At the Park Hyatt resort in Paris, Narae Kim combines the Nashi pear she grew up consuming in Dangjin, South Korea, and the Williams pear typically utilized in eau de vie into an attention-grabbing dessert: a fan of Williams wedges, some marinated in jasmine tea and others cooked in bergamot oil, alongside quenelles of pear-and-cassava sorbet, all topped with tiny orbs of Nashi pear liqueur.
Ms. Kim had wished to review pastry in France since she was younger, taking pastry and baking courses in center college and taking part in grueling pastry competitions in school in South Korea.
When Ms. Kim brainstorms desserts, she all the time begins with fruits like apricots, melons and cherries, which she would pluck from her household’s yard as a baby, and builds on her concepts utilizing the French pastry expertise she has developed all through her profession.
“I don’t think about creating something with a Korean touch,” she mentioned. “It comes naturally.”
Ms. Kim, 33, is only one of a number of cooks born in South Korea who sought out French culinary coaching however, within the course of, have created a definite style of pastry. While their paths differ, their work is defining a rising class of pastry artwork that’s confined neither to South Korea nor to France. It is producing lengthy traces, incomes Michelin stars and wielding affect throughout the pastry world.
These cooks form barely candy, pillowy corn mousse into cartoonish cobs, and layer pine-nut praline into minimalist Mont Blanc. They season madeleines with soy sauce and chubby financiers with candy potato.
Their pastries are not like what prospects can discover at Tous Les Jours or Paris Baguette, the 2 beloved South Korean bakery chains that launched locals to hot-dog-filled rolls, ethereal cream buns and different uniquely French-Asian creations. Still, these bakeries had been the entry level to the world of French pastry for a few of the cooks taking that fusion additional.
Enjoying a type of baked items was as a lot of a Sunday ritual for Erica Abe as going to church in Seoul as a lady. After providers, her mom would take her and her brother to select a deal with at a close-by Paris Baguette.
“I think it was my first memory of liking pastry,” mentioned Mrs. Abe, 37, the primary Asian pastry chef of Benu, the famend tasting-menu restaurant in San Francisco.
After studying about pastry cooks on TV as a young person, Eunji Lee introduced her dad and mom with a 10-year plan to review in France that ended with changing into “one of the best pastry chefs in the world.” She satisfied them, however to know French culinary approach, Mrs. Lee wanted to know French.
She picked up French cookbooks to familiarize herself with terminology earlier than transferring to Rouen to concentrate on baking on the Institut National de la Boulangerie Pâtisserie and on pastry at Ferrandi Paris.
“Since my French wasn’t 100 percent perfect, if I wanted to follow the class and everything, I needed to study more than others,” mentioned Mrs. Lee, 35.
She started experimenting with Korean substances like sesame oil and purple bean paste whereas working at Ze Kitchen Galerie and Le Meurice in Paris. But she didn’t totally develop her pastry viewpoint till she was employed on the New York City outpost of Jungsik, the progressive Korean fine-dining restaurant.
There, she made her personal model of the Paris-Brest with brown rice cream puffs and pecan praline, which she cheekily known as the N.Y.-Seoul.
Mrs. Lee has since honed her model at Lysée, the pastry store she opened together with her husband, the chef Matthieu Lobry, practically a 12 months in the past within the Flatiron district of Manhattan. Inside, you’ll discover that emoji-like corn mousse; the Lysée, her signature brown rice mousse cake, which seems like a midcentury Polly Pocket piece; and a fervor for every (the store units a restrict of 1 corn mousse per reservation).
Bomee Ki, who’s from Gwangju, South Korea, studied pastry on the Le Cordon Bleu in London for a strategic motive: She understood English, not French.
Visa points, a typical impediment for worldwide cooks, took her again to South Korea. She began a household together with her husband, the chef Woongchul Park, and for a second, thought of leaving the stress of restaurant life. But she by no means forgot her pastry desires.
After practically a 12 months of ready for an entrepreneur visa, she and Mr. Park returned to London to open Sollip, which obtained a Michelin star final 12 months. Her ache perdu seems extra like a lava rock than French toast: crisp tuiles of seoritae, the nutty black soybeans, overlap to type a peak above a textural heap of seoritae ice cream, caramelized pecans and vanilla-soaked brioche.
“We are trying to make our food based on French food, but we are Korean,” mentioned Mrs. Ki, 35. “We’re used to having Korean food, and we’re used to learning from Korean moms. This is in our mind. Naturally this will come into our food. That makes our food and our place very special.”
Other pastry cooks, like Yona Son, needed to pursue French coaching in much less typical methods. After graduating from culinary artwork packages in Busan, South Korea, the place she grew up, and in New York City, Ms. Son bought about 50 American and French cookbooks on cookies, muffins, bread {and professional} pastry, and watched famed pastry cooks like Cédric Grolet and Amaury Guichon at work on YouTube.
Neither fairly ready her for a seven-and-a-half-year tenure at Jungsik in New York and Seoul.
“Because Jungsik is the first fine dining in Korea, there’s no example of any modern Korean dessert,” Ms. Son mentioned, including, “I had to create everything from the base since I had no examples.”
At her bakery in Seoul, Patisserie Armoni, she flavors financiers with candy potato, black sesame and bean rice cake, and hallabong, the Korean tangerine. She swipes her delicate sand cookies with ganache constituted of stir-fried soybean paste and caramel.
“Armoni is like ‘harmony’ with a French accent,” mentioned Ms. Son, 33. “I wanted to explain the Korean stuff and European or American dessert stuff and get them into harmony.”
For cooks born outdoors the United States who’re coming into the insular world of American nice eating, a way of group is vital. Mrs. Abe had lengthy admired Corey Lee, the chef of Benu.
“I felt some kind of kinship,” Mrs. Abe mentioned. “He was Korean American just like myself, and he immigrated to America at a young age. He was so successful at what he did and I looked to him as a role model.”
She follows the menu’s Korean reference factors for her desserts, filling the flower-shaped hwagwaja, a standard Korean cake made from white bean and rice, with a walnut praline and preserved persimmon, and creating an grownup model of the Korean snack cake known as Choco Pie with Cognac, vanilla ice cream and a whole-wheat dacquoise.
“It’s the first time in my career where I feel proud to be representing Korean cuisine in such a high level,” Mrs. Abe mentioned.
In the West, the place conventional Korean substances, methods and desserts usually are not certain by the identical cultural expectations, this model of pastry has been nicely obtained. But again in South Korea, it may be extra of an adjustment for pastry cooks and prospects.
Patisserie Jaein in Seoul isn’t only for grab-and-go treats or a handy assembly spot for pals, as is frequent in densely populated cities all through Asia. Jae In Lee, the pastry chef, refuses to promote espresso, and slips Korean substances like woodsy burdock and soy sauce into in any other case conventional French items like mille-feuille and madeleines.
“Negative feedback always exists,” mentioned Mr. Lee, 35. “‘Not as tasty as expected, too sweet, unkind, don’t sell coffee, et cetera.’ We turn negative feedback into good feedback as we perfect our style.”
For Ms. Son, of Patisserie Armoni, it’s been difficult to attraction to potential prospects who wander into her Seoul bakery. “They only think doenjang is with soup or sauces, but it can be with chocolate,” she mentioned.
Still, she pushes ahead, constructing on what she and like-minded pastry cooks from South Korea have set in movement.
“I want to make something not in the world.”
Yu Young Jin contributed translation.
Source: www.nytimes.com