Donna Yen:
Hi everyone, I'm Donna Yen, Cherry Bombe's Event Director. I want to welcome you all to Julia Jubilee, where we are celebrating the life and legacy of Julia Child. Today we bring you Nancy and Paola, a special chat and baking demo. I'd like to thank Crate&Barrel for making today's event and Julia Jubilee possible. So starting her career as a pastry chef, working with influential chefs at restaurants like Spago by Wolfgang puck, Michael's Restaurant in Los Angeles, Nancy Silverton has led to be one of the most influential chefs in food and drink in America. She's co-founded the world renowned La Brea Bakery as well as cherish LA institutions like Campanile. Nancy is the author of eight cookbooks including her most recent book, Chi Spacca. She owns many restaurants in Los Angeles including Pizzeria Mozza, Osteria Mozza, Mozza2Go, and Chi Spacca and her brand new restaurant, the Barish, in the historic Hollywood Roosevelt Hotel, and I believe it opens tomorrow. So she is a mentor to many and has famously made Julia Child weep after one bite of her brioche tart. So for those of you who haven't seen that video please go to Cherry Bombe's Instagram, we actually posted that video and it's amazing.
Donna Yen:
On the other coast we have Paola Velez, was born and raised in New York City and the Dominican Republic. She graduated from Le Cordon Bleu and has trained and worked as sous chef with master chocolatier Jacques Torres and then moved to DC to work with celebrated chef Christina Tosi at Milk Bar. Later, she co-founded and spearheaded Bakers Against Racism, a worldwide bake sale that raised over 1.9 million dollars for organizations that support black lives and black communities. Paula's now the Executive Pastry Chef at Compass Rose, Maydan and La Bodega restaurants in DC. So what do these two women have in common? Both have made a tremendous mark in the food world with their undeniable talent passion and vision, real trailblazers very much like Julia Child. So I want to bring both Nancy and Paola to the center of the screen. And Nancy, I think you are still on mute. We're going to have to... Oh, we're good now. Hi.
Nancy Silverton:
Hello.
Donna Yen:
And then we have Paola.
Paola Velez:
Hello.
Nancy Silverton:
That was an entrance.
Donna Yen:
I am so excited for you to meet. I mean, I think this is the first time you two meeting and what better way over madeleines. I'm just excited to see two amazing chefs together and I don't know, just you guys walking through this recipe and talking about your experience. And Paola, I think I'm going to let you take it from here. I will come back at the very end with some questions for the audience, I'm sure a lot of you will. So please make sure to use the Q&A function below. And have fun and I'll talk to you guys soon.
Paola Velez:
Yay, thank you for having me. Chef Nancy, I'm such a big fan, I wish I could hug you. Hug, hug, hug, hug,.
Nancy Silverton:
Well, I'm going to be in Washington in two weeks so I'm going to look you up. And I've been to Maydan before, great restaurant.
Paola Velez:
Yeah, let us know.
Nancy Silverton:
Oh I will.
Paola Velez:
I'm going to make the madeleines better. I've been rushing around and I think I really need to let my batter sit for that 24 hours...
Nancy Silverton:
Yes, key.
Paola Velez:
... to get that beautiful bump. I guess we could pump up the volume or bump up the volume, I don't know. Anyways, so I think today is just one of those things where I am so... For me, going to a culinary school, I only kind of had that inspiration after watching Julie and Julia, right? And I saw the life of Julia Child and I was blown away that someone could be so bold and proud to just be themselves on camera. And Carrie asked me to do my Julia Child's impersonation so I'm going to say, "Hello everyone." But I wanted to first introduce your recipe, you've been making this recipe, testing it out, and this is the first time anybody is ever going to see it so I feel really privileged to even have these ingredients right in front of me. So I think I'm going to ask a few questions and then we can go straight into the demo and hopefully I don't mess it up. But obviously, they can just watch your screen.
Nancy Silverton:
Well, as Julia would say, "There's really no way of messing something up, and everything including a chicken that falls on the floor to a souffle that doesn't rise, to a bechamel that might curdle, nothing is a mistake and everything is salvageable." And that's one of the reasons that, for me, she is, or has always been, such a mentor because she clearly has fun in the kitchen, she has fun cooking, she doesn't take herself seriously, and I think a lot of people have a lot to learn and be inspired by watching her old videos to see what cooking really is about.
Paola Velez:
I agree. I mean growing up, I just watched Jacques Pepin and Julia. And for me, seeing you is like that direct bridge, you're one degree of separation from somebody who I will never ever meet. I met Chef Jacques and he actually loves chocolate covered Oreos so that's my party trick. And I know what Jacques Pepin likes to eat. But what was it like to work on these shows? How did you end up on Julia's show?
Nancy Silverton:
Well, the first show that I did with her was a show that she was just starting, I think, for the first time separating herself from Jacques and doing her own show, and she wanted to do something called Master Chefs. And she wanted to feature, I don't remember how many, but let's say two dozen chefs from around the country each that she felt were accomplished in their genre, and so she chose me to be the bread baker. For the good and the bad of it, I was sort of the guinea pig. I was the first show that she and her production team taped. And so I can't say that it was a pleasurable experience. Anything that you're first of...
Paola Velez:
Is TV ever?
Nancy Silverton:
Well, sometimes it's fun, and I had a lot more fun on her baking show years later, they had to convince me that the baking show was a whole different format. What was hard about the first one was that I was alone on a screen and she was off to the side giving me direction. What made it much more fun and enjoyable, and I think successful, is the baking show that I did where she invited all of the bakers into her kitchen and we got to cook side by side in that iconic kitchen that is now on display at the Smithsonian in Washington, DC. But that was a whole different experience because it's a whole different vibe having that person next to you and having actually something to talk to.
