Sweet Time News
Volume 3, Issue 1, June 2008 »
Quarterly Industry Trends
by Karl Kelfrich
Pastry Category Manager
European Imports, LTD
Guitar Heroes and Pierre Hermé
My heroes have always been guitar players.
I’ve been fortunate to be able to meet a couple of them, always in awkward encounters. How do you condense what can be a lifetime of comfort and inspiration into a sentence or two? How do you thank them for enhancing the quality of your life, or ask them how they pulled off that riff in your favorite song. How do you ask what inspired them?
In the end, playing guitar in a band and being a pastry chef are more similar than different. The path to each begins with inspiration. Both involve real passion, and a desire to perform. Both require a level of dedication that is well beyond the pale. Both could potentially ruin a marriage or relationship.
Both involve endless practice. How many rosettes have you made? How many choux have you piped? How many gallons of pastry cream, miles of feuilletage, and stories of cake layers have you created? Is each one better than the one before? How many late nights spent working on the perfect dessert to round out the menu or finish a special occasion? It’s been said that Jimi Hendrix would take his guitar with him when he went to the bathroom so that he wouldn’t miss out on practice time. How many cookbooks or magazines do you have next to the commode?
After practice comes the presentation. Up on stage—equipment set up, sound check, set list. One, two, three… There’s no turning back once the song starts. All of the hours of practice, memorizing of melody and lyrics, timing, dynamics, it just has to flow. If everything is just right, everyone in the room knows it. It’s going to be a good show.
Does any of this sound familiar? It should. The hours of practice and preparation, coordinating all the details, the last garnish on the last dessert of the night – damn, that was a good show!
What does all of this have to do with Pierre Hermé? Like Jimi, he is one of my heroes. His recipes just work. His pastry is simple, clean and impeccable. He has invented recipes and techniques that have influenced a generation of pastry chefs, and I was fortunate enough to meet him.
He had just taught a class at The French Pastry School where twenty-five chefs were able to learn some of his recipes and pastry philosophy. It was striking to me to hear what most had taken away from the experience. His “vision” was referred to many times; the fact that he had focused not on everything, but on specific flavor combinations and techniques and then turned that vision into reality by practicing them over and over until they were perfected. “Get to know your ingredients” and use the best ingredients you can, and practice, practice.
So, what do you say when you meet one of your heroes? Something like: “Thanks, Chef.”