Day 10 Lecture - Financier, Butter, Brown Butter

In this podcast episode, the chefs discuss butter and its different forms. They explain that clarified butter has all the liquids and solids removed through cooking, leaving behind pure fat. Brown butter, also known as beurre noisette, is created by cooking butter until the water evaporates and the milk solids brown and caramelize. They also mention fondantiers, a French almond tea cake made with brown butter, and discuss different methods of baking and serving it. Sautéing is another cooking technique that they mention, recommending the use of clarified butter for high heat cooking. They also talk about a la minute plating, which involves assembling desserts to order for a more artistic presentation. The chefs share their methods for making clarified butter and brown butter, emphasizing the importance of monitoring the browning process. Welcome to episode 10, serving the final course, a plated dessert podcast. I'm Chef Livesey. And I'm Chef Schick. And today we're going to be talking about butter. We're going to go over clarified and brown butter, financier, what they are, and then baking it a la minute versus holding it warm, sautéing, and a la minute plating. All right, let's get started with butter. And what is in, what makes up butter? So typical composition of butter is 80% to 82% fat, and roughly 16% to 17.5% water, 1.5% salt, and 1% milk solids, which includes vitamins, minerals, and lactose. Wonderful. Some things we can do with that butter would be to clarify it. So clarified butter is going to be butter that has all liquids and solids removed through cooking, which leaves behind 100% fat. This is going to give you a milk point that is higher due to the removal of those milk solids, which means that it can be used in high heat cooking applications such as sautéing. All right, let's talk about brown butter. Oh, one of my favorites. I also love brown butter, also known as beurre noisette in French. So this is basically what you're doing here is you're taking your butter and you're cooking it long enough that all of the water has evaporated, and then the milk solids start to brown and caramelize. Oh, and that makes them taste so good. It really does. So this creates a more complex, nuttier flavor, and it's used in many pastry applications such as fondantier. And you might be wondering what a fondantier is. These are a classic French almond tea cake. That's normally how I like to describe them. And they have a really unique history, actually. The history is one that starts with its namesake. So being a financier, so working in the financial district of Paris, and the shape of the fondantier is actually because it resembles gold bars. So it's in a bar shape. And the bankers, they liked the rich, buttery almond cakes made by local bakers. And soon, these little cakes became very popular and part of the repertoire of lingerie and patisseries all across France. I love fondantiers. Me too. Yeah, I like, they're just very dense, they're rich. I also love anything almond flavored. They're a little crunchy on the outside and soft and tender on the inside. Yeah, so we can talk a little bit here about how we make fondantiers. Yes, we should. So that is using the blending, mixing method. And those can be baked a la minute. So you can make that batter ahead of time and let it sit in the fridge. And then you can bake it right before you're serving it. And then you also have the option of warm holding it, which basically means that you're baking it in advance. But then you're keeping it in a warm oven, usually wrapped so that it's not drying out on you. And then so that you can serve it with a little bit of a quicker turnaround than, say, something that is baked to order, but still being served warm. You know, one thing that isn't in our lecture, but one thing that we should talk about is what if we hold them room temp or cold, but we just reheat them in the oven prior to serving to crisp up that outside as opposed to holding them warm? I'm here for it. Yeah, I think that's a great option, actually. Which I guess brings us to serving it. What temperature would we serve it? So I mean, I enjoy them both at room temperature and warm. But I think one of the benefits of serving something warm is that you're giving your guests a different experience. You're giving them different temperatures on the plate. And something that they wouldn't normally maybe experience in a restaurant that doesn't have the staff who can create a warm dessert to present it for you. Yeah, one of our contrasts, temperature, right there. That's like immediately built in. Exactly. And then we're going to kind of switch gears to sautéing. So we talked about that sautéing, you would want to use clarified butter because it's a high heat cooking method. And sautéing is a way of cooking fruit or vegetables that can add flavor through a quick, high heat cooking process. It tenderizes and caramelizes the food to preserve the texture. And you do want to monitor it as you're cooking it so that you prevent your products from getting mushy. We still want to see some of those nice, sharp, knife-skill edges. Yes, exactly. I think one of the biggest problems that sometimes people run into when sautéing is not letting that pan get hot enough. Oh, definitely. So when we're talking about sautéing, we're making sure that that pan is super hot. You're adding your product in so that it's cooking very rapidly. Yeah, that's a great point. And it won't cook us on the exterior. Absolutely. Okay, talking a little bit more about a la minute plating, or by the minute plating, is when we're assembling our desserts to order. So this is something that you would typically see in fine dining restaurants, where they have a staff on hand who can be assembling this dessert and not pulling something from the fridge that was pre-assembled earlier in the day. And you can create these different contrasts on the plate through hot items or frozen items. All right, next we're going to talk about a la minute plating, which is plating by the minute or assembling your desserts to order. What are the benefits of that, and when can you use it? So this is something that you typically see in more fine dining restaurants, where you have a large number of staff who can be there during service to assemble a la minute plating, who can be putting things in the oven or taking things out of the oven so they're warm, can be scooping on the ice cream in order to get those contrasts on the plate, and just be able to present something a little more artistic and more involved, opposed to a place where they maybe have more simplified components or things that are going to be partially needed or just in the grab-and-go type of things. And things that you're doing on the menu is how long does it take to prepare a plate or how well-trained is your staff that you can do? So with clarified butter, we talked about how to use it and what it is, but we haven't talked about how to make it. So let's talk about how we actually make clarified butter, and there's a few different ways to do it. So, Jeff, I'm going to talk about the way I do it, and then if you have a different way, feel free to jump in. So my favorite way to do clarified butter is probably one of the easiest. If you look at a block of butter, it's emulsified. It's all the same color. So first thing we have to do is we have to break down emulsification, and the way I like to do that is by boiling my butter. So I'll put it on the stove, I'll bring it to a boil, I'll turn off the heat, and then I'll let it cool. And as it cools, it separates, and you'll see that there's a creaminess on the bottom where all of your solids are, and you have your pure fat layer that's very clear fat on the top. Once that has separated, I then slowly pour off the fat off the top. I see in a little bit of the chunks that are on the top, there's some skin there. And then it's kind of left with this clear, pure fat. And that's how I do it. I know there's other ways. I'm curious to hear. No, that's exactly how I do it as well, Chef. I think that that's the most common method for doing it. And it's easy. Yes, yes. In the last, you accidentally forget about it like I do, and then you end up with brown butter. So, when we are talking about the process of making brown butter, same process starting off with, for when we're making clarified butter, which is we take the butter, we put it onto, into a pot, into a stove, and then once it comes to a boil, you don't turn off the heat, you just continue that cooking process. And what happens is that water content that is in your butter evaporates off, and then your butter will start to caramelize and brown and become delicious. Things that you need to be careful of are that you get very hot. I think people forget how hot it is. Even when you remove it from the stove, it's still at a very high temperature, even though it's not, the liquid was cooked out, so it's not really anything like any medication that is really extremely hot mixture. And then, it's also very easy to take it too far, so it's something that once your butter starts to brown, you have to monitor it during that process so that everything browns nicely without overcooking it. And then you remove it from the heat and let it cool completely. Thanks for listening, and we'll see you in the kitchen.