Honey. Not funny.

Cooling, waiting for their orange / honey bath

Finished product with a blackberry coulis

A lot of honey.  3.5 kilos to be exact.  Half of which ended up on my floor/ counters/ rug/ clothes

In the past 48 hours I have:

- Scrubbed my kitchen floor 5 times

- Wiped down my kitchen counters a dozen times

- Been on hands and knees with the carpet cleaner 3 times

- Removed all contents of fridge (including drawers and shelves) and hosed everything down – twice

However, my socks are still sticking to some residual goop when I walk on the floor.  How is this possible?

One word: Honey.

So why honey in nooks and crannies for months to come? 

Let me take you back 48 hours.

This past Sunday was my third time baking for the 'Potentino Pop-Up'. Normally, there’s a bit of creative banter back and forth around the recipe a few weeks before, allowing for practice runs, perfection of ingredients and ensuring proper equipment.  Not this month.  Only a few days before I got an email asking me to make an orange, honey, and ricotta tart, recipe scanned and attached.

Due to my travels abroad and an Ocado grocery delivery arriving at the last moment (Saturday, the morning before the Pop-Up), there was no trial run. It was going to be all or nothing.

Reading the recipe it seemed ridiculously easy, and thankfully, needing to make 10 tarts (each requiring 45 minutes in the oven) it was.  After baking a mixture of ground almonds, almond extract, eggs, ricotta and…quite frankly... a shit load of honey, the tarts were then covered in an orange and honey mixture that lovingly oozed all over the cake and down the insides of the tart pans.

Problem was this. I’d been told to use (and to be fair, totally agreed that it made sense) to use the 10 tart pans I’d purchased (and expensed) for the sciliian lemon tarts I made back in June.  Only problem here was that the lemon tarts required pans with removable bottoms for their pastry crusts. Not the case with the these tarts.

Since the orange, honey, and ricotta tarts had no crust, when I poured ¾ of a cup of orange juice and honey over them, except for the bit that sat on the top…it slipped down the sides and then out the crack in the removable bottoms.  Multiply this by 10 tarts.

No naturally you must be thinking? Well certainly Dana, after the first or second you must have come up with some sort of alternative solution?

Since there was no room for a real contingency plan (e.g. time to purchase the RIGHT pans) I tried improvising.  Each tart, before being covered head to toe in the honey-orange mixture got a condom-like wrapping of aluminium foil all around it.

It worked a treat until the tarts needed to be moved.  There was so much extra liquid on the top and on the sides that even with the foil, it still oozed up and over. Everything.

I’m not sure why I kept trying to keep up with the mess. Eventually, when they were all stacked into my fridge (which considering the diminutive size of my refrigerator required a significant number of my condiments to live on the counter for the night) I tried to salvage the floor, carpet, and counters.  I admitted defeat late that night.  I decided that I’d just finish it off the next morning once the Pop-Uppers (AG specifically) picked them up for delivery to the restaurant.

Note 1:  These orange and honey tarts, which were served with a blackberry coulis were not really my cup of tea (I'm not a fan of honey). Although much better when finally served the next day, allowing the flavours to settle.  Slightly controversial in taste they appeared to be either loved or tolerated.  Looking around the dining room, Pop-Up guests had either eaten every last morsel or had taken about 4 bites. I was of the 4 bite crowd, the others at my table eating up every last drop…

Note 2: AG who so kindly picked up the tarts early Sunday morning, informed me later that day that he had a small ‘problem’ he needed to deal with once the Pop-Up was finished that evening.  Apparently, the back seat of the car which hosted the tarts from my flat to the restaurant  (each of which had been given a fresh piece of foil for protection that morning) was covered in honey.  

Again, one word: Oops.

Lessons learned through experience:

1. Use the right pans when baking
2. Always allow trial run time 
3. Honey never comes off, ever
4. In excess, I like honey even less

Pop-Up Part Deux

Pine Nut and Rosemary Cookies

About 160 Pine Nut and Rosemary Cookies (I think I ate about 20 because they weren't 'perfectly round' enough - that was my excuse anyway)

First Batch of Syllabubs made with Potentino's wine and Lemon Simple Syrup

Syllabubs Chilling Out in the Walk-in Fridge

7 days later and I’m officially recovered.

