Chez Atelier Melissa Coppel

In October, I had the amazing opportunity to take a class with Chef Melissa Coppel (incredibly talented and you MUST check her insta out here). Before I tell you about my journey, I want to give a massive shoutout to THE Ohio State University for making this possible- OSU has some great programs (esp. Food Science, and if you're someone who's even remotely interested.. please reach out!)

My day 1 in Vegas started with me grabbing some of the nicest grease I've had in a long time... mind you, it was 12am and the last time I ate was lunch at eastern time. I'd love some Inn and Out, but Burger Kind isn't half bad in Vegas.

Before I even talk about the class, I just want to give a shoutout for all the amazing lunched we had. Here's mole, made right in Chef Melissa's home. It reminded me of food from my childhood, and I swear I had the biggest grin after that meal.

And now for the important bit- the class. Chef Melissa's way of teaching is very interesting, in that everyone in the class gets a chance to see everything which I love- a lot of schools traditionally delegate or make multiple batches, but I do like her strategy of getting to learn each formula from her. It was more of a quality over quantity kind of deal. She also cares a lot about the quality of the product and excellence in execution, which explains why her product always looks and tastes top notch. With such sensitive and labor-intensive products like this, the margin or error goes up- and I kind of realized why being a chocolatier is perhaps one of the professions where you couldn't possibly excel without passion. She not only has a wealth of knowledge about chocolate, but also running a business while being a great mum. One of the things that really sets her apart is how much she cares about her students and empowering women, which I love. 

An added perk of the class was getting to meet Gabriel Riva, master of several trades and jack of none- we got to try some of his gelato during the class, and I still have dreams about it on occasion. Something common between the two that I observed that even though their execution was flawless, they paid great attention to the quality and characteristics of their raw materials. 

Passionfruit and sesame mochi gelato

tahiti vanilla with toasted pecans and caramel toffee

Here's literally the coolest cross section picture on the internet:

Cross section of all them delicious shiny bonbons

Parmesan

citrus curd, lime marshmallow, and a hazelnut base. my official favorite of the lot

The adult version of ice cream floats

I got my hands on some nice whisky while I was headed back home for a vacation last year. With a tendency for excessive shopping at airports, I ended up with more than just that. Among all the mess was a coconut ash chocolate bar. My pre-conceived notion of coconut ash being bitter was anything but right.

It had been a long time since I had had a good chocolate-caramel combo- one of my favorite chocolate components was almost a sorbet-like chocolate ice cream (or an ice cream with a much lower fat content). Pairing it with some (obviously salty) caramel, I gave it a twist with black lava salt which went well with the coconut ash chocolate ice cream.

In some ways, this is an adaptation of a chocolate, salty caramel and yuzu dessert that was the signature of a place I staged at. With my mind set of simpler desserts, I decided to turn it into a whisky sour float- take the citrus our and turn it into a granita. Not only does it add the the "rocks" for the whisky, it added an extra texture for the pallete.

The dessert is served with the components stacked and a shot of whisky (I used black label in this instance) poured into the bowl at the table.

Coconut ash and chocolate ice cream, black lava salt caramel. yuzu granita and a shot of whisky

Summer was here/ Mangoes from the Backyard

A couple of months ago, I visited home after a solid 7 months- the longest I've ever been away. One of the things I missed he most was the mangoes from the tree in my backyard (now 13 years strong!). My mum had left out a bucket of those bad boys to ripen up, and before I knew I was inspired to manipulate it into shapes and flavours that reminded me of my childhood.

Rice pudding has been replicated in various forms all over the world, but mostly known as kheer in the northern part of India. The south uses special rice paste flakes to make theirs, so I decided to pair that with mango ice cream instead of kheer. Known as ada payasam, the rice is a bit more chewy and jelly like and swells up a lot more than rice, so essentially comes out to be a chunkier rice pud.

I added some mango carpaccio for the sake of having more mango in there. Not sure why starch on starch works so well, but I have been infamous in the past for absolutely loading dishes with starch. Also explains my mild obsession for potatoes.

mango, ada payasam and mango ice cream

Dessert hiatus

Perhaps the title only tells a part of my story of not having being able to cook since my move to the states, in part of lack of facilities but also, inspiration. It had been about 7 months before I created this dessert, but as always, it's the environment that matters. This is something I can attest to being in college, which nearly gave me a crisis of my own identity of being a creative person. During my time off and my trip back home, I felt as though I was in a position to create again, and so I did.

