Hey Milk Street Radio listeners, for a special episode all about Italy, I'm taking your calls with Lydia Bastianich. From pasta to panella and beyond, send us your biggest Italian cooking questions or problems. Email us at questions at MilkStreetRadio.com. Again, please send your questions about Italian cooking to questions at MilkStreetRadio.com, and we'll be in touch. And thanks.
I'm Christopher Kimball, and here's Milk Street Editorial Director J.M. Hirsch with a special holiday cocktail recipe sponsored by our friends at Allagash Brewing Company. So searching for the perfect drink for the holiday, I actually took my inspiration from the summer. I love a good Aperol spritz, but that's really the quintessential drink of warm weather.
Allagash White, a Belgian-style wheat beer, gave me the perfect way of bringing the Aperol spritz into cool weather entertaining and gives us the Allagash spritz. I really like the notes of coriander and orange zest with kind of a low hop profile in Allagash White. And using it in place of the more classic Prosecco, you're getting all the bubbles. You're still getting those kind of vibrant, bright, citrusy notes. But it's also got the heft to stand up to cool weather sipping.
So let's make an Allagash spritz. I'm going to start off by grabbing a wine glass, although really any glass will do. And I'm going to throw some ice in there. I'm not a big believer in having too much ice, but this is a drink where you want a little bit extra. So I would go about halfway up through your glass. Now, of course, one of the signature ingredients of a spritz is the Aperol. So we're going to add two ounces of Aperol.
And then to play off the citrusy notes of the Allagash White and of the Aperol itself, we're going to add about a half an ounce of orange liqueur. Now, just like in our cooking, In our drinking, salt heightens and brightens all the other flavors, so we're going to add just 6 to 10 granules of kosher salt. You're not going to taste it in the drink. It's not going to taste salty or briny, but it is going to brighten up all the other flavors.
Now, we're going to give that a quick little stir. All right, it's time for the star ingredient, some Allagash White. Now, I really like to top my Allagash Spritz with about four to six ounces. Perfect. And that is your Allagash Spritz. The Aperol Spritz brought into cool weather. To find some Allagash White to make your own Allagash Spritz. Just go to Allagash.com slash locator. For 21 plus only, please drink responsibly. Allagash Brewing Company, Portland, Maine.
This is Milk Street Radio from PRX, and I'm your host, Christopher Kimball. Today we're embracing holiday baking with Dominique Ancel, a French baker who had to travel all the way to America. just to taste a good cookie. I remember the cookies when I was a kid. There were just a few in the pastry case. They were dry. They were flat. They were not good at all. French people don't eat cookies. Later in the show, it's my conversation with Dominique Ancel.
the creator of The Cronut. But first, we're tackling your holiday questions with my special guest host, Cheryl Day. Cheryl is, of course, the author of Cheryl Day's Treasury of Southern Baking. So Cheryl, it's the holiday cookie time. I know lots of people who spend most of December doing nothing but making cookies. It seems like the only time of year they make them. But you know, I have my favorites.
Like Moravian cookies. Oh, yeah. Those are good because they're thin and they're spicy. Do you have a cookie that most people don't probably make or know about that I should put on my list? Hmm. that you, Christopher Kimball, does not know about? Well, I mean, just something that you really love that's not the typical sugar cookie. No, I'm really traditional. I love a great...
Molasses cookie. I love my sugar cookie recipe. I just love the tradition of making old-fashioned cookies. And I just kind of have the same ones. But I'll have to think of something new this year. Oh, wait. I have something new. Okay. Something old. You know, in the old days, in the 16th, 17th century in London, they used to do gingerbreads. And for special occasions...
They were like three feet high. Oh, wow. They would frost them to be like a king or a queen or whatever. They were very elaborate. But I think the idea of a giant gingerbread. That would be amazing. Like a one foot high gingerbread or two foot high gingerbread. I think that would be really cool. And recently I saw, I'm trying to think where I saw this. It was almost like a brioche.
made into the shape of like ginger people with different fillings inside. And I thought that'd be a fun thing, you know, to make too and tie it up to give. I love giving food gifts, period. I just think, you know. food gifts are just so thoughtful and you know from the heart so I just try to think of
You know, ways to give in that way. Another excellent reason to be a friend of yours. You want one of those brioche? Oh, yeah, man. All right, let's take a call. Welcome to Milk Street. Who's calling? Hi, my name is Ashley. Hi, Ashley. Where are you calling from? I'm in Los Angeles. How can we help you today? My question is, every year around the holidays, I start making cookies.
As one does. And every year I keep thinking, okay, there's got to be a way to get more on top of this. And my question is... What doughs can I freeze when? So I know some doughs you can freeze like just the whole mass of dough. But should I like form the cookies and then freeze them and bake them? off or should I bake them and freeze a baked cookie? And if I have the ones that you shape like in the cookie gun, can I shape them and then freeze them?
In shape? Yes, you can do all of those things, but I'll tell you, I am on team bake then freeze. And I'll tell you why. I had a baker that used to bring me... And I owned a bakery for, gosh, over 22 years. But one of our bakers would bring me a holiday cookie box for Christmas, and it was the best thing ever. And I could never figure out with our schedule how she had time to do this. So I asked her and what she did was she baked all of her cookies and then she froze them.