Last weekend was my second pastry chef Pop-Up, again for Potentino.  It also coincided with Guilty Pleasures at Koko. The physicality of it all was something else.  It went something like this…

Friday: Prepping until the wee hours making lemon simple syrup, 4 batches cookies, and a batch of Hawaiian macadamia nut cupcakes (Guilty Pleasures theme for the month was Hawaiian Beach Party)

Saturday: Costume arrangement, rehearsal, cupcake assembly, run-throughs, performance, non-stop dancing until 3 am, sleep at 4 am

Sunday: Alarm at 7:15, at restaurant for 9 am, 128 syllabubs later, collapse

Monday: Hobble (can’t walk), limit coughing and laughing (can’t move abs), no lifting (shoulders and arms feel like they’ve been pulled out of sockets)

General physical state can be summed up here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BbgyppGqBgg

Call me crazy, but I loved nearly every moment of it. (There was a 'brief' second Sunday morning when my alarm went off after only 3 hours sleep – if it hadn’t been attached to my iphone it would have been thrown against the wall and smashed into tiny pieces).  Except for that little 'blip' there was a smile plastered across my face the entire weekend.

So what was on tap for last weekend’s Potentino Pop-up?  Syllabub with pine nut and rosemary scented cookies/biscuits.

Syllabub was a new one for me and not something I’d normally slip out of my back pocket. Having a slightly less than enthusiastic attachment to creamy desserts (for those of you not in the know, syllabub is a creamy chilled dessert, essentially whipped cream with lemon, sugar, and sweet wine mixed in). With no actual baking involved it seemed (at first) something that the Pop-Up folks could have had a line cook whip up easy peasy. 

That said, once a complimentary biscuit was agreed (I'm a baker, I need to bake - not just whip and chill) I felt happier about putting my name to the dish.  I had visions of guests breaking off pieces of deliciously baked biscuits and dunking it in the sweet creamy glasses of syllabub.  Success was on hand when that’s just what I saw looking around the dining room at guests Sunday afternoon.

I spent a lot of time hemming and hawing over which cookie to serve with the syllabub.  Needing to stay true to Potentino’s request of ‘simple’ and ‘Italian’ I went against my natural tide of cookie flavour combinations and decided on the pine nut and rosemary duo.  I was cautious and a bit concerned. While the recipe I’d decided on was easy, I did wonder for a minute if I was going to end up with a cookie that was going to compliment roast chicken more effectively than the lovely syllabub.  Thankfully for all those involved in consumption – there was no desire for poultry to be found.

Essentially sugar cookies, but with the added complexity of olive oil, ground pine nuts, ground ginger, and a wee bit of chopped rosemary (I used half of what the recipe called for) – the cookies were sweet but just a little bit savoury as well. They were stellar and mapped to the syllabub perfectly which was served with large rosemary sprigs as ‘spoons’.

Pine Nut and Rosemary Cookies: 

http://www.marthastewart.com/recipe/pine-nut-cookies-with-rosemary 

Syllabub: 

Recipe given to me by the Potentino folks (initially in Italian, which clearly did me no good since my Italian language skills peak at Gelato flavours). Once translated, the recipe was essentially as follows:

1. Dissolve (in the microwave) 1/2 juice and zest of lemon and 1/2 cup sugar

2. Once chilled add 1/4 cup sweet wine - set lemon wine mixture to the side

3. Whip up about 300 ml whipping cream and 1-2 egg whites until firm peaks

4. Fold in lemon wine mixture

5. Serve in individual small glasses, sprinkle with nutmeg, chill for at least 2 hours

6. We served the syllabubs with a sprig of rosemary, you could also serve with a stem of red currants

7. And don't forget the cookies for dipping. Any simple / crispy number will do!

Sicilian Lemon Tart with Mascarpone Cream

'Sicilian' Lemons (Actually from Amalfi)

Assembly Line of Pastry Crusts

Egg Graveyard (70 in total)

First Plating of the Day

I’m thinking about coming out with a new workout DVD, entitled – ‘Dana B’s Lemon Tart’ – Butter and sugar your way to a sculpted upper body.