Paola Velez:
Right. And I think that that's what makes this new kind of technological advancement in cooking demos so different because we I can look at you, you can tell me, "Hey, don't add that," and it makes it much more, I don't know, when I see you, I feel like a warm blanket is like, "You're going to be able to bake, this don't worry."
Nancy Silverton:
You are.
Paola Velez:
There's a couple of thousands of people watching this but there's no issue.
Nancy Silverton:
I agree. It's an interesting format because I've learned to just focus on the screen and I feel like I'm talking to you and I feel like you're just really on the other side of my work table.
Paola Velez:
Exactly, we're in community. But I wanted to go back and you mentioned that iconic kitchen, right? I remember watching, even just re-watching it on Cherry Bombe's Instagram channel, that taste, the tart, the brioche. Talk to me about that. How was that experience? Half of you looked like you were mortified, you were like, "Why are you crying?" Right?
Nancy Silverton:
Well, the reason why I was so mortified is that... Well, just to back up a little bit. So Julia likes, even though the shows are taped and they're edited, she likes to film them like they're in real time. And so because of that, in that show, she gave me very direct instructions that we would be filming, and as soon as, let's suppose five minutes before we needed to wrap it up, she would hit me on the hip and that means finish it up and at the same time give me a bite so I can taste it.
Nancy Silverton:
So I'm busy sauteing this stoned fruit in a very, very hot wine syrup and I get that tap it's like, "Oh no, okay, wrap it up." So I bring out the brioche and I need to plate it and spoon that hot, hot syrup with fruit in it on top and then put the zabaione and nut and whatever I did, and then cut it and give her a bite. And I look at her because I want to know like, good, bad, what do you think? And tears start coming down and my instinct was, "Oh no, I just burnt Julia Child."
Paola Velez:
You thought you burned her.
Nancy Silverton:
And so I was relieved to know that I didn't burn her and it was an emotional experience.
Paola Velez:
Oh that's so beautiful. I mean, I can't even imagine. I think, what does that kind of translate into that experience, now a lifetime of inspiring us to bake, you know brought a renaissance of artisanal bread back to California. How did that segue into that, and how does this personally relate to you and your work experience? Congratulations on you your restaurant by the way.
Nancy Silverton:
I think that this tart, the simple brioche tart, brought her to tears because that brioche tart conjured up all sorts of memories, and I'm not sure what they were. But it reaffirmed my belief, and sort of my mission in food and cooking is that, it's about the story, it's about the memories. It's not about somebody's ego and trying to be impressed with something on a plate that just leaves you cold and flat. That the most successful and the most delicious food is food that it's clear, it's about a story, it's about memories, it's about sharing, it's about whatever we want it to be ,but it's about emotion.
Paola Velez:
Oh man. I mean if that's not... Every chef that I meet that is making a difference in the industry has this core value. They absolutely cannot be ego driven because this is a community, we're all together, every single person it has a specific role in the restaurant and to see it as like a, "I did this myself," kind of situation, it's so vain and pointless and that's not what baking is about. We need each other.
Nancy Silverton:
No. Everything I do at the restaurant, everything I do in my cookbooks, it's all about the collaboration. And if you don't want to collaborate, then you don't want to work for me. If you don't want to give some input then maybe this isn't the right place.
Paola Velez:
Yeah, and I think those who are watching this right now, I think the biggest takeaway from this is, be a collaborator, want to help your neighbor, because this industry, in the current state that we're in right now, we need the utmost help and we're only going to get through it together. So I guess I'm done asking questions, do you want to walk me through this beautiful recipe? To be honest, I baked a few and they didn't get the bump, I mean they didn't get the little, boop. So mine is to the side, but right when we started, I was eating them, I was like, "This is so tasty and delicious."
Nancy Silverton:
That's what I mean. Certainly there's technique that will get you to what should be the final product, right? But as long as you put some love into it and as long as you use good ingredients, the process is going to taste good no matter. What so maybe you didn't get that bump, but you know what, you'll get it next time and I'm going to show you how to get the bump. When, I don't know if it was Kerry or I don't know who it was it's that sort of asked me to come up with that recipe that I could teach you that would kind of epitomize who Julia Child was, and I thought and I thought and I thought, and then I thought, she was just a very, very humble person, full of life, loved life, loved France, but loved the ordinary and was never afraid to let you know that it was the ordinary that was done correctly is what she was all. Being in her kitchen which, was the simplest of kitchens, and I don't know how much of the kitchen you can see. But as I look around, I have a toaster that plugs in and I have a five quart KitchenAid mixer that plugs in, and that's the only fancy things that I have in my kitchen. And hers was pretty much the same.
Nancy Silverton:
She didn't need tools and equipment, they don't make things that taste delicious. It's these hands and this heart that make things that are delicious. And so I thought, you know what, a madeleine would be the perfect simple little french pastry that we all love that's so often done so improperly, sold on sort of coffee bar counters in little plastic bags and people think that as long as it's baked in this kind of shell mold, that it's a madeleine, and it's not.
Paola Velez:
And that's simply not true. It's not true. It's the booty, It's the booty that gives this a...
Nancy Silverton:
It's the booty.
Paola Velez:
It's the booty.