And then some cookies, you know, she would need to fill or decorate. So she'd thaw those, and then she would fill them and decorate them as needed. And then they were great. But when she baked and froze them, she just put them in, you know, nice containers that you could... put parchment in between the layers and they tasted I mean I just could not believe it so I've been on team bake then freeze ever since but yes you can
Also, you know, have your doughs, but why not just get it out of the way? You know, then they're done. You definitely can, if it starts with creaming butter and sugar, you can definitely... bake them off later but then you'd have to thaw them out some you can you know bake straight from freezing and it gets complicated the only cookies that i don't do that to is like a meringue cookie
But otherwise, yeah, it definitely saves you so much time in the long run. Even like a chocolate chip cookie or like gingerbread cookie that is, you know, you want a little chew and a little crisp, like that's not going to be affected poorly. Not at all. Not at all. I mean, one of my favorites is like those shortbread type cookies that are like crescent shape that you dip in chocolate. The texture and everything is really great. So.
That's my answer. I'm sticking to it. What about you, Chris? Yeah, I would agree. You've done more of that than I have. The exceptions would be like something you have in the freezer when someone comes over unexpectedly. And you want something to be fresh out of the oven.
Something like that, which you can freeze shaped and then just put them on a baking sheet and bake them. Then you have the smell coming out of the oven. They're warm. But for Christmas cookies, I agree. Yeah, you could do it ahead of time. Well, it just saves you so much time, and it's not as daunting to have to bake them all at once. Yes, and to have five different doughs going. Right. Well, this is blowing my mind. I mean. This means I can start earlier.
And go slower, and this is amazing news for me. And enjoy your holiday, right? Yeah, absolutely. Please report back. I absolutely will. Cheryl, I think this was life-changing. I mean, I always keep some cookie dough, like Chris said, in the freezer, you know, when you just have a hankering for cookie. But I just think... Baking the cookie box with all the variety, you definitely need a hands up for sure. Yeah, one of my kids, there was a cookie swap last Christmas.
And I think she spent three or four days baking cookies. I think she needed to go into a rest home for a week after that. That's how you feel. Yeah. I mean, she was totally done in after that. I agree. You got to shift some of the work ahead of time. Well, thanks for your question. Thanks for calling. That's amazing news. Thank you so much. Take care. Bye. This is Mill Street Radio. Cheryl and I are here to better your baking. Call us anytime. Our number.
855-426-9843. One more time. 855-426-9843. Or email us at questions at MilkStreetRadio.com. Hi, welcome to Milk Street is calling. Hi, this is Jennifer Joes calling from Peoria, Illinois. How are you? Great. How are you, Jennifer? I am great. I'm so excited. I went to Bradley University. I teach biology there. Wow. That's amazing. I am actually teaching a class this semester where we talk about the science of baking in this class. So what is baking soda? What is baking powder?
Why do we brown our food? Oh, I love that. Well, how can we help you today? So one of my questions is about brown sugar. We have a lot of family in Maine, so we love that kind of dark molasses-y flavor in our food. And so I prefer the flavor of dark brown sugar, but most baking recipes call for light brown sugar. And I usually substitute them one for one. You really can. I mean there is a slight difference and since we're talking about the science of baking there's more acid.
and dark brown sugar which when you add for a cookie you're going to be adding baking soda and that's going to activate that but it's just going to make your cookies rise just a little bit more. than the light brown sugar and that's not a bad thing but yeah it's slight and if you were weighing it it would be exactly the same fantastic Chris do you think
Yeah, I think light brown sugar is 3% molasses and dark brown 6% or whatever. But yeah, I don't think it's going to make a big difference. And if you prefer the flavor of dark brown sugar, I say go for it, Jennifer. And, you know, very often. Cheryl's probably did this too. You reach for the dark brown sugar and all you have is light. Right. You're still making cookies. You're still making, yeah. You're still in business, so.
I always have both in the cabinet, and I never really know if it actually matters or not. Well, it's funny. A lot of recipes don't even say, which they just say brown sugar, some recipes. How do you keep your sugar?
sugar nice and soft and loose do you put a little sugar bear in it or do you keep in the fridge or what i do i have them in are they called like cambro plastic containers like the food prep and then i do have the little clay mine shaped like a gingerbread man but yes i find they work pretty well and then i keep it in the fridge and it actually works you don't get that solid block of sugar
I find that works really well is to just use it really quickly. Well, that's true. There you go. It's like, what do I do with all the bourbon in my house? We'll just drink it. That's the best thing. All right. Thanks, Jennifer. Thanks for your question. Thank you. Appreciate it. Bye.
Welcome to Milk Street. Who's calling? Hello, my name is Julie. I live in Ramsey, Minnesota. Hi, Julie. How can we help you? So I have this recipe that was my grandma's. I had it multiple times growing up. It was always my favorite. And I've made it multiple times with different things, and I can't get it to turn out. I don't know. I think maybe there's an ingredient missing from her recipe card. Probably. Give us the basic recipe approach. What do you do?
So it's almond brittle, and she's got one cup of white sugar, two-thirds to one cup of whole blanched almonds, one-half a cup butter or margarine, and one tablespoon of water. And then she used to make it in a cast iron pan and she didn't pour it down and break it. She poured it into individual, probably two and a half inch circles.
And she poured them on wax paper to cool. And I've tried butter, margarine. I've tried white sugar, brown sugar. I've tried non-skip. I've tried cast iron. I can't get it to work. Hardens in the pan or it doesn't harden at all. Baking soda? No baking soda? No, that is not on her recipe. Do you think maybe that's what it needs? I've never made a brittle without it.
