or realm interest. In every kitchen I entered, I had to make the same claim: I'm a writer. And, yes, a baker. A chef.

Claim yourself. No one else is going to do it for you.

The expectations are similar for chefs. What does a chef look like? Not like this.

What does a chef do? What does a chef wear? Are bakers really chefs anyway? I call myself a baker and I don't think it's a pejorative word. But some people do. At work sometimes I fall into the trap of thinking that my experience is more valid or more strong than other people's experience because I've worked in restaurants. This is egotistical whether or not it's true. My industry is pretty hot right now, and the restaurant scene is the scene. Those of us who work at tiny, independent bakeries, or for caterers, or for bread-makers, or for farmers, or for ourselves...well, we're somehow less than. Other than.

We are taught that restaurants are sexy, if a little scary. Chefs are (usually)Male. Older. White. Straight. Cooks are younger version of Chefs. There is a mystique and culture to being a chef that gets represented to the general public by Anthony Bourdain, Jamie Oliver, Tom Colicchio. Being queer in the kitchen is hard and it's something I haven't always been forthright about. Being a women in the kitchen, also tough sometimes. Being in the kitchen and having claim to a life outside the kitchen--being a writer in the kitchen--well, it makes you a little untrustworthy. A little suspect.

I'm outside the culture, but where am I? Do I call myself a baker, and with pride? I don't call myself a pastry chef, not comfortably. That would imply some amount of knowledge, skill, status, power, and income I just do not have right now. The girls at Frog Hollow want to call me "pastry chef extraordinaire." Especially when I purposefully drop things so they can try them. But I don't want that title. I'm not just a baker, not just a cook, although I do those things. I'm the girl running around with cherry juice stains on her hand, the girl the guys at the Berkeley farm market ask about the burns on her arms. I'm a writer, and a cook, but what to call myself, how to claim it? Short of wearing whites at all times, I can't dress the part. I'm a chef I tell them. I'm a professional but I don't look the part, whatever that might mean to whoever. Maybe I'll self-identify as a pastry sous chef. Almost a big name, covering the chef's ass at all times, powerful in her own right but without the pressure to prove an identification.

I'm going to go work on a story now, about someone who covets being a baker. It's hard to write about bakers from around the shadow of Raymond Carver's A Small, Good Thing. Because the last things I want to be is a bad imitation of Raymond Carver.