Nancy Silverton:
And you've got to remember also, there's a couple things, so let's talk about a few of the practical things about a madeleine that's important and then we'll get right into the baking of it. One thing is, you got to remember the size of a madeleine is so small. it's a cake, it's not a cookie, it's a cake, but it's not a cake that's going to sit around for weeks. That cake should be eaten slightly warm, but certainly on the same day, right? That's key. So don't think this is something... And even though the recipe that I gave you probably makes about three dozen, and most people, like you it looks like, and me definitely have only one madeleine pan that makes making madeleines, washing out the mold, letting it cool down, and baking your second and then your third, unless you want to have three madeleine and pens. Or just keep the batter because it does better chilled.
Paola Velez:
So would you suggest that the folks at home wanting to bake this recipe, would you suggest them putting them, once they chilled their dough and they have leftover dough, could they store it in piping bags in their fridge?
Nancy Silverton:
You can do it in piping bags. Just have to bring it up to temperature. It has an extraordinary amount of butter which again, is all what Julia was about, was more and more butter when you could, and this recipe you patch in a lot of butter. It's going to be very firm. A little shortcut that I didn't talk about in the recipe is if you make it and you're really in a hurry, what you could do is spoon about two tablespoons in the large madeleine pan, and then stick that pan in the freezer or the refrigerator for about an hour and a half. The point is it has to go in cold and that's what going to give your [crosstalk 00:17:32].
Paola Velez:
Because you want that butter to kind of... exactly.
Nancy Silverton:
Yes.
Paola Velez:
And I mean, to be honest, something that my mom would tell me when I was growing up is if you want the booty, you got to eat the butter, so you have to have a lot of butter to get the beautiful madeleine bump.
Nancy Silverton:
Yep. So let's start in with the recipe. So you need to have your oven... I said cook it at 350 because that's what it ends up. I start my oven at 400. And then after I put them in, after a minute, I'm going to turn it down to 350. So if you have a 400 degree oven, do that. One thing we have to get going is our butter, because it needs to cool and I already have butter cooled but not melted. So turn on your pot that has the butter in it or if it's not already in, put the butter in a large pot. Looks great. And we're going to...
Paola Velez:
I had... Go ahead.
Nancy Silverton:
Oh, I'm just playing with my burners here I don't... there we go. So I'm going to melt it over sort of a medium heat and once it melts I'm going to turn it up. Now what we're going to make is, what I call, a golden butter. So this is something that's a little bit different in other madeleine recipes, Madeleine recipes always call for melted butter by the way. I'm making what's a golden butter, so a golden butter is somewhere between a melted butter and a brown butter. And the reason I love this golden butter is because it has a lot more flavor than a melted butter but it doesn't have the beurre noisette color of a brown butter.
Nancy Silverton:
And I'm in the process of writing a new cookbook and everything I taste is like, everything I make is like, it's pretty good but it would be better with golden butter. So I might be calling the book, Golden Butter. Or I'm also finding that with the size of everything I make, it has a tablespoon of vanilla extract in this case too, so it's either the golden butter cookbook or the one tablespoon of vanilla extract, it's like how much did it have? I never understood how somebody puts in a half a teaspoon of vanilla extract.
Paola Velez:
There's no way.
Nancy Silverton:
I mean it doesn't do anything.
Paola Velez:
You have to be like chaos, so you have to just pour it.
Nancy Silverton:
Do it.
Paola Velez:
The more vanilla, the better, just do it.
Nancy Silverton:
Do it. Yeah, I agree. So my butter is melting.
Paola Velez:
Chef, would you like to see my butter? Is that...
Nancy Silverton:
Oh, it's golden, it's a beautiful color. So you already have a cooled. Well, for our viewing audience, I'll show you how to do that. Mine's going but I do have some in reserve as well. So mine's going. While that's going, I want to sift our flour.
Paola Velez:
Okay, I'm going to move this.
Nancy Silverton:
And I'm using pastry flour.
Paola Velez:
I'm using all purpose just because...
Nancy Silverton:
That'll work too. And most of my baking, I do all purpose but the madeleine, I do do a pastry just for a softer flour. Can you see what I'm using to sift my flour or no? Is that on camera okay. So I love this drum sim. That's prefect.
Paola Velez:
So I'm going to use what a normal home baker would have at home. Just so that they could see the side by side but if you are at home and you have the space for it, I would suggest getting what Chef Nancy has because that drum is really going to make sure that all those clumps disappear, and you don't want the clumps, you don't want the clumps.
Nancy Silverton:
Well, I also am doing it to sift together my baking powder to make sure it gets distributed. But I want to just do a quick little tip for everybody that when you're cooking, don't forget to open all those senses. So open up that smell, nothing should ever burn in your oven because you would smell it cooking. Open up your eyes so you can see what's going on. But also importantly, keep those ears open because I hear my butter bubbling in the back so something's happening, there's activity, I'm going to peek over and I'm doing fine. But really, smell, look, obviously taste, but that comes later on, but listen. So I am sifting my milk powder, my salt, my baking powder, and my flour together. I even recommend doing that twice, only because again, I want to distribute that baking powder I'm worried about.
Nancy Silverton:
Now, when I'm making, say a cookie, I have years ago kind of gone astray of that idea of sifting the salt, say the spices, and certainly the leavening with the flour, because I never think that that gets mixed properly. I always add that, when possible, with my butter. So I cream it into my butter and therefore I know that it's getting distributed correctly. So I have my dries sifted and I did it on a piece of parchment paper.
Paola Velez:
I have my parchment paper.