Okay. I'm a little perplexed about the individual portions also. And you said you used to make it with her. Yeah, we made it every year. That was kind of our thing. Wow. That's awesome. And you drop it? On the wax paper. You know what it reminds me of is something we do in the South. Pralines or pralines. Oh, yes. I know they're so delicious. Which is made with...
dairy, but this was definitely a brittle, though. Well, that's what she calls it, yep. It was hard. It was a little bit chewy, though. It wasn't hard like peanut brittle. It was more chewy than that, but not as chewy as a caramel. When you make it, what's going wrong? The texture's wrong? Yes, the texture's wrong. By the time I wait for it to get the golden color, it's gotten too hard. And if I don't wait for it to get the golden color, then it doesn't get hard.
Have you tried adding a little corn syrup to the mixture when you're heating it? I think I did once because I looked at a peanut brittle recipe and it called for that, but that didn't work either. You use a candy thermometer, right, when you're doing this, or are you just looking at color? I'm just looking at color. I would get an InstaRead thermometer, a good one, because you want to get that sugar syrup to, what, 248 to 249, 250, whatever it is. I think also...
Then you add other ingredients, and then I think you may have to take it up to a higher level on the second pass with this, I think. What's happening, I think, is it's the wrong sugar temperature. Either it's too high or too low.
If you don't have any chew, you just may be, the sugar is being brought to too high a temperature. That would be the thing, right, Cheryl? Yeah, but I'm really still perplexed about the texture because I've never... seen or heard of a brittle that's individually done and it seems that it would be hard to do it quick enough right
You know, so that's what made me start thinking about a praline or praline, which has dairy. So I do think there is a missing ingredient. It's not foggy like a praline. It's more clear. Okay. And it's not soft. Like a praline, I know you can just kind of break it. It's not that soft. It's not soft. Okay. It's a brittle, like she called it. I would add corn syrup, and I would definitely get a good Insta-Read thermometer.
nail the temperature. That's the problem with candy making. It has to be pretty precise. Also, when you take the temperature, push up. the pan a little bit right so the liquid goes away from you in the pan so when you put the thermometer tip in the middle and you mix it around a little bit you're getting an accurate reading because that's also a problem how much corn syrup do you think would be good
Two cups of sugar, four cups of sugar. What's the amount? One cup. Two tablespoons of corn syrup is fine. And then, Cheryl, what are you thinking about the baking soda? For that amount, that's not very much. No. So maybe a half a teaspoon? Yeah. Okay. I will try both of those things. Because, I mean, I would think that that would help. But have you ever had trouble when you're scooping it out or portioning it out? Do you have any trouble getting it done fast enough before it sets up?
Well, I haven't gotten it to set properly, so I haven't come across that yet. We need to have a new rule on this show, which is if someone's making something delicious, they have to send us some, right? I think so, too. I mean, this is definitely put some in the mail because we'd love to try it, right? Yeah. I mean, I just love the thought of it being on a little piece of wax. paper that's just so you know old-timey yeah i love it i love it too yeah all right
Hope that works out. Okay. Thanks for your question. Thank you so much. Take care. Bye-bye. You're listening to Milk Street Radio. Right now, author Julia George-Allis is here with a tip for how to eat your Christmas tree. Hi, I'm Julia Georgialis and here are three ways that I really like to use my Christmas tree in my cooking. The first is...
a recipe based on a traditional Italian cake called torta di pinoli e chocolato. Pine nuts are something that people don't usually associate with Christmas trees, but they do actually come from pine trees. And so the way I like to use these... is to toast the pine nuts in with the butter and incorporate them in a really chocolatey, gooey brownie. The second way is hands down one of my favourite recipes, Christmas tree ice cream.
I really love to use blue spruce as weirdly spruce tastes quite a lot like vanilla. And so the way that you make this ice cream is you take a big bunch of Christmas tree needles, clean them really, really well, chop them up and steep. those needles in a custard so cream, milk, sugar, egg yolks and then you end up with this beautiful Christmas tree flavoured ice cream which is really exciting and quite surprising I think.
And then the third way is really, really fun. You can make a Christmas tree booze. So you can use your older, drier Christmas tree. You could also use the bark. And what you would do is you take two large handfuls of spruce fir or pine. Put them in a sterilised glass bottle full of good quality gin or vodka and let the alcohol infuse for about four days. And after you've got yourself a really beautiful kind of alpine...
flavored alcohol, which you can gift or you can drink well into the new year. Happy holidays. That was Julia George-Allis, author of How to Eat Your Christmas Tree. You can get her recipe for Christmas tree ice cream at Milkstreetradio.com. Coming up after the break, how a viral creation changed one baker's life. This January, the energy price cap is due to rise.
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Not near the house, please. Come on, up the other end of the garden. It's fine, Mum! Oh, it's gone straight through the kitchen with... We'll get someone out to replace that for you. Don't worry. With DirectLine's accidental damage cover added to your home insurance, whether you've smashed your window or spilt wine on your carpet, we'll get you from problem to solution as quickly as possible. DirectLine. We're on it. This is Mill Street Radio. I'm your host, Christopher Kimball.
It's no surprise people go nuts for cronuts. The $5 Crisanti donut confection that's gone viral. People lining up as early as 5 a.m., even overnight sometimes, just to snag a maximum of two of these elite trees. That was a clip from an ABC News segment in 2013 when baker Dominique Ancel went viral for his invention of the cronut.
