yes indeed, more ice cream

gianduja ice cream
Toasted hazelnuts. Milk chocolate. The only thing that could have made this better would have been if I had added chocolate chunks at the end. You can cheat when making this ice cream by using actual gianduja chocolate instead of toasting hazlenuts and steeping them in the milk. You don't get the same, intense hazelnut flavor, but it tastes delicious in it's own right.

pain au chocolat
Look at those layers! I made these a few weeks ago and stashed them in the freezer to cure any future croissant cravings. Unfortunately, I used up the last of my chocolate batons. One of my coworkers suggested using wedges of gianduja chocolate in place of chocolate batons, to create a Nutella-like experience inside a croissant. OH YES. I will try that next time for sure.

at work...
Chef has switched up some of the desserts and sorbets at work. We now serve an amazing blueberry sorbet (the color is incredibly vibrant) and a creamy toasted almond ice cream. Chef tasted the first batch of almond ice cream and pronounced it overspun, which means it spent too much time churning in the ice cream maker and almost churned into butter. She said you can tell by the overly fatty and grainy mouthfeel. The next batch was perfect, though. I had quite a few spoonfuls just to make absolutely certain. Heh.
We are also serving a new dessert amuse for the tasting menu which has four different kinds of tiny melon balls and a squirt of shiso syrup. Shiso is a giant, leafy Japanese herb which tastes a bit like mint or parsley. We blanch the leaves and puree them with a little corn syrup to make a brilliant green sauce. I love the way it tastes with melon and I think I will try to make a shiso-melon sorbet at home sometime soon.
I also got a re-cap this week of Chef's three rules for working in the pastry kitchen.
Rule #1: Always keep her informed. She won't get angry as long as she knows in advance.
Rule #2: There's no crying in pastry. Ahem. That one seems quite familiar. Chef specifies that if you are on the verge of breaking down, you should do so discreetly in the walk-in refrigerator or in the chocolate room.
Rule #3: When Guns N' Roses is playing on the radio, CRANK IT UP. Whenever there is lots of work to be done in a very short amount of time, you can hear Gunx N' Roses blasting from the radio in the pastry kitchen. Unfortunately, when Chef leaves for the night, some of my other coworkers like to blast Mika instead, specifically Big Girl (You Are Beautiful). I HATE THAT SONG. Really, really, really hate it.