Nancy Silverton:
And the reason I did it on a piece of parchment paper is that I find it's easy to roll that up and create kind of a funnel or a spout to add that flour to my ingredients later on.
Paola Velez:
For the folks at home watching right now...
Nancy Silverton:
So I've got that on... Say it again.
Paola Velez:
Oh, for the folks at home watching...
Nancy Silverton:
I made this. So I made a little parcel that I'm going to be dumping my flower into. So this was...
Paola Velez:
Are you going to sift it twice, or are you going to just sift it once?
Nancy Silverton:
I didn't sift it twice only because I don't have another sheet of parchment paper, but you could sift it into a bowl and then put it back into the sifter and then on top of that parchment paper. Now I can smell even more something happening to my butter so I'm going to check on it. And now my butter is all bubbly, can you see that? Lots of bubbles and I can smell it. Now I need to turn up my flame, and what I'm going to do is I'm going to gently swirl it and that's why you need to have a deep pan so that I can swirl it so it cooks evenly. What I'm doing is I am caramelizing my milk solids and that's what's going to give my butter a lot of flavor. And it's going to look like yours, which is a beautiful golden flavor. Did you taste it?
Paola Velez:
Yes. Oh man, so it's halfway between umami and heaven.
Nancy Silverton:
Yeah, that's a good place to be in the baking world. Do you use that golden butter? I mean, I use brown butter in a lot of baking things too but it's only recently that I've used golden butter a lot when using melted butter when I don't want that brown butter.
Paola Velez:
So I make this cheesecake semifredo and I use my stabilizer, which is golden butter. So when you said golden butter, I was like, "Oh, this is going to be good, this is going to be delicious." Because a lot of people they assume that all brown butters are equal, and that is not the case.
Nancy Silverton:
No, they're not.
Paola Velez:
It is similar to how you have different types of wine. It makes a difference to the recipe so much so. So I'm sifting my flour a second time. I'm also, for the folks at home, I am using a rubber spatula to help me kind of push it through this strainer because it is not as easy to kind of strain it with this guy. And if you can see, I have a little bit.
Nancy Silverton:
So my butter... I'm just going interrupt you really quickly. My butter was all bubbly and the whole surface was covered with bubbles and foam, and then all of a sudden it starts to quiet down and that's when you're almost at that golden stage is when it sort of quiets down and now I'm going to pour it out so it can cool. So it's not brown, but it's golden.
Paola Velez:
And all of those milk solids will float to the bottom so it's not going to be this... Usually with brown butter, you're almost burning the milk solids and this recipe is not that. So if you do see some kind of coloration or any type of pieces of milk solids colorful, maybe we would try our golden butter again at home, correct Chef?
Nancy Silverton:
Yeah. And because they're caramelized and not burnt, I'm going to use them, because they're delicious.
Paola Velez:
Delicious. Yes, I have some and they're just floating like little heavenly morsels in my bowl.
Nancy Silverton:
Right, but you do need to turn it out into another bowl to cool because it'll keep cooking, even if it's on the stove, you will get brown butter if you leave it in the pan. So into another bowl or into a pot of ice water or something. Okay, so we've got that sifted, let's go on with our eggs. Okay, so we have five eggs and one yolk.
Paola Velez:
Okay, so I have mine cracked here and I have my yolk separately. So should I crack them directly into my bowl?
Nancy Silverton:
Into a small bowl.
Paola Velez:
Small bowl.
Nancy Silverton:
We're going to need a big bowl so unfortunately and kind of the reason why I didn't sift my flour twice into another bowl as I thought somebody would turn off the video because they saw how many bowls I would be using because I got even more coming up by the way.
Paola Velez:
I have a ton of bowls and it's okay. Bowls never hurt anyone.
Nancy Silverton:
So whisk your eggs.
Paola Velez:
I'm going to show you my whisk, it's ginormous, it's the biggest whisk.
Nancy Silverton:
That's over kill.
Paola Velez:
But I guess, when in Paris, you got to go grand." So here we go. So I'm going to mix, mix, mix, mix.
Nancy Silverton:
Okay, so mix your two sugars together, and if your brown sugar is a box that's been laying around for a long time in your cupboard, you may want to have sifted that as well, because some of those lumps can be pretty hard. Mine's fresh. I've got my egg yolks. Into my egg yolks, I'm going to add... Now look, you went big with the whisk, I'm going super small with my spatula which I love because it's really easy to get the liquids out of these tiny ramekins. So I'm adding my vanilla bean paste to my eggs.
Paola Velez:
So we're doing the sugars right now Chef, right?
Nancy Silverton:
Yeah, I mix the sugars and then I'm going back to my eggs and I'm just adding my honey and my vanilla extract to my eggs.
Paola Velez:
Your eggs, not the sugar.
Nancy Silverton:
Yeah, I just added it to the eggs just because it was liquid, and now I'm going to add all that to my big bowl. So the reason why I cracked my eggs separately is that it's much easier to get any shell out in case we got that in into the small bowl without having to start over with the sugars.
Paola Velez:
Okay. So I'm going to put my vanilla in my eggs and then the honey as well, Chef?
Nancy Silverton:
Yep. Honey as well.
Paola Velez:
Got my honey. Give that a little mix-y mix. And then should I pour my flavored eggs into my sugar now?