What happens after a viral baking moment? Well, 10 years after the invention of that pastry, Dominique Ancel is here to tell us. Dominique, welcome to Milk Street. Thank you. Thank you for having me. I actually have used your recipes, and you actually have changed the way you bake. I've always loved to bake, but some of your ideas were, I thought, really innovative.
You're high on my list of experts on baking. It's so nice to hear. Thank you. So you're a serious guy. You're a serious baker. And then this phenomenon happens, which, you know, I'm sure you don't regret. But... I guess you never thought when you got started you'd at least briefly end up with a bouncer outside. Absolutely not. I don't think anyone can think of this. If you had told me that like 20 years ago, I would have laughed at you. But I did.
I did and remember it was like 2013 I only had four employees at the bakery and we're trying to do something special and I had made this pastry just for the weekend and randomly a friend of ours, snapped a photo of it and put it on his blog. Still had blogs at the time. And he had to call me the same day and explain to me that his article went viral. So of course, you know...
Putting things in perspective, that's just the beginning of social media. Something going viral, like, I have no idea what you're talking about. Like, I'm happy for you. You have to go on viral. It's like, no, no, no, you don't understand. We had an increase of traffic of 300%.
And over 140,000 links to the same article in just a couple hours. This thing is huge. Be ready. You're going to get busy this weekend. I was like, oh, sure. Yeah, you know, I made like 35 today. I'm going to make 45 tomorrow. And little did I know, by day three, we had over 150 people line up before we even opened the shop.
People would come as early as 2 o'clock in the morning, lining up on the sidewalk. You know, the neighbors were calling the police because everyone was so loud. It was like madness. It was like so overwhelming. So what's so good about the crow nut? I mean, first of all, explain to me how you make it. And secondly, why did it become such an obsession with so many people, do you think? Sure. So how we make it, it takes, you know,
process your croissant. It takes about three days to make. Why it went so big and viral is still hard to pinpoint. Exactly. A lot of people asked me this question. I think it was a time where people were looking for something exciting, something new. And we had this like, you know, cute, I would say cute idea.
to combine a croissant, a donut shape, and to finish it like it was elegant. It was changing the flavor every month. And then, you know, things went viral because people relate to it. People, like, understood what it was. And then... Picked it up from one news to another, from one country to another. And then, you know, before we knew it, it went across the world. Did you come up with a name or was the name, did someone else come up with it later? Yeah, we came up with a name. It was...
Very interesting because at the time we had our friend who also was a lawyer. She was like, oh, listen, you know, this is a great idea. You should trademark the Kronat. I was like, no, no, no. I don't want to bother with that. She was like, no, no, no. You should do it.
I was like, no, no, there's no need. It's just a pastry. I don't want to do that. She's like, listen, I'm going to do it for you. Good for her. And we'll talk about it later. And she did it. And five days later, there were about 27 applications for the same. Same name. And she explained to me that trolls will go after it if it goes viral. They will try to trademark it before you and they will prevent you from using your own name.
Well, that's because very often the big difference between one thing and another is the name. Exactly, yeah. And the name sometimes is the mark that people recognize as a product. Are there different... styles of being a pastry chef, you know, doing a perfect tartatin or coconut layer cake or just doing, you know, like in Japan, you do the same thing over and over again to get really good at it for years.
Then there's, you know, for the eye, right? The pastry chef where the plate is entertainment, lots of little dots of fruit puree, et cetera. So there's a lot of... presentation. Where do you stand on that in terms of either just doing a great job with something familiar on the other end of the spectrum, you know, making dessert an experience? Or is there...
Is it always just a combination of those things? Yeah, that's actually a great question. I think you need a little bit of both. I always say, like, you only recognize a good pastry chef by a perfect croissant. A croissant is very telling. It sounds simple. It sounds silly.
But it's very hard, technically, to master. Now, hold on. Croissant does not sound simple. Croissant, to me, sounds like the hardest thing in the world you can possibly make. And I've tried. But it's simple in the... in the idea of it you know it's like hundreds of years old it was some similar shape it's a french classic you can find it like all around the world there's a lot of bad croissants so many bad croissants all over the world yes there are but it's hard to find a good one
So you go to Paris and you start dropping off resumes at various bakeries. And you say, after just a few days, I had eight job offers. So what year was this and how did you get eight job offers just randomly dropping off resumes? So I was living with my parents, coming back from my military service. And I just want one thing is to find a job in Paris. So I had like $2,000 of savings.
I had bought this small car that was falling apart. I would drive from my hometown to Paris every day. It was about 9 and a half drive. And I was completely lost. I would drive around with my huge map. that would unfold in the car because no GPS, no cell phone at the time. And every time I would see a bakery, I was...
Parked the car quickly, dropped off a resume and ran back to my car. Eventually, you know, people started calling, asking me, you know, questions and offering me jobs on the phone. It was 1998. I was still in my 20s. No, I was barely 20s. I was 19 years old. It was a fun time. So let's get into baking and recipes. You like souffles. You talk about a fruit souffle. So a standard souffle, usually some sort of a bechamel base. But the fruit souffle, is that a...
cooked, thickened fruit base as the base for it, or do you still use a bechamel? What's the base of a fruit souffle? So fruit souffle usually is a puree of fruits that you mash up and strain and then you make custard with like pastry cream. One of my tricks actually is that I had a little bit of cornstarch. So cornstarch kind of like stabilizes the egg whites and keep it good right there. I remember my days at Daniel, working for Daniel Beaulieu.
