Under the Table (7 page)

“Hello, Darling? Am I boring you?” Chef Jean asked, only partly joking.

I couldn't bring myself to tell Chef that I was hoping for a religious experience by eating apple pie, so I ducked my head and tried to mimic his deft actions once again. We peeled bowls of apples, both Golden Delicious and Granny Smiths to add a layer of complexity to the filling, and after coring and roughly cutting them into large chunks, set them to simmer in small pots with water and just a quick dash of sugar to bring out the sweetness of the fruit.

After twenty minutes or so, the apples had softened and the water had evaporated, leaving us with a pot of something resembling rustic applesauce. We stirred constantly until the apples were cooked through and beginning to break down, careful not to beat all the chunks out.

“Leave it a bit interesting, eh? Not like baby food,” Chef directed.

While the apple compote chilled in an ice bath, we returned to our lumps of dough. Armed with heavy wooden rolling pins, we pulled our chilled dough circles from the lowboys and began to roll them out. Once the dough had been rolled out into a thin, even circle, it was ready to press into the waiting tart pan. The air was soon full of flour as overzealous students added handful after handful to their dough in order to ensure that it would not stick to the work surface. Chef Jean took a shot of flour right to the face as he was prowling the aisles of the classroom, and exploded, a French Krakatoa.

“What the hell are you doing? What is all this flour? If you did it right, you need no big handfuls of flour! Just a dusting! A sprinkle!
Un petit petit peu!
Morons!” Chef shouted, blowing little puffs of flour off his face with each furious syllable.

In a paroxysm of rage, he grabbed the nearest dough lump and tore it into two pieces. We were shocked, thinking that he had destroyed someone's effort in a fit of pique. But no. Angry though he might have been, Chef was never vindictive. He held the two flaccid pieces of dough up and showed us the insides. It was plain to see that there were large gobs of butter that had not been properly incorporated into the whole. We gasped and gawked at the poor performance of our classmate, like motorists passing a particularly gruesome traffic accident. No one got out to help, however. I felt like kissing the feet of the patron saint of bakers that Chef hadn't chosen my pitiful dough for an object lesson. Chef took a deep breath and began to rework the dough he had destroyed, slapping small pieces of it against the work surface in
frottage
to thoroughly incorporate the rogue lumps of butter. Soon the dough was once again a homogeneous whole, and Chef rolled it out in a few brusque movements of the rolling pin. Carefully he folded the dough in half, and then in half again. Scooping the little package up, he placed it over the buttered and chilled tart ring and unfolded it, its halves of dough fluttering open like a paperback caught in a high wind. He tucked the dough in with deft pats and then pinched a decorative edge around the sides with his meaty thumb and first two fingers, spinning the tart ring around like a child's top.

His good humor once again restored, Chef explained that a further spell in the lowboy to chill the dough and let it rest after being rolled out would ensure that the dough would not shrink up in the oven, leaving too much filling and not enough crust. Rolling out the dough must be done very quickly, like mixing the dough once water has been added, for the same reasons: the more dough is worked and played with, the more structure is created. Structure in this instance means the formation of strong strands of gluten, which give bread its marvelous chewiness but wreak havoc with the texture of pastry dough. Letting the dough rest after working with it allows the molecules of gluten to loosen the bonds they form with
each other, enabling the dough to “relax” and perform properly. This was another revelatory moment for me. For years I had been making piecrust, rolling it out, and sticking it straight into the oven without any additional rest, despite my grandmother's insistence that a “nap” would produce better crusts. I thought it was just an inefficient step I could cut out of the procedure with impunity, but I was wrong. I cast my eyes up to heaven and said a little prayer to Nan, thanking her for all the insights she gave me and letting her know that I was using them at last.

Once all the dough had been rolled out and placed, more or less successfully, into the tart rings, and after another long stint in the lowboy refrigerators, we were ready to assemble the tarts and bake them. First, in went the simple, rustic apple filling we made, now cool to the touch. Next came the thin apple slices on top for garniture.