Nancy Silverton:
Yes, and whisk it up until it's combined. And then we want to start adding our flour, I'm going to start adding it with the whisk and I'll probably switch over to a spatula. So start adding your flour. Again, you should have a good big bowl like you have so the flour doesn't go all over the place. So I'm whisking slowly-ish, getting all that flour incorporated, I'll probably do this five or six times, and like I said, if it gets too thick, I might switch over... Something else I do, hold on, this is also a nice thing to know. When you are folding in flour or adding flour in a bowl and it starts jumping around, I oftentimes take that pot that I melted the butter in, I don't know if you can see, and I anchor my bowl on top of that pot, which is a sort of a nice thing because I don't have to chase it all over the kitchen.
Paola Velez:
I'm going to put a towel underneath my bowl because I didn't have my pot...
Nancy Silverton:
Okay, that's another great way.
Paola Velez:
My pot is already washed and sitting pretty.
Nancy Silverton:
And then at this point, I'm switching to a spatula because it'll make it easier for me to get it in because it's thickening up a little. And then I can also scrape the sides down at the same time.
Paola Velez:
So would you say maybe this is halfway of the flour being used, half of the flours used?
Nancy Silverton:
By the time I switched over?
Paola Velez:
Yes.
Nancy Silverton:
From a whisk, I would say more like three quarters of it.
Paola Velez:
Okay. So I'll keep going whisk-y whisk-y.
Nancy Silverton:
Julia also would have loved this recipe or this technique because it doesn't involve...
Paola Velez:
A mixer?
Nancy Silverton:
A mixer. Not to say she was anti-mixer, I just think she just liked the old-school way of doing things by hand.
Paola Velez:
But also, I guess in France, there's not a lot of expendable kitchen space.
Nancy Silverton:
No. Exactly, exactly.
Paola Velez:
So yes, when I saw this recipe I was like, "Oh cool, I don't have to take out my mixer." Also because she kind of makes a lot of noise she's like... and I'm like, "Okay superstar." Okay, so I think I'm at that point.
Nancy Silverton:
Okay, now I'm going to ask you to grab another bowl, and this is something that's not imperative but I find it very helpful whenever I'm incorporating two mixtures together. And in this case, I'm going to be incorporating melted butter, or golden butter, with this egg and sugar mixture. What makes it easier for them to come together, to like each other, is to make their consistencies similar. And to do that, take a couple spoonfuls of your madeleine mix and put it in yet another bowl.
Paola Velez:
You're a couple of steps ahead of me, Chef.
Nancy Silverton:
So sorry.
Paola Velez:
Oh no, it's okay.
Nancy Silverton:
I'll wait for you.
Paola Velez:
I just don't want to mess up. I don't want to mess up. I want to [crosstalk 00:34:40].
Nancy Silverton:
I'll wait for you.
Paola Velez:
Okay, thank you Chef. I'm going to show you before I go to the next step, what do you think? It's good?
Nancy Silverton:
Great, perfect.
Paola Velez:
Okay. I'm going to...
Nancy Silverton:
Okay, now pour some of that batter into a bowl, it could be any of the bowls you used, by the way, because it's all the same ingredients so it doesn't have to be a clean bowl. And then pour your cooled butter into that mixture, the small bowl of the egg and sugar mixture, and mix that together so that what you're doing is you're thinning down that egg and sugar small quantity mixture with the butter, but you're also changing that texture or the consistency of that batter so it'll go in easier to the batter.
Paola Velez:
So it's almost like tempering it.
Nancy Silverton:
So you're tempering it. Well said. And I'm scraping out all my caramelized... God, that looks good.
Paola Velez:
It smells heavenly.
Nancy Silverton:
And then you're going to transfer it back in and fold and stir it back in, but it's going to go in a lot easier.
Paola Velez:
Okay. So I am almost there. Let's see now. Maybe I didn't put as much as you did on in your bowl. Mine has separated just slightly.
Nancy Silverton:
Yeah, it'll separate, mine did too.
Paola Velez:
Oh okay. Fantastical. I'm ready for the next step.
Nancy Silverton:
So the next step now is to stir it together. And even though it's a little bit runny, it's a lot easier to do it that way and it goes in much quicker than if you only had melted butter. However, if you only had melted butter and you didn't temper it, you would be able to mix it would just be a lot more difficult,
Paola Velez:
It gets a little messy I think.
Nancy Silverton:
So kind of slosh it around, slosh it around.
Paola Velez:
Sloshy slosh. Slosh it around. Sloshing the wrong [inaudible 00:37:10], Chef.
Nancy Silverton:
Got it?
Paola Velez:
Oh yeah. Mine is coming together so nicely, and it's not...
Nancy Silverton:
Does it look like a pate chaud?
Paola Velez:
It looks like a pate chaud, it's nice and shiny and it's super smooth as well. But one thing I would note is that you would think that your arm would have a total arm workout and it doesn't. My arm is just having a whole vacation, it's just having so much fun. Okay, how does this look?
Nancy Silverton:
All right, that looks perfect. Okay, now this is the stage where you would either fill your... Well, we'd have to prepare our pan, but if once our pan is prepared, you'd either put in a couple tablespoons and put that whole pan in the refrigerator for an hour and a half or...
Paola Velez:
This pan.
Nancy Silverton:
Yeah, filled, and then bake. Or do what I do is I just refrigerate all that batter for the next day. And that's what I have right here is yesterday's dough, thick like that.
Paola Velez:
I'm going to grab my piping bag from the fridge. Ta-da.