the sales on the menu and always there's always someone that wanted the classic souffle in the middle of service on a Saturday night. and of course you know it throws like everything off and you have to stop everything and like make a pastry cream and whip the egg whites and you have to time everything with server it's it's very very challenging so what i found out
But with the regular recipe, just special cream and egg whites will always collapse and will never like rise up the right way or it's cracked. There's always something wrong. So what I found out, I added a little bit of cornstarch. And with the egg whites and the cornstarch, that makes the perfect texture. So you're whipping the whites, adding sugar to the whites, and also adding some cornstarch to the whites as you whip them? Actually, no. I add the cornstarch in the pastry cream. I see.
and when you put in your dish you can keep it in the fridge for a couple of hours and then just pop it in the oven and it rises up perfectly it's just like the perfect recipe But then you've also said, and I agree with this, you say it's important to leave room for mistakes. But being a pastry chef, there's very little room for mistakes because it's precision, it's weighing, it's science.
When is it okay to leave room for mistakes? I think your whole life you have to leave room for mistakes. The only way human people learn. We still make mistakes in our kitchen every day. They're learning experiences in life. And none of us is born doing everything perfectly. I still do mistakes and I still learn from it. And thankfully, if I knew everything, it'll be a boring life. Well...
I should get a medal of honor for mistakes. I think the key is not whether you make mistakes. It's just surviving them. Speaking of failure, you say. ... ... ... ... ... ... and end up looking like an ashtray at the end. So what is this dish? What is this? So this dish is, we created this dish. The theme was the first time in life. And one of the dish was first heartbreak. So I wanted to talk about the beauty of love.
and how it starts with like a beautiful dish. So we had made like this ice cream, this rocky road ice cream with a little marshmallow on top. And underneath the dish was hidden. a little piece of rice paper that was sticking out with the love notes and we will give people matches and we'll tell them to light on fire the little love notes.
and they would see the paper burning and melting all the meringues around the little ice cream and turn these meringues into ashes. So that was the interpretation of love, starting with something beautiful. And sometimes, you know, first heartbreak ending up into something like very sad. And what do we do when you have a heartbreak? You eat ice cream. That's quite a story. I really like that.
Something beautiful, complete disaster, and then you drown your sorrows in the ice cream. French rice pudding, turgul, I've never heard of. It kind of looks like a Basque cheesecake or something with a very dark top to it. I'm a big rice pudding fan. But this one seemed really interesting. It's from Normandy. You want to just explain it because I don't know why I never heard of it, but it sounds great.
Yeah, it's a French classic turgul. It's from Normandy. Traditionally, it was made in cast iron. It was rice that they were putting in a dish, covering with milk, and let it... this cooked in the in the oven for a couple of hours until it gets dark so to google is like delicious dish it's it's so good it's creamy this is like beautiful almost like creme brulee like layer on top almost like a pasta cheesecake like you just described very dark and the bottom should be like creamy and soft
Just like sugar, milk, you know, a little bit of rice and put this in the oven. It's more simple and delicious, easy to do rice pudding. Another thing I love about what you do is you decide... Your wife really likes the chocolate pudding at the hospital. So you make your own version. So what was so good about that chocolate pudding and what did you do to sort of make it more interesting? I think in this new cookbook, Life's Sweetest Moments, I think we talk a lot about why people bake.
and the reason why people buy pastries from us, you know, to say thank you, to say I'm sorry sometimes, to say congratulations, to say happy birthday. There's always a reason behind why people buy pastries. The chocolate pudding, you know, it's a moment where my wife and I had our first baby at the hospital and she was eating that.
chocolate pudding and it's such a simple dish it's like it's not the greatest one but you know it's sweet it's comforting it's simple and it makes you reminds you of that moment in time where you leave something special. So the connection between the food and the memory is very important.
Well, I would just point out for listeners that you added the dollop of olive oil chantilly cream. So, OK, you were you were sexing it up or however you want to describe it. A little bit. Yeah, for sure. The ultimate cookie. I mean, I've discussed the ultimate cookie with many people over the years. So your ultimate cookie is what? My ultimate cookie is something warm out of the oven, like every American kid. And, you know, I can say that now.
I understand and I know what a good cookie is. I grew up in France where we had no clue what a good cookie is. I remember the cookies when I was a kid, there were just a few in a pastry case. They were dry. They were flat. They were not good at all. French people don't eat cookies. Well, I have this thing about cookies like a chocolate chip. Everybody overbakes them because they think...
The center should be set, but it's like a pie, custard pie. The center should be soft, and it'll continue to bake when it comes out of the oven. So almost everybody overbakes their cookies. You're right, and once you overbake it, they're just not that good.
Yeah, for sure. And it's fascinating to me because, you know, again, bringing back to the nostalgia of being a kid, I always ask people, what is the first thing you've ever done in the kitchen? 95% of people will answer me, it's something sweet.
It's a pie. It's a cookie. It's a, you know, it's a pound cake that I made with my mom, my grandma. And it's amazing because people are always scared of baking. They always think it's more complicated, more scientific, you need more tools. But it's the first thing they've done as a kid. And when you think about it, why did they think back as a kid it was so simple and so easy and so like comforting? Because they always had mom or grandma like baking with them.
guiding them step by step that's why when i think of cookbooks i always make it like as simple as possible i always make it as like approachable as possible so people feel like almost like they're baking with their mom or their grandma Dominique, just thank you so much. I love your work. I love your recipes and all the best. Thank you. Thank you. It was a pleasure.
