When three star pastry chefs meet at a cooking competition, the result can only be something sweet and something amazing. Andy Vorbusch (Sööt, Düsseldorf), Matthias Ludwig (Törtchen Törtchen, Cologne) and Jordi Butrón (Espaisucre, Barcelona) took part in the show cooking on the stage of the Pastry Chef of the Year late last month.
Based on three components – fruit, dairy and aromatic herbs – they created exceptional flavour pairings, showcased their individual philosophies and demonstrated the differences and synergies between classic pastry art and high-end patisserie.
The iPastry event gave guests insights into the craft and creative processes of the three chefs and their sweet creations. Andy Vorbusch, Pastry Chef at Vendôme chose two dairy products, curdled and lightly whipped milk cream and a custard made of whey. The implementation of sustainability is as important to him as the meaningful use of the products, explained Vorbusch. And so the ripe, aromatic pear found its way onto his plate without any treatments. He combined it with aromatic wild herbs such as wheat grass sprouts, dill, verbena, sweet cicely or fennel as well as white currant sorbet and a lactose cracker.
Matthias Ludwig is a trained chef and confectioner with roots in Germany’s top restaurants. For several years he has worked on new products at Törtchen Törtchen. He successfully opened four stores that are all about modern pastry.To introduce customers of the pastry shops to lesser-known combinations such as beetroot and apple requires quite some entrepreneurial creativity, said Ludwig, because the classics are still strongly rooted in their minds. On stage, he re-worked the three components into a sophisticated Asian-inspired tart creation. He used quince in several ways, cut and cooked with yuzu, and as quince stock. Together with a puree of Thai basil and quince and a goat cheese cream everything was placed between two Yuzu macarons. This was finalised by a decorative element made of white chocolate with Yuzu powder. The result was a tart with red and yellow shades.
The third iPastry chef was a special guest and had come from Spain. Jordi Butrón, together with his business partner Xano Saguer, founded the first dessert restaurant in the world, Espaisucre in Barcelona. In the integrated cooking school, students learn about desserts from all over the world in addition to techniques and above all a methodological approach. In this very simple scientific manner Butrón summed up the differences between the pastries in the pastry shop and patisserie in the restaurant: The restaurant was a constant exchange with the savoury kitchen, he said. This was essentially the reason for the international hype around Spanish cuisine. Through Ferran Adrià’s work, this integration of techniques and approaches from the patisserie into the savoury world became possible. In essence, the Patisserie in the restaurant is dynamic, while it is more static in the pastry shops, he explained. Jordi Butrón first began with the more static components of his dessert creations at iPastry. Giving the main flavour, he put the butter in the centre and placed North American shortbread crumble and a typical Spanish butter biscuits on the plates. A cream of white chocolate, basil and nut butters, Golden Delicious cubes and foam of lime and basil rounded up the dessert. The complexity on the plate arises ultimately by the different techniques, explained the Spanish star pastry chef, not by using many different flavours.
The next iPastry takes place in April 2015 during the third semi-finals of Pastry Chef of the Year in Vienna.
For more information, visitwww.patissierdesjahres.com