Photo by Sonya Yu
Sure, you’ve indulged at restaurants in wine flights, beer flights, and even dessert flights.
But when’s the last time you’ve succumbed to a porky-licious bacon flight?
You can at Lafitte at Pier 5, just blocks from the Hilton in San Francisco’s Financial District.
Amid all the lengthy, elaborate and supremely elegant recipes in “The French Laundry Cookbook” (Artisan) is a most homey one that concludes the book.
Perhaps it’s only appropriate, too, since “Sally Schmitt’s Cranberry and Apple Kuchen with Hot Cream Sauce” was a favorite dessert at the original incarnation of the French Laundry when it was owned by Sally Schmitt and her husband, Don, before the couple decided to sell it to Thomas Keller.
As “The French Laundry Cookbook” co-author Michael Ruhlman so eloquently writes of the couple in the intro to the recipe, “…they are the ultimate purveyors. They purveyed a restaurant.”
Indeed, had it not been for them, and what they nurtured in that spot, there might not have been the French Laundry as we know it today, nor the now vaunted reputation of the town of Yountville as a tiny culinary capital of the world.
So when I purchased some Philo Gold (Golden Delicious) apples from the Philo Apple Farm that the Schmitts bought after leaving Yountville, and which their daughter and son-in-law now run, I knew just what to do with them. To pay homage to all that the Schmitts have accomplished and created, I knew those apples that Sally had helped sow the seeds for had to be baked into the apple cake she used to serve at her restaurant.
A very thick batter of butter, sugar, egg, flour, a little milk and baking powder gets stirred up with nutmeg and a pinch of salt. Spread it evenly into a greased cake pan. Then artfully press thin slices of apples down into the batter. Arrange fresh or frozen cranberries over the top. Sprinkle with cinnamon sugar and bake.
The simple, tender cake lets the fruit shine through. It’s fine as it is. But Sally also adds a hot cream sauce fortified with sugar and butter that you can pour over slices as liberally as you want. I must say, it does add a rather nice touch, making the cake even more special and memorable as it soaks up all that warm richness.
You might not know Sally and Don Schmitt by name. But you know of them by their legacy.
They were the original owners of the French Laundry in Yountville. They transformed what was once variously a bar, laundry, brothel, then run-down rooming house into a destination restaurant with a prix fixe menu even back then that attracted wide acclaim and visits from the likes of Julia Child and Marion Cunningham. Opened in 1978, Don was the maitre d’ and Sally was the cook, serving up five French-comfort-style courses that topped out at $46 per person.
In 1994, after a number of restaurateurs eyed the property with interest, the couple decided to take the chance to sell it to a then down-on-his-luck, young chef named Thomas Keller.
As Sally deadpans now, “That turned out pretty well, didn’t it?”
Sally, 79, and Don, 81 have a gift for seeing the potential in things most folks would turn their backs on.
After selling the French Laundry, they went on to refurbish yet another run-down property — a 30-acre swath in Philo in Mendocino County near the Navarro River. They turned what was once a decrepit sharecroppers farm into a thriving biodynamic farm specializing in heirloom apples. The Philo Apple Farm is so picturesque now that it’s a favorite setting for retailer Pottery Barn to do its catalog shoots.
If you tuned into the insanely wild first season of Bravo TV’s “Top Chef Just Desserts,” you know that Yigit Pura brought sweet victory home to San Francisco. The executive pastry chef of Taste Catering and Event Planning triumphed over formidable challenges and plenty of histrionics to win a cool $100,000.
A native of Turkey, Pura has felt at home in the kitchen ever since he was a tot, helping his mom make dark caramel and other sugary goodies. Self-taught, he worked in New York at Le Cirque 2000 and Restaurant Daniel, before moving to San Francisco, where he now works on a variety of events that range in scale from a dinner for eight in a private home to a Major League Baseball fete for 5,000 people. Following his win, the board of supervisors even proclaimed Nov. 17 as “igit Pura Day” in the city.
This week, I had a chance to talk to the 30-year-old Pura, about life before, during and after the show.
Q: I’ve watched ‘Top Chef’ since its inception and I have to say I’ve never seen such drama as on ‘Top Chef Just Desserts.’ Is the world of pastry really that over-the-top?
A: (laughs) Pastry chefs tend to be more meticulous creatures, and with that comes a need for more of a sense of control. We’re definitely more eccentric than the savory side.
Q: Why did you want to do the show?
A: I got approached by Bravo. I had always watched ‘Top Chef,’ so it was a tempting offer. I couldn’t say ‘No.’ I thought it would be an interesting platform to showcase pastry chefs’ work instead of just having it be an afterthought after the savory courses, as it usually is.
Q: What was the hardest challenge?
A: There were a few of them. The ‘Celebritea’ challenge, where we had to create a dessert based on a celebrity couple. (Pura chose Madonna and Guy Ritchie.) I had a hard time grasping that in my core. I felt I wasn’t in my body then. After the restaurant wars challenge, I was a mess. I tend to be pretty grounded, but with the lack of sleep, I just felt the floodgates open. It was definitely not my finest moment. But I finally was able to channel all of that to just get re-inspired in the competition.
Q: What surprised you most about doing the show?
A: I tend to plan things a lot in my work when I create recipes and do events. Confronted with such time constraints and limitations on the show, I was amazed I could be so spontaneous under such conditions.
Q: Of all your competitors, whose pastries/desserts would you most want to eat on your day off?
Chef Bruno Chemel of Palo Alto’s Baume can be a bit of a mad scientist.
With his molecular gastronomy creations that foam, smoke, fizz and bubble savagely at the dining table, you’d think that any chocolates he would make would be equally jaw-dropping wild.
But instead, they are as timelessly elegant and chic as can be.
Chemel doesn’t make chocolates very often. No time. But on his rare days off from his nearly one- year-old restaurant, which just received a coveted one Michelin star, he likes to pull out molds, temper chocolate and stir ganache. Sometimes, he even enlists the help of his 6-year-old son, Antoine, who is a whiz at piping.
For Chemel, chocolate-making is relaxing — which, he jokes, his pastry chef thinks is preposterous.
Next year, Chemel hopes to find the time and a way to incorporate his chocolates into the restaurant. Let’s hope so, because recently, the chef allowed me to try some of the bonbons. They are exquisite.