Pastry hacks at the speed of light

This is more of a watching video than a doing video. Fun and fancy, but I'll probably never try them. I'm more of a butter tart person myself, or a cheese straw person (mmmmm . . cheese straws. . . ). I haven't made a pie in a very long time. Eons ago, I would turn out a raisin pie with a lattice crust (I mean a true lattice, weaving the pastry strips in and out like a basket, not a faux lattice such as you see here). The kids didn't like it, but I think it kept my marriage together through many a storm.

Pastry is a hereditary condition, like certain diseases. I inherited the knack from my mother, who got it from HER mother, etc. etc., all the way back to Old Ireland and the most primitive, poverty-stricken kitchen, where women nonetheless turned out warm, juicy, delectable fruit pies, the cherries and apples picked the same day from their own trees. The pastry would be like a bit of heaven in the mouth. It must have helped to make a scraping, strivingly hard life more bearable.

We had a sour cherry tree in the back yard in Chatham, a gnarled thing with a big branch at the bottom that kept almost falling off, so that we had to tie it back on with rope. It didn't help that I kept climbing it to get over the picket fence to my neighbor's house and their fascinating pigeon coop. Once I saw the Dad flick the head off a live chicken and watched it flap around, while the head sat on the step, its beak opening and closing.

The sour cherries, when combined with just the right amount of sugar, were the kind of Proustian memory you take to your grave. I can see them now, and feel them in my mouth, the tart pink slipskins. Too bad the best stuff in my life had to happen so long ago.

My daughter picked up pastry-making from me, her light hand making her a natural. Caitlin then got it almost right away, perfecting it on second try. She just got it, understood that you must handle the pastry gently but firmly, not working the gluten. 

Many people never learn the knack. I don't put much into it, don't fuss, don't use a marble slab or ice water or anything (but I DO wipe the plant dirt off the counter first), sticking the bowl under the tap, when it's supposed to be some sort of distilled Alpine water or whatever. The pastry tells you when it is right.

(If you want to hear the sound track to this, click play, click on the Facebook symbol on the bottom right corner, and you'll get a sound version. Not much to write home about, but there it is.)

Julia Child's Classic French Madeleines




Prep time
1 hour

Cook time
20 mins

Total time
1 hour 20 mins

Ingredients
2 eggs
⅔ cup sugar
1 cup plus 1 tablespoon All purpose flour (Maida)
140 grams unsalted butter
¼ teaspoon pure vanilla extract
¼ teaspoon lemon juice
¼ teaspoon lemon zest
pinch of salt
Powdered sugar (optional)


Instructions

Slightly beat the eggs in a bowl. Measure ¼ cup of eggs into a bowl. 

Then beat in the sugar and the cup of flour. Add little more egg ( a tablespoon at a time), if the batter is too dry. When thoroughly blended, set aside and let it rest for 10 minutes. 

Meanwhile, melt the butter in a sauce pan, bring it to the boil, and let it brown lightly. Set aside.

 
Place the 1 tablespoon of flour in a small bowl and blend in 1½ tablespoons of the browned butter. Paint the Madeleine cups with the butter-flour mixture. Set aside. 

Stir the rest of the butter over ice until cool but liquid. Mix the butter with the last of the eggs along with salt, lemon rind and juice and vanilla. 

Add this mixture to the resting batter and stir well. Allow the batter to rest for 10 more minutes. If you want a big hump in the middle which is so characteristic about Madeleines, allow the batter to rest for one hour at room temperature or couple of hours in the refrigerator. 

Preheat the oven to 375 F, and set the racks in upper and lower middle levels. Divide the batter into 24 lumps of a generous tablespoon each, and drop them into the Madeleine cups. Bake in the preheated oven until the cakes are slightly browned around the edges, humped in the middle, and slightly shrunk from the cups. 

Un-mold onto a rack. When cool, turn shell side up and dust with confectioners sugar for serving. (dusting is optional). They will keep in the refrigerator for a day or two in an airtight container.

Cheezus!

Every time I do this, I have good intent-(bangbangbang - oops, that's the guys putting in the new windows, just igbangbangbangnore them). I mean, I renounce things. Not sex or anything (praise God!), but foods.

Certain foods become Franken for me. Not frankfurters (a furtive Frank, for sure). No. But I mean, what could be a more insidious Frankenfood than Gummi Bears? Made of nothing but sugar and goo and artificial this 'n' that, (and forget about that "made with real fruit juice" garbage, it's a corporate lie so mothers can plug their kids' mouths with a gob of high fructose corn syrup without guilt), they can be easily inhaled, first one at a time, then three or four, then - . After a while the head spins, the eyes unfocus, and the entire body

succumbs to sugar coma.

Right. I gave those up, gave 'em up when I suddenly realized that I liked the queasy feeling of skyrocketing glucose. So I self-righteously swore them off and started eating. . . something healthier. Much healthier. Pretzels! Not just any pretzels but Rold Gold Pretzel Sticks, crisply varnished

and crusted with salt.

I have a history with Rold Gold. I used to buy them as a child for five cents ("Fi' cents," Mr. Mardling of Mardling's Groceteria use-da say), in a little box wrapped in cellophane. I don't mean a normal snack box. I mean a flat little box less than an inch deep, shaped sort of like a pack of cigarettes. It was wrapped so that you could see the pretzels lying there in a neat little row, just waiting to

be devoured.

Rold Gold. Pretzel Sticks. These had no fat in them, none whatever, so I could insert them into my mouth one after the other while watching Hoarding: Buried Alive until I looked down and realized that half the bag

was gone.

I don't know what happened with the pretzels, but one day I just didn't want to eat them any more. I began to lose weight, then more weight. I began to eat like a human being. It was amazing. Maybe my binge days were over.

So when did the Nips come along?

I've always had a thing about cheese, you know, orange cheese. I don't know if it goes back to my mother, who was a walking refrigerator emotionally (at least to me - she loved my sister without reservation), but baked

extremely well.

After making one of her impossibly delectable pies, Mackintosh apple or sour cherry (from the tree in the back yard, the one that leaned against the white picket fence so I could neatly vault over into our neighbor's yard and feed the pigeons) or maybe even rhubarb which stripped the enamel off your teeth, there would always be some pastry left over, the trimmed-off bits.

Sometimes she rolled these out again, sprinkled the surface with grated orange cheese, rolled it up, folded it over and rolled it out again. She then cut them into strips and baked them: cheese straws. This method created flaky striations of cheddar that melted in the mouth. The pastry sort of puffed up and formed crusty, crunchable browned bubbles.

Dear God.

I can't fool myself that Cheese Nips are anything like that. They aren't. But every once in a while I get a box that's a little more browned than usual, probably some minor mistake in the factory. And Oh God. I have been Nipped again!

I imagine the postage-sized squares with the cute little hole in them are cubes of cheese pastry magically conjured from my childhood, pulled out of time and plunked down in front of me.

Before I know it I'm 2/3 through the goddamn box. And I feel guilty as hell,

because I've done so well with my weight loss lately

and it could all come back to me just like that.

And probably will.