Going pro: Our food editor gets a taste of what it's like to be a

0 Comments | Deseret News (Salt Lake City), Sep 27, 2006 | by Valerie Phillips Deseret Morning News

CHARLOTTE, N.C. -- "I'm starting to think that being a pastry chef is all about covering your mistakes," confided Debbie Moose, a North Carolina cookbook author and newspaper columnist.

She and I were cooking together in a culinary-school crash course of sorts at Johnson & Wales University. We were putting the finishing touches to our Banoffi Pie-- a sweet-tart crust layered with caramel, bananas, pastry cream and topped with coffee-flavored whipped cream.

It's easy to see how Moose got that impression. Our instructor, John Maas, had helped us glue together a broken piece of pastry with a dab of caramel, telling us, "No one will see it."

When my banana halves weren't curved perfectly into the tart pan, everyone reassured me it was no problem; we soon buried them in pastry cream. And when we got a little carried away while piping the whipped cream, we camouflaged that with a liberal sprinkling of chocolate curls.

But by the time we were finished, it did look and taste somewhat professional.

The annual Association of Food Journalists' conference for about 70 food writers and editors ran the gamut of topics this year, from writing and editing skills to obesity research, "alternative" soda pops, ethnic pork dishes, barbecue, organic farming, heirloom recipes lost during Hurricane Katrina, and how vineyards are replacing Southern tobacco farms.

When it came time to put down our pens and hone our cooking skills, Johnson & Wales was a natural venue. Charlotte is the newest campus for the Rhode Island-based university, which also has campuses in North Miami and Denver. Tuition for a two-year culinary degree is $39,750, although about 90 percent of the students get some form of financial aid, according to Greg DiStefano, marketing manager of the culinary arts college.

We were divided into teams and assigned various dishes to make for our lunch that day, with guidance from the chef-instructors and culinary students. By the time we finished, the buffet table showed off an impressive repertoire of Mediterranean fare, which included things such as foccacia topped with onion marmalade, flaxseed falafel, Moroccan wheat-berry salad, rack of lamb Persillade, veal Saltimbocca, paella, pasta with reduced-fat Alfredo and pesto sauces, and wild mushroom risotto.

All this was polished off by my group's two desserts. Maas said he learned to make Banoffi Pie while he was a pastry chef at Princeton University. Our other dessert, Toucinho Do Ceu, is Portuguese cake made with almond flour. It's a good choice for people who can't tolerate wheat gluten. Maas said the English translation is "Bacon of Heaven."

"Is that because it's rich like bacon?" I suggested.

"Maybe you eat so much of it, you feel like a pig," countered my teammate, Moose.

From the moment we donned the high paper toques (which felt more like dunce caps), I became aware of what I didn't know. A few things became apparent, though:

Why chef recipes usually need to be adapted for newspaper food sections. The tart dough recipe, for instance, made a big batch -- 8 pounds of butter, 4 pounds sugar, 1 pound and 9 ounces of eggs and 6 pounds pastry flour. And the directions were two words: "Creaming method."

Chefs recipes are apparently scaled to feed a restaurant full of people, with directions for kitchen staff who know techniques such as "creaming method." Newspaper recipes, on the other hand, are written for readers with varied skill levels, who measure ingredients by the cup and don't weigh their eggs, and they usually want to feed only six or seven people at a time. (This is why I decided not to publish the Banoffi Pie recipe with this story.)

Chefs tend to use more than one heat source while cooking a dish. For instance, the veal and lamb were first seared on the stove top, then roasted in the oven.

Our Toucinho do Ceu cake required thickening the mixture of egg, cinnamon, sugar and almond flour on the stove, then baking it in the oven. As we hovered around the six-burner stove stirring our pots, it felt like a bunch of high school girls jockeying for space around a bathroom mirror.

"How do I know when to take it off the stove?" I asked Maas.

"You can feel it," Maas told me. I continued stirring and finally asked, "But what am I supposed to feel?"

"It will feel like porridge," he said, grabbing a spatula and giving it a quick stir. "This is just about ready."

Don't try this at home ... Several of us felt iffy about Maas' method to caramelize the sweetened condensed milk for the Banoffi Pie: Immerse unopened cans of sweetened condensed milk in a deep pan of boiling water for five hours. The result is a rich, caramel- colored cream -- known also as dulce de leche. I've heard of this method before, but the labels on sweetened condensed milk warn against heating an unopened can. At home, I tested Mass's method using gently simmering water. It worked, but I still can't recommend it for fear a can will explode in someone's face.

The Eagle Brand makers of sweetened condensed milk say to simmer the milk in a double boiler over boiling water for 1 1/2 hours; or microwave, in an 8-cup glass microwave-proof bowl at medium for 4 minutes; then reduce power to medium low for 12-16 more minutes, stirring every 2 minutes. Both of these methods are less time- consuming.