Nancy Silverton:
Great, excellent. Well first we need to prepare our madeleine pan. By the way, there are madeleine pans that are non-stick as well and you wouldn't have to do this but I prefer this one it, even says made in France on it, the sticker, I kind of like that, I don't wash it off. Did you did your recipe have that you're melting extra butter and then anything that's left over you're going to use it to prepare your pan? So that's what I do when I melted butter. Most recipes that don't have any melted butter, I say use nonstick spray which you can, a non-stick spray. But if you're going to be melting butter anyway, you may as well melt more and use that.
Paola Velez:
So I have a few drops of this melted butter here, if you guys could see as well. I'm actually going to... because sometimes chefs at home don't have pastry brushes, so I'm going to use my two fingers and I'm just going to get in there and just spread it around.
Nancy Silverton:
Yep. All these things like pastry brushes, piping bags, those make life easier but they aren't there to deter you from making something.
Paola Velez:
Absolutely. I have mine, but I figured I'd show.
Nancy Silverton:
I am going to use a piping bag because I find it easier.
Paola Velez:
Same for me.
Nancy Silverton:
So let me show you how I... Oh, forgot. Look at... That's why when I bake or and when I cook I like to always pull out all my mise en place, so that's my prepared ingredients or what goes in, and I'm talking to you looking at the lemons, I forgot the lemon.
Paola Velez:
I'll grab my batter.
Nancy Silverton:
Yeah, so I'm going to use a half a lemon because I don't like it too lemony, I just like a hint of lemon. So it's actually only a half of a lemon and I'm using one of my favorite tools, I think probably my favorite kitchen utensil next to a rolling pin is a mortar and pestle, but I love microplanes and I have them in all sorts of configurations and sizes and they're great for cheese, grating garlic, and grating the color part only off of citrus.
Paola Velez:
So I have my citrus already pre-zested but I too have a microplane. But like you, I have a microplane for cheese, I have a microplane for nutmeg and cinnamon, I have a microplane for citrus, and I just have an extra microplane because it's so cute I think it's the best.
Nancy Silverton:
I love them, I love microplanes. And I'm usually suspicious of recipes that say a half a lemon, it's like, "Well, what am I going to do with the other half of the rind?" I mean I know I can use the juice for anything. But in this case, I've tried it with a whole lemon and I find that lemon overwhelming so I am using restraint. Okay, let me show you how I fill a piping bag and I think that this is important because, especially with the batter that's so sticky, all you're going to do is get batter everywhere, on your hands, on your sleeve, on the counter, and it's just frustrating. It's really simple to grab some sort of a vessel, whatever it is, it could be a measuring cup, something that's tall. This is what we call a bain marie or a deli, whatever you want, stick your bag in that deli, the tip. I'm going to put a tip in but you don't actually even need a tip in that pastry bag, and these are disposable bags, you can buy them probably anywhere now. I am going to put that tip in.
Paola Velez:
And you are using a round tip, Chef?
Nancy Silverton:
I'm using a round three-quarter inch tip and I'm putting it at the bottom. I'll be cutting off my pastry bag once it's filled.
Paola Velez:
And I saw that you twisted your tip to seal it.
Nancy Silverton:
Yeah, I twisted my tip to seal it and I stuffed the bag into that tip so that it doesn't drip down. Again, this batter is so stiff it's not going to happen, but if it's something that's runny that really helps. So set that over. Again, my batter is super stiff.
Paola Velez:
And I guess they can see the difference between your batter and the batter that I have currently, you see how loose it is? Resting it overnight is really going to make sure that that butter in this mixture sets up and gives you that lovely lady lamp or mr. Lump, I don't know.
Nancy Silverton:
Yeah, and also being able to set your bag here gives you two free hands rather than holding it and trying to control it that way.
Paola Velez:
Absolutely.
Nancy Silverton:
Okay, so fill up your bag. Actually, I'm going to fill up mine a little bit more.
Paola Velez:
So beautiful, your batter.
Nancy Silverton:
I'm going to snip off the top of this. I'm snipping off the top of my bags on my tip. Like I said, you don't even need a tip, you can just use this bag without a tip and just snip it off. And now we want to fill our molds, and it's just a couple tablespoons. If you over fill them, what happens is the batter goes onto the top of the pan and you lose that shell shape.
Paola Velez:
So would you say it's like an inch and a half of filling maybe?
Nancy Silverton:
Well, it's a little bit more than that, it's about two tablespoons. When we say an inch and a half it's because my madeleine mold is larger than an inch and a half I think but I'm I'm half to three quarters filling that mold. And then after you fill the first round, just put your bag tip side up back into conical container. And now I'm going to put these in the oven. Now I'm going to put these in and I'm going to let it cook for about a minute and then I'm going to turn my oven down to 350.
Paola Velez:
And so I'm going to walk off screen and I'm also going to put my madeleines into the oven, so but my journey is much longer than Chef Nancy, so I'll be right back.
Nancy Silverton:
And if you have the option at your home to use a confection, definitely use your confection on your oven, it helps to bring the Madeleine up. I got to make sure mine is on.
Paola Velez:
I had a bit of a oopsies, my oven was turned off by my very, very wonderful kitchen staff. So I'm going to wait until my oven preheats a bit, but maybe I won't be able to make these on. Thank you Donna. It's okay thank you. If my oven was right here, I'd be like ta-da.
Nancy Silverton:
So funny, every time I turn my oven on for confection... All right, it's on confection there we go. I'm going to wait until Paola gets back.
Paola Velez:
I'm here. I am trying to turn on oven in the back but it's not on. It was preheated but I think Erica, who does prep here, thought it was done so she wanted to be efficient and save energy.
Nancy Silverton:
Well, let's talk about madeleine while these are in, let me watch.