I kid you not.

I awoke Monday morning from a 19 hour lemon-tart-athon covering both Saturday and Sunday afternoons. Saturday was spent making the pastry crust and lemon curd filling (which involved “constantly stirring” 15 batches of lemon curd), and Sunday was spent rolling out the pastry, baking them, assembling with the lemon, baking again, making 8 cups of mascarpone cream and then plating up 120 servings (15 tarts in total)

Exhausting? Yes. Sore muscles? You betcha! Spending the weekend as a ‘professional’ pastry chef for my friend’s ‘pop-up restaurant’ – absolutely phenomenal.

Rewind back a few weeks to when AG originally rang me to get my thoughts on helping him out with his Pop-Up endeavour. I’d sent through a number of dessert suggestions that fit with his Tuscan inspired menu, but new to this ‘professional baking’ thing I didn’t think about the effort involved in making so many of one particular dish. Lesson learned. The effort involved in lemon tarting is exponentially greater than let’s say, a mascarpone cheesecake with balsamic berries. Sure the cheesecake take a lot of time to solidify etc....but it’s ready to go on the day. More of a love ‘em and leave ‘em approach. No faffing about with pastry crust and assembly. And second degree burns covering a 2 inch by 2 inch space on my arm...

The other somewhat comical bit was that of the hundreds of desserts I’ve ever made, I’d never actually made a straight up lemon tart. And with so many different opinions on pastry crust and lemon filling, I knew I needed to do a bit of homework to make sure I got it 'just right.'

Homework manifested itself in 4 lemon tarts the week before the Pop-Up. I had lemon tart coming out of the wazoo. Luckily, I have generous friends (ES, LM, KC) who were ever so kind as to come take the tart off of my butter and sugar coated hands. Probably a good thing because even though I tried to give most away, I still knocked back half of a whole one. But as I was the lead taste tester, it was a rough job that I had to take on – the tart needed to be perfected and we all know practice makes perfect.

And to add calories upon already thousands of calories, May Guilty Pleasures fell into the middle of my Lemon tart practice runs so I also was ‘forced’ to squeeze in a batch of lime and coconut cupcakes with lime cream cheese frosting as well. It was a rough week, one that I’m not entirely sure even 3 dance rehearsals and 2 trips to the gym could even out. Which reminds me, I need to buy stock in Spanx. Note: Lemon tarts and cupcakes are not a match made in heaven with fishnets and sequin shorts.

So what did my research prove?

1. Pastry crust need not be secondary to the lemon tart filling. And while being able to stand on its own two feet, should not just be a conduit for the lemon but a complementary partner in crime.

2. You can make a ‘Scicilian Leman Tart’ with a pastry crust recipe written by a French chef. I used Joël Robuchon’s which included your typical ingredients of flour, butter, eggs, etc. but also calls for ground almonds and vanilla beans (in an attempt at cost savings I used extract instead of the bean).

3. Lemon tart filling recipes should not be complicated. I tried the ‘sabayon’ method – it ended in disaster and all over me. However, recipes can be doubled but should most definitely NOT be tripled or quadrupled.*

*Note: I was getting exhausted and tried combining the lemon curd batches, three or four at a time... only to have to separate it back out into two pots so it would finally thicken, because it wouldn't with so much in one pot. Just picture me sitting by my stove top (yes sitting, I was EXHAUSTED) with 2 whisks, one in each hand ... ‘stirring constantly’...for a few hours. At least when I was only doing one batch at a time I had one free hand for playing scrabble on my iphone. Not. A. Joke.

4. Sorry folks, but mascarpone cream, whilst indescribably delicious, tastes pretty much exactly like plain whipped cream, only with a slightly more dense consistency. Not sure it’s worth the extra bucks/quid/yen to make it with mascarpone, but it did give the lemon tart a slightly more Italian nuance.