This dessert is inspired by one of my favorite combinations of lemon and pistachio, replacing the lemon with yuzu. I got a hold of some fabulous pistachio paste from Eataly, and I knew the time was right. 

A lot of the components arise from things that I have learnt in the past in new forms, like the Pistachio 'Toblerone', this time sans chocolate. Mixed with almonds and palm sugar for texture, the paste is frozen to obtain hardness. The paste was turned into a sable as well and used on the plate as it is. 

Coming to yuzu, some water would have been great to cut down the incoming fat, and hence came into play the ice in the form of long sticks and jellies. The 'base' of the entire custard was a whipped vanilla pana cotta. It's one of the desserts that works in bigger portions, and tasting it instilled in me the fact that I could still create after all this time. 

Whipped pana cotta, pistachio paste, sable and Toblerone, yuzu jelly and ice

Summer trials from last year

Roughly a year ago, when I was still really into the food service side of the industry, I developed this dish for a trial. Possibly for a dessert night that never went through (I will be back someday however). 

The very exotic combination of coconut and pineapple never fails to please especially in weather like India's, making it an appealing choice for a dessert. Trying to use mostly locally sourced ingredients, cashew nuts were used for some extra crunch and some basil to give it a little kick of freshness. 

It takes be right back to the days when coming up with a dessert was easier than ever, antithetical to my days now. However, I've noticed my approach to food change drastically as I familiarize myself with the production side of the industry, and I do feel like I've made the right decision taking up food science. In time, I should be able to translate this better in dessert, the reason I joined this industry to begin with. 

Coconut custard and cake, pineapple granita and caviar, basil, vanilla cream, cashew praline. 

Yuzu and Mushrooms

During one of my stages, I encountered one of the restaurants making mushroom crumble. At the time, the very idea of any mushroom in dessert was very appalling perhaps; as someone who did not like mushrooms at that point, I certainly became a convert. The taste of earthly, thin and crisp shiitake to complement the toastiness of the crumble aided by milk powder, the gluten free crumble quickly became one of my favorite things at the restaurant. Fast forward a year, I'm served a yuzu creme brulee, so mildly scented yet packed with the flavor I love so much.

Me being the person that I am could only do what I think of when thinks click- put them in a bonbon.

Pureeing a tiny batch of creme brulee, I piped them in white chocolate shells that I dusted with raspberry powder for an extra kick- and color. A more regularly shaped mould would have been more ideal for temperamental bonbons like this, since I could have simply put in a white chocolate mushroom crumble insert and capped them off. That would have been much better than struggling another way, like I did with these.

Kinako Chocolate and Truffle

Kinako tuile and ice cream, warm chocolate mousse, butterscotch and summer truffles

I guess an apology is in order for not posting anything for almost 6 weeks! With a massive number of papers due and finals, it isn't a surprise that I got carried away. 

Learning from the kinako chocolates I made a while back (seriously, its been a while, but an idea worth checking out) it made a lot of sense to combine another deep, earthy ingredient into the equation- summer truffles. The slightly warm chocolate mousse has always been comforting to the heart; here the truffles season this warm, airy yet rich base to coat the mouth.

The kinako this time takes the form of an ice cream. This is in part a derivate of the chocolate mouse with potato skin ice cream that I found worked so well together, texturally and in terms of flavor, which led me to believe that it would sit well with a warm "mousse" in this case. I remember craving butterscotch when I was formulating this dessert- some sort of 'caramelized' milk has, in my opinion, always added more complexity to the dish when chocolate is included.

Perhaps the most common combination with chocolate in pastry shops this days has got to be feulletine- thin french crepe shards, delicious and crispy. In this particular case, my 'feulettine' piece was composed majorly of kinako powder, adding flavor along with texture.

The overall perception of the dish was perhaps that somewhat familiar flavors on somewhat familiar textures works really well. This particular set of textures seems like a great base for other combinations to experiment with, especially if they're sort of new and out there. I've found things slightly harder to accept if there isn't an easily recognizable component in the dish, regardless of how well it may work objectively.