Friday, May 9, 2008

Workshops at French Culinary Institute

After having breakfast at Petrossian Cafe, my husband dropped me off at French Culinary Institute to attend some of the workshops organized by PastryScoop. I registered for 2 workshops which were the modern french dessert with Chef Dominique Ansel from Daniel and contemporary petits fours with Chef Joe Murphy from BLT Market.

Chef Dominique showed us how to make 2 different desserts, he was a very friendly person. The first one was roasted sesame bavarois with a tasting mango. It was excellent, a very nice combination of sesame and mango.

French Culinary Institute: Roasted sesame bavarois with a tasting of mango
Roasted sesame bavarois with a tasting of mango


The second one was honey mousse with vanilla rhubarb compote and sheeps milk yogurt-bergamot sorbet. It was light, the sorbet was refreshing.

French Culinary Institute: Honey mousse with vanilla rhubarb compote, sheeps milk yogurt bergamot sorbet
Honey mousse with vanilla rhubarb compote, sheeps milk yogurt bergamot sorbet


Chef Joe came a little bit late since he was stuck in the traffic. A lot of us already went to different workshops but some of us decided to go back to watch his demonstrations when he finally arrived. He showed us how to make several kinds of petits fours. The first one was blueberry pate a fruit, it was too sweet for me.

Then he showed us how to make sesame yuzu macarons, it was okay, the cookies were moist and the filling was sweet and citrusy.

French Culinary Institute: Blueberry pate a fruit (sliced) French Culinary Institute: Sesame yuzu macarons
Blueberry pate a fruit and Sesame yuzu macarons


Next was s'mores petit four, which was surprisingly good -- the cake was moist and the marshmallow was perfect.

Finally was strawberry tart with lemon thyme, the tart was buttery and the filling was creamy.

French Culinary Institute: S'mores petit four and Rose champagne marshmallow French Culinary Institute: Strawberry tart with lemon thyme
S'mores petit four & Rose champagne marshmallow and Strawberry tart with lemon thyme


I enjoyed both of the workshops, I learned different things from these 2 wonderful chefs. From Chef Dominique I learned how to make desserts that tasted as good as they look, but as you can see they have a lot of components for each dessert. From Chef Joe I learned how to create different desserts using the same components. For example he said we could make yuzu tart using the tart dough from strawberry tart and yuzu curd from the macaron filling.

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French Culinary Institute
462 Broadway
New York, NY 10013-2618
(888) FCI-CHEF
(212) 219-8890
http://www.frenchculinary.com/

PastryScoop
http://www.pastryscoop.com/

Daniel
60 E 65th St
New York, NY 10065
(212) 288-0033
http://www.danielnyc.com/

BLT Market
1430 6th Ave
New York, NY 10019
(212) 521-6125
http://www.bltmarket.com/

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