An article from the past

On this lazy saturday afternoon in Durban I was dabbling on my computer when I came across an article that I wrote in 2009. It seems like a lifetime ago but it was good to read that my passion for food is still as strong as it was a few years ago.
For some leisurely reading I decided to post it on my blog, hope you enjoy it .....

Why I want to be a pastry chef                             Isla Rechner

Since I was a young girl, I have always loved food. Creating a meal out of a few choice items was like modern alchemy to me, it still is. That is why I decided to become a chef, so I could continuously have this feeling of creative satisfaction and quench my constant thirst for culinary knowledge.

I was born in Johannesburg in the winter of 1985, I moved to Durban when I was seven. I have been living in Kloof since 2001 and went to Kloof High School. What I love about the hillcrest area is the small town feel of it, but at the same time the bustle of it. There are great places to get fresh produce like the Shongweni farmers market or Everfresh, as well as great butcheries.

I had a happy childhood. My mother informed me that I loved food even as a tiny tot, sitting myself in front of the television every Saturday morning to watch some Scottish lady cooking, her name escapes me.

I started taking cooking seriously when I was about sixteen, cooking dinner every night for my ever-supportive family with initial humorous results. They are ever grateful that I carried on with it and got a lot better at it over time. My first attempt at pastry making was quite obviously fuelled with disaster and lot of muttering under my breath. I decided in order to be a domestic goddess I would have to kick it up a notch. I was hosting a dinner party and chose to do a phyllo salmon en croute. Anyone that has worked with phyllo pastry knows how delicate it is. I happily got the pastry out the fridge and was trying to encase the gorgeous salmon in the pastry. Every time I tried to handle it, it would tear apart and stick to the other pastry sheets. It was also drying out at a rapid pace! I poured a glass of wine and prayed to the culinary gods that the phyllo pastry would be more forgiving and pliable. I eventually got it to work, with my dinner party guests none the wiser of the emotional trauma I had experienced because of it!

I qualified as a journalist in 2008 from Damelin and decided I wanted to study another love of mine, which is quite apparently food. I studied at the 1000 Hills Chef School in 2009. The school taught me a lot about self-discipline and hard work, I also gained great friendships from the experience.

I am going to be studying my pastry diploma at Capsicum in 2010( I did and thoroughly enjoyed it there too). Purely because I am a culinary gypsy, moving around to garner all influence in the South African cheffing industry. It also helps me not get too comfortable in one place.

I have three favourite chefs with different reasons of why I admire them. In third place it would have to be Raymond Blanc, a self taught French chef who has one of the best restaurants in England called Le Manoir aux Quat Saisons, which has two Michelin stars. He has this certain debonair element to him; he is like the Humphrey Bogart of haute cuisine.

In second place would be Australian chef Bill Granger. His infectious happiness when it comes to food is an absolute treat. What I also love about him is his approach to food, which is fresh, clean and frills free. When you buy one of his books, you want to have all your friends over for a relaxing time with great food and humour. My number one is the reason I got into cheffing, Nigella Lawson. I can identify with her as I am a journalist and she is too, but our love for food pours out into every avenue of life. I love the way she describes food in such a sultry and confident way. She put sexy back into food. Nigella is gloriously unapologetic for loving food and shattered the theory that in order to be a great hostess you had to have stepped out the 1950s and throw away all feministic traits. One can be a fiercely independent and intelligent women that also happens to love feeding people.

In the cheffing industry, there are shades of light and dark, dimensions of hard and soft. The trick is to find a balance between it all to achieve your full potential in an ever-competitive industry.

Gordon Ramsay bared the hot kitchen for all to see, the hardness and the drama (perhaps with a bit more dramatic flair than it is in reality) and showed that it was not a place for the complacent.

There might be a fiasco in the kitchen but the customer will get a great meal oblivious to the commotion that has been happening behind the scenes.
The hot kitchen is for a person who is fiery, determined and can take everything with a pinch of salt.

Pastry on the other hand is something that needs to be done in a meticulous almost scientific way. It demands a great amount of skill and patience to be a great pastry chef. A pastry chef has to be cool and collected and have an artist’s soul.

Ultimately pastry is a mixture of art and science with a touch of architecture on the side. Pastry is also an indulgence, something that ensnares the senses and envelopes the indulgee in wicked serenity.

I remember the day that I decided that I wanted to be a pastry chef. I was watching the movie Chocolat starring Juliet Binoche and Johnny Depp. Vianne Rocher played by Juliet Binoche was a chocolatier that just moved to a very small town in the French countryside. The townsfolk were god fearing and conservative. Limiting themselves to few pleasures in life. Vianne introduces them to the magic of chocolate and in turn life.

The way their eyes light up when they eat the delectable chocolates Vianne created made me realise that I wanted to be a person that contributed in the delight in someone’s eyes. This will be my way of creating happiness in others.

I want to put the magic back into pastry. To give South Africans the pleasures of French pastries while staying in their hometown.

In a way people have been food conservatives, obsessed with every morsel or calorie they consume.

I do not wish to promote gluttony but occasional decadence is great for the soul. My ultimate pastry to make someone would have to be a croquembouche hands down. It is a tower of choux pastry puffs held together with caramel and is usually decorated with spun sugar. It is usually served at weddings, baptisms or communions in France. It is something that just looks like an absolute triumph to achieve, which one day I will accomplish. A croquembouche will be my Mount Everest!

One of my favourite mediums to work with is chocolate. I started making chocolate truffles about three years ago. They have been a hit with friends and family and I even made some for a friend’s wedding last year. Which was very rewarding.

I hope my aspirations to create glee in others will come to fruition that is why I want to be a pastry chef.

Tips on pastry

·         For phyllo pastry make sure that it is completely defrosted before handling. Also while you are handling one sheet of phyllo pastry, cover the rest with a damp cloth to avoid it drying it out.

·         With short crust pastry, after you have made your dough it is essential to cling wrap it and put it in the fridge to rest for half an hour. This allows the gluten strands gain elasticity when it comes in contact with the water. This will prevent shrinkage when baking the pastry. When you are baking short crust pastry, you usually have to bake it blind before adding your filling. To bake blind all you need to do is place your pastry in a tart of pie mould, place some baking paper in it and use “baking beans”, personally I use dried beans or lentils. They work equally as well.

·         The most important tip of all with regards to pastry is not to fear it! If you handle it with tender loving care and are patient there is no reason why it won’t work out.