Dav’s Croissants
Back in the day, I worked for a NATO unit in Germany. Since I was one of only three women employed there (all of us Americans — the NATO countries were way behind in gender equality back then!) the American Spouses' Club took pity on me and invited me to join in their fun. One summer a group of us went to French Cooking School. We stayed in a chateau in the Loire Valley. Every morning, we'd watch Chef perform a cooking demonstration. Then we'd eat part of what he created for lunch, and spend the afternoon touring the nearby, more famous, chateaux. After sight-seeing, we'd come back for a multi-course meal involving the rest of the food Chef had created during the demo.
I learned a few things about French cooking. It takes FOREVER. Every dish Chef demonstrated required a multitude of finicky steps. One of the dishes was stuffed sole. The filling for the dish was made from langoustine–basically a salt-water crawfish. To me, they looked like giant buggy shrimp or tiny buggy lobsters. The dish required Chef to steam the langoustine, then mash them, then simmer them, shell and all, for a while, then strain, then reduce… you get the idea. All to produce the thick sauce that was later rolled into the sole. And honestly, I didn't really like it when we had it for dinner that night!
The other thing I learned was if you're going to do French cooking, you really need a little man in the kitchen. Chef had a sous chef/pastry chef named David. Pronounced Dah-veed, of course. David was a short, thin, quiet, young man– the exact opposite of boisterous, plump, middle-aged Chef. Dav, as we referred to him amongst ourselves, did all the clean-up. He washed the million pots and pans Chef used each day without a word, whisking them away to the sink in the corner almost before they hit the counter. We all decided that we, too, needed a little man in the kitchen to clean up after us.
Dav also taught us to make croissants. They were to die for. And took forever, of course, because you have to make the dough, knead it, let it rise, and then roll the huge chunk of butter between the layers, folding, turning, and chilling a half-dozen times.
Croissants were the only thing I ever made myself after that cooking course. They weren't as good as Dav's, but they were pretty yummy. So, in homage to David, the little man in the kitchen, I gifted Dame Morgan with her own pastry chef, Dav.
Chocolate croissant featured image by Beckmann's Bakery, used under Attribution 2.0 Generic (CC BY 2.0)
Croissant cross-section photo by skopp, used under Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported (CC BY-SA 3.0)