That was Dominique Ancel. He's a pastry chef, also author of Life's Sweetest Moments. You can find his recipe for turgul at MilkStreetRadio.com. You know, the world of baking is full of curious creations, such as Dominique Ansel's cronut. But many Christmas celebrations are even stranger. In Sweden, they celebrate the Yule goat.
In Japan, a special holiday meal is sold at Kentucky Fried Chicken under the name Kentucky for Christmas. In Russia, Santa is accompanied by his granddaughter, Snagoruchka. The Snow Maiden. In Finland, it's children's shoes instead of stockings to hold the gifts. And in Eastern Europe, Krampus, the evil companion of St. Nicholas.
He punishes bad children with birch rods. But my favorite tradition is actually American. It's the Christmas pickle, an ornament hidden on the tree, and the child who finds it gets a special present. Pickles and Christmas? Now there's a festive holiday tradition. I'm Christopher Kimball, and this is Milk Street Radio. Right now, I'm joined by Rose Hattabaugh to learn about this week's recipe.
Paris Flan. Rose, how are you? Good, Chris. How are you? Good. I was in Paris not too long ago, and I stopped by a restaurant called Amazonia, and the pastry chef at the time was Stefan Jimenez. He's been around. He's French Laundries. He's got a long, long background. And he made something for me, which is common in Paris, but not here, called Paris Flan or Periflan. It's pastry cream in a crust, baked in a round.
And it's four inches high. There's this behemoth thing. And the secret of this was the crust was thin, but the pastry cream filling was light. You know, and you think about, oh, my God, I'm going to eat, you know, two cups of pastry. A stomach bomb. But it was like magic. So I think you fell in love with it, too. But we started with the crust.
In the pan. You know, in Europe, of course, they use these metal rounds that have no bottom. And of course, most people in this country don't do that. So how do we fix that problem? Well, we found the... best thing to use for this because, as you said, it's a pretty high crust. So a springform pan seemed to be the best way to solve this problem. So if you take the crust and...
drape it over a springform, then you can push it into the sides and use a paring knife to kind of cut it where you want it. And that worked out perfectly for us. It's also kind of a nice way to store it if you're going to make it a hit. He also showed me a... pastry dough method in a stand mixer with softened butter and flour, and then he added the egg and sugar.
But he mixed it for just a minute or so, and then he frisaged it. I think he chilled it maybe for a bit, but he pressed it out with his heel just once or twice and gathered together. The whole process took two minutes, three minutes. Now, that's something that's more of a pastry chef technique, but I think we decided to go with something a little more, you know, American, right? Yes, the dough is made in a food processor, so it's a little bit easier for a home cook. So we pre-bake.
the dough, and then meanwhile we make a pastry cream. Just maybe refresh everyone's memory about what is a pastry cream, and then getting the thickness was kind of tricky, right? Yes, well, a pastry cream is you're heating milk and cream or sometimes just milk, just cream. We're actually using a whole quart of milk and a couple of cups of heavy cream.
add some vanilla to that, and then you want to temper some eggs with it. The real challenge with this flan is that you want to make sure the amount of cornstarch that you add that will actually thicken the pastry cream. Does it make it too thick or gummy, or does it make it so soft that you can't slice it? So that was the problem really we worked on. I think we used about a half a cup of cornstarch in this, and that seemed to be the perfect amount.
And of course, sugar as well. Oh, yes. Nothing like a sugarless. Right. So we fit the dough into the pan and then refrigerate that. Meanwhile, you make the pastry cream and put the warm pastry cream into that cold crust. And then you put that back in the fridge because during baking, if you don't, the filling is going to rise up too high.
over the sides of the crust. And then that goes into the oven. But then when it was ready to slice after it had cooled, he showed me, Stefan showed me this great trick. Take a serrated bread knife. cut directly across in half, down through the crust and a little bit into the custard, and then take a typical thin, you know, chef-style knife to cut. And that way, the pastry crust gets cut cleanly.
you'd end up breaking a piece off because the crust itself is pretty thin. That was such a great tip because you get such a beautiful slice because you're not trying to cut through something crusty and then the creamy filling. And I'm glad you brought that tip back because it was great. Yeah, so this is like one of those, well, not rare, but sort of rare times when I come across something I'd never seen. Millions of Parisians are familiar with it.
You know, kids would get a slice, you know, at the bakery coming back from school. It's absolutely delicious. And the secret is it looks heavy, but it's light. And I think the baking, I don't know if you agree with me, but I think. Something happens to a cooked pastry cream in the oven where it's sort of baked a second time. I think it rises up and becomes lighter. It's not as dense as a typical pastry cream. It's amazing how light it is.
You know, when you look at it, you think it's very thick and heavy, but it's so delicious, light, so vanilla-y. I think it's a perfect dessert. Yeah, when he gave me that slice, which was huge, I was a little taken aback. And then I ate the whole thing. And I felt fine. I had no regrets whatsoever. So Paris Flan, essentially pastry cream in a shell, a pastry shell, lighter than it looks and easier than it sounds. Rose, thank you. You're welcome. Have a great holiday.
You can find this recipe for Paris Blonde at MilkStreetRadio.com. You're listening to Milk Street Radio. Coming up, our favorite food books of the year. This January, the energy price cap is due to rise. But with Eon Next, you can start your year on the right track. Our next pledge tariff guarantees to keep your energy prices below the cap. So if the cap goes up or down, you're still winning.