Paola Velez:
Okay.
Nancy Silverton:
Yeah, mine's on.
Nancy Silverton:
Okay, so what makes a madeleine Julia Child worthy? Well, beautiful golden color, beautiful hump in the middle, right? And then let's slice it open, and right at that hump. First of all it should smell delicious and buttery and vanilla-y, but I think most important, it shouldn't be like a sponge cake, there should be a little bit of density to it, but it shouldn't be heavy, it shouldn't be dry, and it should bring back those memories as it did for Marcel Proust, right?
Paola Velez:
Yeah. Oh yummy.
Nancy Silverton:
So good.
Paola Velez:
I'm going to eat my bad batch.
Nancy Silverton:
Try a bad batch.
Paola Velez:
Here we go. So I had made my batter, same day, and I was asking Chef Nancy whether or not I could not wait because I was a little impatient. But it didn't work, it didn't work.
Nancy Silverton:
But taste it, all the flavor is going to be there. You just are not going to have the humps. A hint of honey, a hint of lemon, definitely vanilla and definitely golden butter, right?
Paola Velez:
Mm-hmm.
Donna Yen:
I wish I was there. I want to eat. I'm so hungry, it's lunch time here, and I'm just like, it must smell lovely where you both are it.
Paola Velez:
It's wonderful.
Donna Yen:
So I'm going to come back because I have some questions. That was so much fun. Both of you bringing your expertise to this recipe was just so much fun to watch.
Nancy Silverton:
And did we inspire you to bake?
Donna Yen:
Oh definitely, and I think the first thing is the Madeleine pan, I guess a lot of us want to know what is the best one? We see that you know Nancy has a different one, Paola has a different... There are silicone ones out there. What do you both recommend?
Paola Velez:
Personally?
Nancy Silverton:
Yeah, go ahead.
Paola Velez:
I wish that I loved the silicone ones but I don't. I think the metal ones...
Nancy Silverton:
Paola, I am with you and I does it have to do with the way it feels? It doesn't feel like food. It doesn't feel like anything delicious will come out of that.
Paola Velez:
And that's the thing. With this metal pan, I feel that it is getting every nook and cranny of that batter and even my batch that didn't rest in time has all of this delicious texture. Oh my gosh, I'm trying not to eat it because I don't want to eat on camera and like crunch, crunch, crunch, but it is so tasty when it is made in a metal pan for some reason.
Donna Yen:
Does it give that crust? Or does it give a crust of some sort? I don't know.
Paola Velez:
Chef Nancy, what do you think?
Nancy Silverton:
I mean it does give it a crustiness. I haven't worked enough with silicone because I don't make anything in them. So I don't really know and I don't want to put a bad name on it because it might be great but I can't imagine it gets the color or the crust because it can't conduct that way. But I also feel that it doesn't leave a patina or it doesn't leave a history. Every time I pull out a pan of mine, I'm like, "Oh, I remember when I burnt that pan, that was when." Something that's so sterile about baking that way, right? Or I don't know, I gotta switch my pan around here.
Donna Yen:
So I have another...
Paola Velez:
So I...
Donna Yen:
Go ahead good.
Paola Velez:
Oh yeah, I agree with Chef Nancy. While I'm very new school on certain things, old school like pastry. I went to Cordon Bleu.
Nancy Silverton:
Me too by the way.
Donna Yen:
Cordon Bleu alums in the house.
Nancy Silverton:
I'm a graduate of the London Cordon Bleu.
Paola Velez:
Oh amazing. I was here in the States, back in 2009 I graduated. So I wish I would have went to Paris to study but my mom is very old-school Caribbean and she was like you're not leaving this house until you have a college degree.
Nancy Silverton:
It's funny, at my... I was just going to say, when I told my parents that I was dropping out of college in my senior year because I wanted to bake my dad said, "The only way you can do it is if you go to the Cordon Bleu," I didn't even know what the Cordon Bleu was.
Donna Yen:
All right, we have more questions. So let's talk about golden butter because there's a lot of questions about the golden butter. So would you recommend that for every recipe that calls for melted butter or is it something distinct?
Nancy Silverton:
Let me get back to you on that because my nose tells me my Madeleine are done.
Donna Yen:
Follow your nose Nancy.
Nancy Silverton:
So I need to get them out of the oven. But I also want to say that this is something that Julia Child insisted on, and I'll tell you in a second, is that she didn't like things to be staged or fake. So for instance, she wouldn't have accepted like, "Let me just bring my own madeleines that I make in my restaurant and I know my commercial oven because I don't trust my oven at home," or whatever, she wouldn't accept that. So just to show you that these madeleine came out just as beautiful in my oven and you saw with the big humps.
Donna Yen:
Wow, there's the bump people, the bump.
Nancy Silverton:
You don't need a restaurant size or a restaurant grade oven to get things right. There it is, it worked, right? There's my hump. Anyway back to golden butter, this is important to think about when you're going to leave your melted butter and go to either golden butter or brown butter. You're going to lose a certain amount of water, it's going to evaporate because we know there's water in butter and moisture. So always, if something calls for say four ounces of butter, make more golden butter a little bit more or more brown butter and then weigh it after it's made, that's important, don't start with four ounces and then golden your butter or brown your butter and then use it because you won't have the right amount, that's one thing.
