Culinary Retreat with Shannon & Wlady Grochowski

Meet Shannon Grochowski, our hostess at the culinary retreat. I will post mostly photos..the wi-fi at Abbaye de Reigny was a tad slow…

The aroma of molten Valrhona chocolat is in the air. We inhale 👃 only the best chocolate 🍫 

Dessert Fourplay

I promised you on Friday I'd return to the NY Chocolate show for Johnny Iuzzini's demo...
So here's JOHNNY!
I don't think I'll ever misspell his name again.
His team of gorgeous assistants.

And the guy down in front with the camera?
That's Johnny's dad, who always shows up to documents his shows for posterity. Sweet no?
Johnny's an upfront, funny kind of guy and happily shared all his tricks of the pastry trade. I'll pass on as much of his wisdom as I could scribble down and translate later. Johnny was French-trained and went to CIA.
Tools are important for his superb desserts at Restaurant Jean-Georges
But every home 'chef' can get his/her hands on an isi whipped cream dispenser. Measuring ingredients is another biggie. Grandma may have used her hands to show you how much of this or that to add to a recipe, but that won't work in a pastry kitchen.
Everything has got to be METRIC!
Johnny uses 1.1 grams = 28th of an ounce as his standard measure.
And use a thermometer - monitor your temperatures future pastry chefs out there!
Liquid nitrogen..hmm well
Johnny demonstrates dripping chocolate straight into nitrogen to create chocolate lace, but you can do it in your home kitchen using a bucket of ice cubes.
Regarding chocolate - Johnny loves Valrhona, but other chocolates work well too - Guittard, Cluizel etc. depending on the dessert.
*Buy 5 different (for example all 70%) brands of chocolates. Get to know their flavor profiles
Write down notes on file cards to refer to later.
Chocolate is a lot like wine - it has terroir too
Try & Taste & Smell EVERYTHING! Smell your food first.
And eat your food together, not separately.
That's how it was meant to be eaten.
CONTRASTS!
It's important to have different textures, different flavors, different temperatures in a dessert.

Always think about the textures.
Like think about Mac & Cheese. Then something crunchy to up the ante.
Textures are HUGE with Johnny
His desserts are: a single flavor, single tasting, single season at Jean-Georges.

He's not a reader - he likes to touch, smell, blow things up!

"Full blast! Full blast!

Done and done!

Google is my best friend - you can find any ingredient on the internet and where to buy it."

Et voila - Le dessert!
'Chocolate Curd with crispy Cacao Nib Tuile, White Chocolate-Sesame Clouds'
Quite a delicious mouthful!
So that's your taste of Johnny Iuzzini.
His book, Dessert Foreplay, is written with the home cook in mind.
And I definitely tasted A LOT of chocolate putting together this post.
I hope I did you justice Johnny :)

Later on Johnny was signing books and even talking to book buyer's sons on the phone Ha!

Tell me what his flourished handwriting says, I can't figure it out...

An watch Bravo's Just Desserts for the finale this week!

You can get that T-shirt on the website.

On the back it says, Paddled, Whipped, Beaten...and left to rest.

Sunday was the last show day and the last chance for some more tastes...

Somehow or other I ended up buying a lot of pre-Xmas gifts...

My 'booty' - all GIFTS!!!

This dog in a shop nearby was giving me dirty looks as I left...

"Where's my chocolate 'chicken drumstick' milk bone?"

Ice Cream For Breakfast

I was going to write about Pierre Hermé's chocolate cakes today but it's just too damn hot. We're looking 100 + degrees in the face =UGH I was lucky. Cold Stone Creamery believed me when I said I had 3 under-12-year olds waiting at home for some ice cream. They let me buy 3 "Kid's Size" cups of ice cream at $1.25 each !!! This has to be the bargain of the century.

At least in New York where you can easily spend $5.00 for a not-so-hot cup of 2 flavors at CONES for example.
They have a pretty shop and their flavors LOOK gorgeous but I thought the ice cream was mediocre. Sorry CONES, but THIS IS NOT GELATO!
I wasn't thrilled with Mary's Dairy ice cream either, though they do have adorable ice cream cone seats.
I tried their Yin-Yang flavor -Milk chocolate with Valrhona Bittersweet chunks...why ever would you pair these two? Valrhona deserves better. I don't think they'd approve. I've come to the conclusion that true gelato can not exist outside of Italy. There are factors like altitude and Italian cows you can't replicate. And forget cloning too. If you're ever in Bologna go to Gianni's. I'm excluding il laboratorio del gelato from this discussion because their stuff is celestial and something all together different.

Two Dips, watercolor, 10 1/2 x 7 3/4"

It's much easier to be an ice cream critic than a chocolate critic. Who hasn't eaten ice cream since almost day one ? Did your mom "trim" those 1st ice cream cones like my mom did? I'm not sure that's allowed anymore...off-limits territory for parents :( Nowadays Kids are King.

Speaking of drips, Food And Wine magazine says in their article, Shoot First, Eat Later that you should ->
#3) Wipe glasses and plate edges. Be sure surfaces are free of smudges and greasy fingerprints, says food stylist Alison Attenborough. In good light, they really stand out.

I have yet to get this one right especially with a vulnerable subject like ice cream and I like a bit of mess in my photos. Hmmm..
The other day the NYTimes said “It’s simple, never leave a container of ice cream unfinished.” Otherwise you get ice crystals. Now I'm totally with them on this one. BTW the Watermelon ice cream shown here was delicious and I can recommend it without hesitation :)