Beat the price cap and save with Eon Next. Switching is a breeze. Visit eonnext.com today. Next pledges a 12-month fixed-term tariff. Rates adjusted quarterly to stay below Ofgem's price cap. Your bill depends on usage. T's and C's apply. Pay by card. Earning points. It's as simple as it's what you can do with them that counts. Discoveries with friends. Memories with your taste buds. Or just one epic. Thank you.
to status 18 plus T's and C's apply. It was the night before Christmas when all through our home, friends were waiting for drinks at the party we'd thrown with an espresso martini mixer from Fever Tree. All you need to add is the vodka, you see. Five espresso martinis ready in a second. A Christmas miracle, everybody reckoned. So this holiday season, mix with the best.
with fever tree cocktails for you and your guests. Please enjoy responsibly. I'm Christopher Kimball, and you're listening to Milk Street Radio. Right now, it's time for some holiday cocktail inspiration from J.M. Hirsch. There's something winter weather romantic about a hot buttered rum, but it's not exactly a crowd-friendly cocktail. Luckily, I've got the perfect trick for turning this classic into a batched cocktail that's ideal for holiday entertaining.
The secret is a fancy yet still simple cocktail technique called fat washing. Here's how it works. Fatty ingredients, things like bacon fat, coconut oil, or peanut oil, are packed with flavorful molecules that love to dissolve in alcohol. So when you stir together a liquor and a fat and you let them sit for a bit, the liquor quickly tastes like that fat. That's right, you can make bacon-flavored bourbon. But don't worry, you're not drinking the fat.
After a quick infusion, you pop the mixture into the freezer. The fat solidifies and becomes easy to strain out, leaving just the flavor behind. So let's use this trick to make a full bottle of buttered rum cocktails, one of 75 batched cocktails in my book, Frieza Door Cocktails. Start by combining 18 ounces of aged rum and one stick of melted butter in a four-cup liquid measuring cup.
Leave it on the counter for 10 minutes or so, stirring it every once in a while. Now pop it in the freezer for about an hour or just until the butter rises to the top and hardens. Next, use a mesh strainer to strain the rum into a 750 milliliter bottle. Discard the butter or save it to make some pretty amazing popcorn. To the bottle, add two and a quarter ounces of orange liqueur, two and a quarter ounces of agave or simple syrup, two ounces of water, and a generous pinch of grated nutmeg.
Cap the bottle, give it a shake, and stir it on the freezer door until ready to serve. When ready to serve, offer the bottle with coupe or cocktail glasses and some hard apple cider for adding a splash to each glass. I'm Christopher Kimball, and you're listening to Milk Street Radio. Right now, it's time to look back on the year with our very good friend, Adam Gopnik. Adam, how are you? I am well, Chris. How are you? I feel it's that time of year.
where our literary muses come out, and we reveal our favorite food-related books. And since you're an avid reader and avid cook, you should go first. The Gopnik Kimball Prize. Let's try. So my first book that I particularly enjoyed and learned from this year was The Editor. How Publishing Legend Judith Jones Shaped Culture in America by Sarah B. Franklin. Now, the subject of this book, as you know, Chris, is the publishing legend Judith Jones, who was an editor and shaped culture in America.
Really, the subtitle should be Shaped Cooking in America, because though it's true that she was an important literary editor, her central contribution to American letters and American culture was bringing Julia Child to the attention. of the United States in the 1960s. And what fascinated me about this book, which is extremely well done, is that she really invented, in a sense, the cookbook as we have it now. Because what was unique about Julia Child and the...
Mastering the Art of French Cooking, as it came to be called, was that it was both about an individual and a cuisine. And if you think about it, Chris, almost every successful cookbook now... almost always involves a single figure who's being offered as a prism into a larger culture. That seems self-evident to us now, but it wasn't self-evident in the mid-1960s when Mastering the Art of French Cooking came out.
And then Judith went on to publish many other books, cookbooks of a similar kind, and genuinely transformed our understanding of what a cookbook is. She did. Well, my first book and one of my favorite books of all time is called The Light Eaters by Zoe Schlanger. It's about whether or not vegetables have a soul. And the conclusion is... They might, which is pretty amazing. But if you put a cabbage in boiling water, it releases a death sound.
Many plants, like pea plants, send their roots towards flowing water. They know where it is. Corn, when attacked by a caterpillar, sends out a gas to attract the right type of wasp, which will come. inject eggs into the caterpillars and kill them. So this notion of plants being able to make decisions based on their environment.
It's just absolutely fascinating. That is both fascinating and, quite frankly, a little frightening because now you're telling me that a carrot is capable of emotion, that we will soon be cordoned off into a corner drinking water and eating water. What exactly? Adam, corn on the cob? No. Can't do it. Can't do it. Anyway, The Light Eaters, highly recommend it. I will get it right away. My next book is...
by Ariel Johnson, who I think should be Dr. Ariel Johnson or Ariel Johnson PhD. It's Flavorama, A Guide to Unlocking the Art and Science of Flavor. Have you read this one? Yes, I have. I thought it was fascinating. Now, normally I'm a little skeptical or even allergic to books that take on the molecular level of our experience of taste. But this book is so well done.
