Notebooks of Michel Bras: Desserts

Rating:
Summary: Unusual, Complicated Ideas and Recipes. Profesional Fare
Review: The most important thing to mention about this book is that it is not a notebook. It is composed of dessert recipes, equipment tips, and sidebars on fruit ingredients made up to look like a notebook. In fact, the sidebars on fruits, however informative they happen to be, are very incongruous matched up with the `notebook' appearance of the recipes and theme of the book.

The most famous notebooks I know are those of philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein, where his notebooks are composed of many aphorisms. I can imagine similar notebooks of literary figures, historians, naturalists, graphic artists and journalists, and I can imagine finding these musings interesting. On the other hand, I cannot imagine finding the notebooks of scientists or cooks very interesting. Having been a practicing chemist, I can attest to the fact that the great bulk of scientific notes are simply columns of numbers and formulas. I can imagine a culinary notebook, being very similar to scientific research in that it simply repeats the same procedure over and over again varying a single aspect each time can be pretty dull. Witness the articles in `Cooks Illustrated' where we are not presented with all the details, only the summary of dozens of attempts at achieving the best recipe. But then, I am pretty sure that only professional philosophers read Wittgenstein's notebooks.

In this book and in his more conventional book, `Essential Cuisine', the author makes much of his wanderings through the countryside of his native region of France, Aubrac, which is in the southwestern hills, about a hundred miles inland from the Bay of Biscay and Bayonne and Bordeaux. At least it is voice from a new region, neither Lyon nor Provence. The introduction cites how the author Michal Bras roams about the countryside noting flavors and scents. But there is the rub. How do you put scents of acacia flowers, chicory roots and white pine needles in a notebook. I guess this is the opening which make room for the little monographs on fruits. Believe it or not, the author actually does give recipes including acacia and chicory. Oddly enough, there are no little monographs on these two ingredients. And, the order of the ingredients monographs seem to show very little rhyme or reason. It would seem to make sense to put all the citrus monographs together, but they are not. The monographs are also a very odd mix of information, certainly different from a naturalist's observations of the fruits in situ as you may expect to find in a notebook. The pieces contain an assortment of information on geographical distribution, history, and care in using, as with the little tidbit of washing blueberries in vinegar to ward against fox piss. But I go on too much about the fruity notes.

All the recipes are complete, albeit somewhat shorter than what you may expect. Most of the recipes are difficult and many of the recipes require a long time to prepare. And, the author states that fact clearly at the beginning of each recipe. On top of all this, the instructions for some of the long and difficult recipes are rather terse. Bras' recipe for the famous `La Buche de Noel' or Christmas Log is not much more than a single page of text plus a single hand-drawn illustration. Nick Malgieri's instructions for the same cake in `Perfect Pastry' takes at least two pages. Other presentations I have seen take longer, with many pictures.

This is not to say this is a `bad' book. Most of what this means is that the audience for this book may only be professional pastry chefs and very serious amateur foodies and bakers who like to experiment with unusual ingredients and unusual preparations, molds, and ingredients like acacia flowers and chicory. The combination of unusual ingredients, long prep times, and professional level skills means this book is not for the average bake sale matron. On the other hand, even if you are not a professional or even an active amateur baker, this book does offer a window into a world of desserts you may just not see outside of some very special shops in New York, San Francisco, Paris, Brussels, or Lyon... or in the Aubrac. In spite of the many long and difficult recipes, there are several, especially in the chapter `Basic Recipes' which will give the inventive pastry amateur a lot of interesting ideas. There are the usual recipes for frangipanes and Italian meringue, but there are also interesting recipes for Fouace Dough, caramelized phyllo leaves, and a short crust pastry dough with duck fat.

The chapter on fruit desserts offers a lot of interesting tarts with roasted fruits, nut creams, and quinquina (whatever that is). The chapter on pastries has interesting cake recipes, mousselines, pralines, and preparations with one of his favorite unusual ingredients, milk skin.

The chapter on ice cream may be more interesting than most books. Just be careful not to be taken in by the `instant' ice cream recipes. They are unusual in their use of whipped cream and fresh toasted bread crumb to get the fluff of ice cream, but they do require that the preparation spend several hours in the fridge and they also require the use of an ice cream maker.

The book requires several European ingredients such as black and blond sugar. I suspect blond sugar is what we would call light brown sugar and black sugar may be an especially dark `dark brown sugar', but the book does not clear that up for us Yanks. I was totally baffled when one recipe called for the cook to measure the relative density of sugar syrup. I know how this is done, but I have never seen a device for doing this in any kitchen supply source.

Recommended to professionals, adventuresome pastry hobbyists, and foodies bored with the average book on French cookery.