For Americans, cleanliness may be next to godliness, but for the French, garniture
is
God. We carefully peeled, halved, and cored two more apples each, and then set each half on the cutting board, on its side. Using our chef 's knives, and all of our remaining patience, we made paper-thin apple slices, hundreds of them. Very few of them were actually any good, but by the time I had worked through my second apple, they were looking a bit more even. The apple slices were then fanned out over the filling in two concentric rings, the first, larger ring running clockwise, and the next, smaller ring running counterclockwise. Because there is some small, deeply ingrained part of me that seems dyslexic, I made my rings counterclockwise first, and then clockwise. A small mistake, but one immediately obvious to Chef, who made me pick all the apple slices off and start over again, going in the correct direction.

“See?
Much
more beautiful,” he said, when I had replaced the slices, now all marching in neat circles, the right way. I couldn't see the difference, but reminded myself that the French have a mania for both the intricacies of bureaucracy and rigidly formal gardening in
addition to a stranglehold on the world's best desserts. Perhaps it all went hand in hand. After arranging the two overlapping rings of apple slices, there was still a bit of the filling showing in the middle of the tart. The remaining apple slices were arranged in a tight, overlapping concentric circle, cored sides touching the apple filling, winding ever tighter until the remaining surface of the filling was covered with a rose made of apple slices. A few tiny circles of apple were stamped out of a stray apple slice to provide the proper degree of botanical verisimilitude to the rose, everything was washed gently with clarified butter, dusted lightly with a bit more sugar, and slipped into the waiting oven. Since the apple filling is already cooked, the tart is finished when the dough is fully cooked through and golden, and the apple slices have caramelized and are glowing brown, like a sunbather in a secluded cove of St. Tropez (Chef 's words, not mine).

I spent the forty-some minutes waiting for my tart to come out of the oven kvetching with Angelo, whose dough had been the unlucky recipient of Chef Jean's object lesson. Nominally, we were making another pâte crust for the afternoon's recipe, quiche Lorraine, but while Chef was in conference with Cyndee about the progress we were making as a class, Angelo slouched over to Tucker and me to vent his feelings. Angelo's station was on the other side of the classroom from us, but we had quickly become friends—he was very talented and driven, but he also liked to have a good time, slurping down beers and shots with us a few afternoons a week at Toad before catching his PATH train back to Jersey.

“Asshole!” Angelo huffed, his Jersey boy muscles bulging with emotion. “Why pick on me?”

“Your pretty face,” I replied. It was so much fun to tease Angelo, to see his blue eyes widen in laughter before he delivered an always witty, and usually dirty, rejoinder.

“Seriously, Angelo, today was just your day. We all have them,” Tucker added.

And it was true, we all did. While Chef was never deliberately malicious or mean-spirited in his critiques of us, there usually was one person who felt the sting from the sharp side of Chef 's tongue a bit more than everyone else. I had been the unlucky student once, and while I was grateful for the lessons I had learned, I was not eager for a repeat performance.

At last, Chef deemed our tarts well baked, and out of the huge ovens they came. But they were not quite finished. A thin glaze of apricot preserve would need to be applied to the top so that the tart had a shiny, “come hither” look.

“Like a stripper putting on lip gloss,” Tucker whispered to me.

I was too besotted with the gorgeousness of my own creation to pay any attention to Tucker's redneck observations. I reverently painted on the apricot glaze with my pastry brush (a tool that looks exactly like a small paintbrush from the hardware store, but costs about five times as much) and waited impatiently for my masterpiece to cool. This was it, the very essence of French cooking—a dessert that made much of its very simple ingredients, prepared in a regimented, time-hallowed manner, and decorated with dizzying attention to detail. Now I was to taste this apple tart from the tree of knowledge, and know food with all the glory of God—as a true chef, in other words.

Like the sound of one hand clapping, my first attempt at a
tarte aux pommes
lacked the resonance I was hoping for. It was good, even delicious in its own way, but it was not the religious experience I had anticipated. There was no jolt to my taste buds, no heavenly choir, no path to nirvana magically appearing before me. There was just a glimpse: a tiny twinge, somewhere in my hippocampus, of something greater. It wasn't enlightenment in a blinding flash of brilliance. More a quiet awakening, the gentle warmth radiating from a tiny crumb of knowledge. I was learning. Slowly.

