Crisis of Faith

For Christmas, DMR presented me with a copy of Eric Ripert's Avec Eric, a wonderful and weighty reference with lots of lovely pictures of fabulous foodie destinations and replete with recipes that a happy home cook might favorably follow without breaking the bank.

Many valuable facts were revealed to me as I perused its glossy pages:

• Eric's glorious silver mane is always quoiffed to perfection, even when He is boar-hunting or in a swimming pool.
• Eric bakes his financiers in mini-muffin tins, just like I do.
• Eric uses canola oil.
• Blue Hill at Stone Barns is a destination to which I must hie myself at the very earliest possible opportunity (Google tells me it's only 120 miles away).

Most important, however, were the secrets disclosed to breathless readers, including Chef's recipe for the rillettes served at Le Bernardin as an amuse bouche and - staggeringly - the procedure for roasting white chocolate that so impressed and stymied DMR and me during our lunch in December.

Eager to try out the method, I hurried to the shops to obtain some good white chocolate and set about fabricating Caramelized White Chocolate Panna Cotta for the dinner I was planning for The Cycling Scientist and His Lovely Wife.

The routine sounded simple enough and only took up about two lines in the recipe. I am paraphrasing, but the gist of it was as follows:

1. Pop the chocs in a 300 deg F oven for 15 minutes until they start to brown.
2. Stir 'em up.
3. Cook for a further ten minutes or so, stirring occasionally, until they are toasted and delicious.

Sounds straightforward, right? It was a nightmare.

Hidden in these innocent-sounding instructions were pitfalls and unexpected events such that I suffered a series of devastating crises of faith and agonies over whether there would be any dessert to serve my guests.

1. After the initial fifteen minutes had passed, the chocolate was barely melted and had taken on no detectable color. I began to lose faith in the thermostat of the smaller of my Wolf ovens.
2. After 25 minutes, the chocolate began to brown at the edges, but also started to seize up and separate - normally a sign of sure disaster. I began to lose faith in the quality of my white chocolate.
3. After a further 15 minutes, I had a stiff grainy mess (still only slightly brown) than I could barely stir and that stubbornly stuck to the edges of the dish. I began to lose faith in Eric.
4. Five minutes later panic set in and I enacted The Dessert Backup Plan which resulted in the added anxiety of trying to carry out two new recipes at once. The air turned blue with curses directed at Eric and his pastry chef, Michael Laiskonis, who was no doubt the true villain of the piece.
5. When my timer said one hour had elapsed, I pulled the chocolate from the oven - duly brown but particulate and coagulated in a manner that, under normal circumstances (say, for use in a mousse or souffle), would prompt immediate disposal in the trash can under the sink. I vowed, in protest, never to cross the threshold at Le Bernardin again. Ever. Not in a million years.

Since, as the poet said, a picture paints a thousand words, an illustration is appropriate at this juncture. This is what I started with - rather expensive Guittard white chocolate couverture wafers:

This is how my efforts were rewarded - a gritty substance with the characteristics of hot, damp, highway gravel:

Yikes. Having dedicated the better portion of my morning to this enterprise, however, I was determined to see the catastrophe through to its bitter end. I transferred the now-grotesque goop to a bowl and started dribbling in just-boiled cream, hoping that the heat would somehow melt the chocolate back into some sort of acceptable state. With my green silicon spatula, I stirred and squished the mixture desperately against the sides of the bowl, doing my utmost to subdue all the unacceptable granules into a smooth paste. Nervous perspiration collected on my forehead and I started spilling things in my agitated haste. My strategy seemed to work after a fashion, though, and by the time I'd added all the cream I deemed I had a pourable lump-free solution.

At this point in the proceedings, almost two hours had elapsed since I'd commenced my efforts and I was suffering palpitations. With no real hope of success, I poured the chocolate into dessert ramekins, placed them in the back of the fridge, and with a heavy heart proceeded with The Backup Plan.

After several hours I gave one of the ramekins a jiggle and was encouraged to see that it was wobble-free and smooth on the surface. A couple of hours after that, with our guests innocently chatting amongst themselves, Sir and I snuck into the kitchen for a Situational Assessment. We discreetly sampled one of the dishes to discover a smooth, silky, creamy, gorgeously caramelized panna cotta that was more or less perfect in every way. I almost wept with relief. A quick garnish-flourish and dessert was on the table to rave reviews.

I returned Eric and Michael to their rightful places in my good books, but decided that the editor of Avec Eric had some serious explaining to do. My complaint to the miscreant is the first item on my List of Sternly-Worded Letters to Write in 2011.

Next up: what the Powers That Be don't tell you about roasting white chocolate and a recipe for my version of Caramelized WCPC, a gluten-free dessert par excellence.