I thought. It's so revealing in terms of what it is that creates flavor, the interaction of molecular chemistry and human receptivity, that not only did I learn something from it, but I felt that it gave me a sharper understanding. understanding of the palette of flavors that I'm playing with all the time. It actually helped me sharpen my own cooking. So I thought it was a book that made the connection between the scientific layer and the aesthetic layer.
lucid in a way that no similar book had for me before. Yeah, I really, those books are tough because sometimes they get into molecular biology, but I thought she made her case clearly and in a... conversant way, right? So you could really understand it. My next book is called Rintaro. You probably know the restaurant in the Bay Area.
by Sylvan Brackett, who came to California from Japan when he was a mere babe. But what I love about this book, besides the design with woodcuts, it just is a fabulously designed book. But he takes Japanese cooking and kind of makes it... Tuesday night cooking, like chicken meatballs or frying breaded chicken breast with a slice of cheese in the middle, perfect for my young kids. Blanched vegetables with a cold-seasoned dashi. So there's a lot of...
day-to-day useful stuff. It takes Japanese cooking to the American table in a way that was really charming and also... talking about flavors and combinations and colors in Japanese cooking. But it was a combination of the sublime and the everyday that made this, for me, probably one of my favorite cookbooks of all time.
Wow, that's high praise. I have not read this book through. I leafed through it at the local cookbook store. And what struck me about it is it wasn't taking Japanese cooking so much up to the next level, but in the best sense, down to a more accessible level.
Exactly. My final book, you know, I always love to bring a vintage classic to these conversations. And this is one that's been a classic for a long time and that I had frankly been avoiding. It's Robert Farrar Capon's The Supper of the Lamb. which was first published in 1969. I was a little skeptical of it because I tend to be skeptical of overtly spiritualized books. about food, but I discovered that this book is in fact an absolutely delightful meditation.
on not so much the spirituality of cooking, but if you like, the zen of cooking. Robert Capon, when he wrote it, was an Anglican minister and has a powerfully Christian. content, but of a wonderfully idiosyncratic kind. There's a charming part where he talks about the pleasure he takes in an absolutely horrible bottle of bogus kirsch that he keeps in the house. And he writes, I take a sip to remind myself what a paragon of awfulness.
is, but partly to prove that for all its faults it is not undrinkable. In a real world, nothing is infinitely bad. My bottle of bogus Kirch bears witness that there is no bottomless pit in any subject, that to be good or bad is not as much of an achievement as to be. At all. That's a sentence I would have loved to have written. Yeah, that was a good one.
And my last book, and this is for people who love waffles, split waffles, rolled up waffles, double cooked waffles, sweet potato waffles, dark rye and honey cake by regular Eastwind. She's from Belgium.
This is about Belgium, Netherlands, the Low Countries, Luxembourg. It's about festival baking and has amazing recipes you just won't find anywhere else. I am so drawn to this because I love waffles. And in fact, I have a tear in my eye as we speak because... every Saturday morning throughout my kids.
Growing up, I would make waffles. I do too. And it made for joyous mornings. And now I wake up on a Saturday morning. Both of my kids are fruitfully employed elsewhere. And I have no one to make a waffle for. So I sometimes sadly end up making them exclusively.
for myself. Well, I was asked at a talk last week, what's my favorite recipe? And my answer was Saturday morning waffles. Once again, two minds with but a single recipe. Saturday morning waffles would be at the very summit of my list as well. And for the same reason. Adam, thank you so much. Have a great 2025. Have a happy new year with your kids. Yeah, you too. Take care.
That was Adam Gopnik, staff writer at The New Yorker. His latest book is The Real Work on the Mystery of Mastery. That's it for today. You can find all of our episodes at MilkStreetRadio.com or wherever you get your podcasts. To know more about Milk Street and everything we have to offer during this holiday season, please go to 177milkstreet.com. There you can become a member and get full access to all of our recipes.
and free standard shipping from the Milk Street store, and much more. You can also learn about our latest book, Milk Street Bakes. Plus, we have a complete collection of all of our favorite holiday recipes at MilkStreetRadio.com slash holiday. You can also find us on Facebook at Christopher Kimball's Milk Street, Instagram at 177 Milk Street.
We'll be back next week with more food stories and kitchen questions. Happy holidays from all of us here at Milk Street. And thanks, as always, for listening. Christopher Campbell's Milk Street Radio is produced by Milk Street in association with GBH. Co-founder, Melissa Valdino. Executive producer, Annie Sinspaugh. Senior editor, Melissa Allison. Senior producer, Sarah Clapp.
Associate producer, Caroline Davis, with production help from Debbie Paddock. Additional editing by Sidney Lewis. Audio mixing by Jay Allison at Atlantic Public Media in Woods Hole, Massachusetts. Theme music by Chewbop Crew. Additional music by George Myrtle Eggloff. Christopher Kimmel's Milk Street Radio is distributed by PRX.
This January, the energy price cap is due to rise. But with Eon Next, you can start your year on the right track. Our next pledge tariff guarantees to keep your energy prices below the cap. So if the cap goes up or down, you're still winning. Beat the price cap and save with Eon Next. Switching is a breeze. Visit eonnext.com today.
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This is Christopher Kimball. We just announced our culinary tours for 2025 fall departures. Now, I'm particularly excited about the tour of London, and it begins in the soil at a farm in the Cotswolds, and then ends up in London at the Nation. nation's oldest baking school.
In between, we visit an eighth-generation mill, eat at a private supper club, take a baking class with my friends at London's Honey & Co., and make pizza, sourdough loaves, cookies, scones, focaccia with Elaine Boddy and Sophie Carey. And we send you on a scavenger hunt of bakeries across London. Yes, there are prizes. The April departure is sold out, but you can join the September trip by signing up at 177milkstreet.com slash tours. One more time. 177milkstreet.com slash tours.