Pâte Brisée (Short Crust)

Food Processor Method

 

This is it: the basic short pastry crust that all other short crusts are based on. It can be used for everything from an apple tart to a rustic tomato and herb pizza (my favorite meal in the summertime). With a few modifications (egg yolks instead of ice water, some confectioners' sugar, a sifting of cocoa powder with the flour), this recipe can be used in hundreds of ways.

 

1 cup plus 1 tablespoon all-purpose flour, plus extra for rolling

1 teaspoon fine sea salt

8 tablespoons (1 stick) unsalted butter, well chilled and cut into small lumps

1 to 2 tablespoons ice-cold water

1. Dump the flour and salt in the bowl of a food processor and blend briefly to combine. Add the butter all at once and blend in short on-off bursts until the mixture resembles very coarse cornmeal. Add 1 tablespoon of the water and blend briefly. The dough should begin to come together. If not, with the motor still running, carefully add a few drops of water at a time until the dough just begins to clump. Continue to blend only until large clumps of dough form.
   
2. Remove the dough from the bowl of the processor onto a large square of plastic wrap. Using the plastic wrap to guide the dough (especially helpful when the dough is a bit too sticky from overzealous watering), gently pat it into a rough disk shape. Wrap securely in the plastic wrap and stow in the refrigerator for at least 15 minutes, until the dough has fully chilled and is firm to the touch.
   
3. The longer the dough is chilled, the better off it will be, I think. Should the dough be very firm when removed from the fridge, don't attempt to manhandle it with the rolling pin—it will only cause cracks
   to form in the dough and frustration to boil over in the chef. Leave it alone on the counter for a few minutes. The warmth from the other things you no doubt have going on in the kitchen should be sufficient to warm the dough enough to roll without letting it get sweaty. On the other hand, beating the dough with hearty thwacks from your rolling pin will soften the dough without the chance of it overheating.
   
4. When rolling out the dough, be sparing with additional flour. It is tempting to create a snowstorm on the work surface, to ensure that the dough will not stick during the rolling process and will make it from the work surface to the tart or pie pan without tearing. Resist this impulse! A scant flick of flour on the rolling pin, work surface, and each side of the dough should be more than sufficient to prevent sticking. Watch the dough as you roll it out: it should move with the pin a bit. If it doesn't, there is a sticky spot underneath somewhere; use a scraper to gently unstick things and add a whisper of flour.
   
5. Once the dough has been rolled out to
   ¹
   /
   ₈
   inch thickness and a roughly 12-inch circle, fold the circle in half, then half again. Place this in one quadrant of the pan and unfold. Press the dough into every little nook and cranny. Be generous with the dough (there should be very little to no dough left over). Keep tucking until there is only enough dough left for a small decorative edge.
   
6. Do your dessert a favor at this point and stick the crust back in the fridge to chill one more time before baking. It will make a more delicious, beautiful dessert, and will also give you time to finish the filling.
   

Makes one 8-or 9-inch pie or tart crust

Buttermilk Pie

This is, hands down, my favorite way to use
pâte brisée.
My fanatical love of this pie, and the driving desire to have it as much as possible, is probably what spurred my culinary ambitions from early childhood. It is also very southern and reminds me of the long line of excellent cooks I come from. It is a wonderful antidote to those days when taxi drivers snarl at you, the laundry loses your shirts, and you get caught in the rain without an umbrella. A great ending for a barbecue supper—pulled pork, coleslaw, sautéed string beans fresh from the garden, a long summer evening, and this pie. Heaven.

 

3 tablespoons all-purpose flour

Pinch of salt

Generous pinch of freshly grated nutmeg

4 tablespoons (½ stick) butter, softened

¾ cup sugar

4 egg yolks

1 cup fresh buttermilk (see Note)

Juice of 1 lemon