In Dessert at the restaurantpublished by Italian Gourmet, Paolo Griffaat the direction of the Caffè Nazionale in Aosta, one Michelin star, analyses, enhances and highlights the course that seals the gastronomic journey at the restaurant.
The importance of dessert in the restaurant
It’s when the curtain is about to fall that he enters the scene. To take the stage.
It’s when everything is about to end that he turns the spotlight back on the stage of taste. Not an easy task entrusted to dessert, seal and seal of an itinerary that goes from bread to coffee, winding through dishes that have already given and told so much.
For this reason Paolo Griffa, chef and pastry chef of the Caffè Nazionale in Aosta, in the volume published by Italian Gourmet focuses on that dish which represents the last act in the restaurant. And therefore it must be applauded.
A careful and timely analysis, which starts from the term dessert, to define its origins and concept.
It actually comes from French desservir, which means removing the service, clearing the table, getting rid of. To mark the final moment of a meal.
While a pastry dessert lives its life in the shop window, with its colors and decorations, chosen on a whim or to give a gift, things change a lot with dessert: a dessert must be contextualised, coherent, follow the logical thread of the narrative that the chef chose to do.
Not only. The dessert is in itself ephemeral and can concentrate different consistencies and temperatures, it can require particular gestures from the diner.
The profession of the pastry chef
This is why Griffa highlights a complex profession like that of the pastry chef (the master reiterates this well Corrado Assenza in the preface) but also his skills.
Which are different from both those of the cook and those of the laboratory pastry chef: the pastry chef must in fact be able to draw the best of both from the two worlds. He must be able to look at 360 degrees, without limits and boundaries, because in the kitchen he has infinite ingredients at his disposal: from vegetables to fruit, from herbs to spices.
A pastry chef must also know how to make bread, amuse-bouche, avant desserts and small pastries.
An all-round vision that of the pastry chef. Who must be able to master the basic pastry making techniques (from creams to wafers, from shortcrust pastry to puff pastry), but must also know the cooking techniques and ingredients.
For cooking, marinating, flavoring, freeze-drying, fermenting, extracting, thickening, clarifying, distilling and creating broths and infusions.
The beauty? That the pastry chef can also have small, practical and high-performance tools at his disposal (of the series, not only oven and pacojet, but also stencils and silicone moulds, craft bunches and knives of all kinds and sizes, without forgetting the very new technologies, which allow you to achieve unprecedented results, such as the Ocoo and the rotary evaporator, 3D printing and the flavor blaster…).
Sweet recipes for every occasion
About thirty à la carte recipes. Accompanied by their history, because every dessert has a genesis and a motivation, it has a why and a wherefore.
Hence the need for a thematic subdivision, characterized by distinctive colours.
So under the name of Interactions include those desserts that require strong involvement from the diner, as happens with Banana Splash (also in the 2020 version), The NutcrackerThe Ai Weiwei vasethe Treasure hunt and the Piñata.
While they are true Full immersion in a territory or in an experience the Flower PowerThe Picnic in Val Ferret and the Al_Pino bonfire. The Mont Blanc in a boule de neigethe William Tell Apple, Honey And Carrot instead they embody the illusory concept of Trompe l’oeil.
The Cappuccino in the Langhe and the Peach blossom represent spatial Architectures.
THE Virtuosity they are divertissements on the great classics, fromFloating Île with strawberries to the Citrus VacherinfromSoufflé omelette to the Tarragon baba.
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