Nancy Silverton:
The other thing that's important is, if you want to use it because you want to cream it in something, then you can chill it or freeze it, I do that for scones for instance, golden butter scones are absolutely delicious. I freeze my butter, I do use a food processor to cut my butter or whatever fat it is into my flour, my dry ingredients, when I make a scone, cut that frozen butter in. Other times you can just use that golden butter, and I have for a number of recipes, add my sugars, use a paddle to mix it... At first, it just looks like you're making wet sand and all of a sudden it transforms, it starts to lighten, it starts to cream. But to answer your question, sure you can use golden butter anytime you want. Sometimes it doesn't make a difference and you don't taste it. So my feeling is then don't go to the trouble. But other times, it really makes a difference like in these madeleine, like in a blondie, like in a...
Paola Velez:
A chocolate chip cookie.
Nancy Silverton:
Or in a chocolate chip cookie. When it makes a difference and you could taste it, go ahead and do it. But just remember, melt more, weigh it back to what the original proportion was.
Donna Yen:
Thank you for both of your great answers. So Melissa wants to know... We have questions about the bump, so what's making the bump? Is the batter temperature? The flour? The leavener amount? Paola, you want to go?
Paola Velez:
Oh, it's the butter. That's the magic.
Donna Yen:
That makes the bump?
Paola Velez:
That makes the bump. But it's not just the butter, it's how Chef Nancy had one. The ratios of the sugar in this recipe are you could put a leavener, but baking soda only does so much, right? Baking soda would make something rise in its totality. But the bump, it's as if you were a flower in the ground, right, and when you bloom up, you could put leavener and you could put fertilizer into your soil and there could be a lot of nice action going on in your soil. But to be the flower, to be the madeleine, you have to make sure that you treat this as gently as possible, but also give it time. That resting period is what relaxes the gluten, but also gives the butter the kind of gumption to do what it needs to do in that specific little bump area. Because if you look at your pan, this guy is a little lower so he catches just a little bit more batter than the rest of the madeleine mold, which creates this long beautiful flowing process.
Nancy Silverton:
Wow, well said.
Donna Yen:
Wow. Paola, you really, thank you. All right and then another question about vanilla is you have a favorite vanilla that you're using for this. I know you both like to put a lot of vanilla. Is there an extract or a paste that you recommend?
Paola Velez:
Make your own.
Nancy Silverton:
I use vanilla. What?
Donna Yen:
Make your own.
Paola Velez:
Make your own if you can.
Nancy Silverton:
Oh wow, there you go, let's hear how you make your own.
Paola Velez:
So it takes a year and you have to have it...
Nancy Silverton:
I'm 66, I don't have a year but go on.
Paola Velez:
Well, I just turned 30 so I have...
Nancy Silverton:
Okay, you've got two years.
Paola Velez:
I got two years... Oh my goodness, I might as well just buy a barrel too and just put it in there too so that it gets that wood flavor. But if you're going to make this at home, you can make it as little as a month or a year. A year is the best process. I believe in trying to use... Thank you so much, happy belated to me. You would use your vanilla beans, right, in a recipe and you would save all of these pods, right, and you would buy some very good quality bourbon or rum. I'm from the Caribbean so I would prefer rum, and then you would let this sit and something that... Similar to if you were making an infused oil or infusing another type of spirit, and you would just let it sit in your cupboard in a nice cool dark place. You could try vodka as well, but I would suggest something with a lot of caramel notes.
Paola Velez:
A question was asked, can you use vodka? And to be honest, to have this kind of infused vanilla, if done correctly you can add it to your spirits, you can add it to your cocktails, if we have any mixologists in the house. But to go back to Chef Nancy's point, I think that there's a plethora of store-bought vanillas that do justice to where they are farmed sustainably If you do not find something that is true to your values, you can go to, I don't know, a large wholesale chain and find it there as well.
Donna Yen:
Thank you Paola. So I think it's about time, I think. I have one more question for each of you and this is from Felicia Gonzalez. She asked, if Julia was around what was one thing you would bake for her now?
Nancy Silverton:
Madeleine.
Donna Yen:
So Nancy would make this madeleine with the golden butter. And then Paola, what would you make for Julia?
Paola Velez:
Oh man. I would be too nervous. I'm so shy, I would just kind of melt. The minute that she would tap me I would just be like, "Goodbye everyone."
Nancy Silverton:
Yeah, that tap.
Paola Velez:
But I think for me, in kind of like my love of New York City, I would present to her my New York Style Cheesecake Semifreddo.
Donna Yen:
I think Julia would like that. That sounds amazing. Well, I want to thank you both. I mean I feel like the whole audience, they just loved watching you two together.
Nancy Silverton:
What fun.
Donna Yen:
And we hope you can cook together on TV live and meet each other in person. But thank you both for your time. I know you both are busy and taking over the world. So I just want to thank you both this was an absolute pleasure and thank you everyone for watching. For more Julia Jubilee, please visit cherrybombe.com. We have a few more events left, it's almost over and it's making us really sad. And I want to really thank Crate&Barrel because they've been able to make all this free for everyone and making this event possible, so thank you to Crate&Barrel, and thank you all for watching, and thank you to you too.
Nancy Silverton:
Thank you.
Donna Yen:
Please take good care.
Paola Velez:
Thank you. Chef.
Donna Yen:
And we'll see you...
Paola Velez:
I love you so much, Chef. Bye.
Nancy Silverton:
Love you, see you in three weeks.
Paola Velez:
Yes, I'll see you...
Nancy Silverton:
I'm going to call you, I'm coming to DC.
Paola Velez:
Okay, I'll be waiting.
Donna Yen:
Oh my gosh please. Please, yes, I would love that. Bye everyone.