New Classic Desserts
by Andrew MacLauchlan
VanNostrand Reinhold, $39.95 hard
The publisher gladly rushed me a review copy of this new book when I
explained to them that Coyote Cafe would be opening an Austin location. Author
MacLauchlan was the executive pastry chef at Charlie Trotter’s in Chicago when
the book was written, but has since moved west to take the same position in
Santa Fe for the Coyote Cafe operation. So while you won’t find the recipes for
the new restaurant’s popular Chocolate Thunder or the signature Cajeta Caramel
Tart, this interesting book can definitely teach you the building blocks the
accomplished and artistic pastry chef uses to create his architecturally
challenging desserts.
While several mentions are made of “the serious home cook,” this book
strikes me as something presented more for chefs than for the general public.
Like his former employer Trotter, MacLauchlan creates food that is artistically
and architecturally complex. Most of the recipes include several component
preparations for each dish, which seems much more possible in a commercial
kitchen than at home. While many of the basic recipes (variations on tuiles,
sorbets) greatly appealed to me, my personal bias is that this whole trend in
food is entirely too precious. In the catering business, we referred to it as
“terminal cuteness.”
Because MacLauchlan’s work is representative of a culinary trend that is
currently very popular, I decided to discuss the book with a local pastry chef
who has recently spent some time training with MacLauchlan in the Coyote Cafe
corporate kitchens in Santa Fe. You may remember talented pastry chef Lisa Fox
from her excellent desserts at 612 West. The Coyote Cafe team wisely chose to
retain Fox when they opened in Austin, and sent her to Santa Fe to train with
MacLauchlan for a couple of weeks this spring. Chef Fox currently heads up a
staff of five people who are preparing and serving dessert menus that feature
five selections at lunch and seven during dinner.
While Fox acknowledged the complexity of MacLauchlan’s desserts (the
Chocolate Thunder includes eight different preparations), she told me that she
feels MacLauchlan does make his creations accessible. This is accomplished by
using top quality ingredients, paying special attention to the seasonality of
ingredients such as fresh fruit, and demanding an intensity of flavor in each
dish. Indeed, the book is arranged according to the seasons, and MacLauchlan
several times states his premise that the flavor of a dessert should be
considered as a complementary finale to the savory portion of the meal rather
than just an overabundance of fat and sugar at the end of a meal.
According to Fox, the dessert menu at Austin’s Coyote Cafe is evolving to
suit local tastes and products and making a few concessions to the famous local
humidity. Fragile tuile cookies and meringue decorations must be made in
smaller batches so as not to deteriorate into soggy blobs, not a problem in the
high desert at Santa Fe. She expects to begin adding occasional examples of her
own renditions of “Coyote-style” desserts very soon. Some presentations have
been simplified, but I’d venture that the dessert menu at Coyote Cafe is the
only one in town that requires a regular staff of two people just to plate up
desserts every evening. Therein lies the key to the $5.50 price tags.
New Classic Desserts is a definitive example of a specific culinary
trend. MacLauchlan presents a thorough and educational body of information,
methods, and formulas which will allow the pastry chef or serious home cook
(with plenty of time and money) to re-create the desserts in the book. Better
yet, the book can also serve to provide building blocks to further inform and
inspire a repertoire. – Virginia B. Wood
This article appears in July 14 • 1995 and July 14 • 1995 (Cover).