January 20, 2010 Meeting
On January 20, 2010, Michael Laiskonis, executive pastry chef of Le Bernardin, will present Composition and Structure: A Closer Look at Everyday Ingredients. As contemporary chefs continue on the path of exploring forward-thinking concepts through the marriage of cooking and science, we inevitably find ourselves stripping our ingredients down to their bare essentials, examining their composition and structure to better understand their functionality. Only by looking inward can we truly innovate and think further “outside-the-box.” Here, we’ll take a closer look at milk and dairy products from the perspective of a pastry chef: what they’re made of, how they work in traditional applications, and how we can exploit such knowledge in the pursuit of new ideas.