Category Archives: Chocolate

Take Five with Pastry Chef Rodney Cerdan of the Village Pub, On His Candy-Filled Childhood

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Rodney Cerdan, executive pastry chef of the Village Pub, who is never far away from a good cookie.

Rodney Cerdan is a very dangerous man.

If left to his own devices, he will ply you with chocolate honey mousse cake, peanut butter brownie bars with fluffs of toasted marshmallow, chewy almond cookies and bags of homemade sticky caramels to no surrender.

He can’t help himself. As executive pastry chef of the Village Pub in Woodside, Cerdan, 33, has been baking since he was 7, when he’d commandeer his mom’s toaster oven before taking on the full-size one.

After stints at Roy’s Restaurant in San Francisco, Delessio’s Market in Bakery in San Francisco, and Bi-Rite Creamery and Bakeshop in San Francisco, Cerdan took over the head pastry job at the Village Pub in October 2010.

Recently, I had a chance to try a sampling of his newest desserts (about $10 each) on the house that reference homey favorites, but have been reborn with contemporary flair. They included a fluffy, airy chocolate honey mousse cake with spicy ginger ice cream; and a Meyer lemon pudding cake with an ethereal texture made all the more luxurious with dollops of lush white chocolate.

Cerdan's chocolate honey mousse cake with ginger ice cream and ginger chocolate bark.

Cerdan, who is of Spanish-Basque and El Salvadoran heritages, joined me at the table to chat about his failed attempt at an acting career, what it was like to grow up with a mom who worked at See’s Candies, and what his all-time favorite dessert is.

Q: Your Mom wrapped candies at See’s. That must be every kid’s fantasy, right?

A: She used to bring home 10-pound boxes. The fruit-filled chocolates were always my favorite. I used to take a knife to the bottom of each candy until I found the ones that I was looking for.

I got pretty good at identifying them just by sight. But it’s been a while. I’m not sure I could do it now. I’d have to brush up on it.

Q: When you were 7 years old, you wanted an Easy-Bake oven?

A: Yes, but I couldn’t have one. But I found that the toaster oven was better. There was none of that pushing a tiny pan under a light bulb.

I would grab a box of Bisquick and make all the recipes. Then, I’d make my own coffee cakes and pigs in a blanket. I made my own pasta at 9.

I’d watch all the PBS cooking shows, especially Julia Child and ‘Yan Can Cook.”

Q: So was this how your love for baking started?

A: My Mom would come home smelling of chocolate and vanilla. That pretty much did it. (laughs)

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Matcha Kit Kat

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Japanese Kit Kat bars flavored with matcha.

Who doesn’t love a Kit Kat bar, with its crunchy “fingers” that consist of three layers of wafer cookies covered in chocolate?

But did you know just how many variations there are around the world?

Sure, we can’t resist the basic milk chocolate Kit Kat found in stores everywhere in the United States. But folks in Canada can indulge in peanut butter ones, while hazelnut cream ones are sold in Germany, strawberry ones in Australia and tiramisu in the United Kingdom.

Japan, though, is where you’ll probably find the greatest array of specialty Kit Kat flavors, including azuki (red bean), pickled plum, wasabi and soy sauce, according to Wikipedia.

Last week, I snagged a bag of matcha Kit Kat bars at Nijiya market in San Jose’s Japantown. Yes, green tea-flavored ones.

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Healthful Pizza, Ruth Reichl Visit, Chef Demo & More

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The Mexican pizza at ZPizza in San Francisco. (Photo courtesy of the restaurant)

Organic Wheat Flour Pizzas in San Francisco

Laguna Beach, Calif.-based ZPizza, which has more than 90 locations nationwide, now has a locale in San Francisco at 833 Mission St., Suite C (at Fourth Street).

The pizza dough is made from certified organic wheat flour, the sauces are prepared fresh daily, and the cheese is part-skim, rBGH-free mozzarella from grass-fed cows. Gluten-free crust and vegan cheese also are offered. Gourmet ingredients include cremini and shiitake mushrooms, as well as truffle oil and the African hot sauce known as pili pili. For delivery, the pizzas are ferried via bicycles to reduce carbon emissions. Gourmet salads, pastas and sandwiches round out the menu.

Pizza choices include the Thai, with peanut sauce, mozzarella, spicy chicken, cilantro, bean sprouts and serranos; the Mexican with housemade salsa, mozzarella, spicy lime chicken, green onions, avocado, sour cream and cilantro; and the Casablanca, with roasted garlic sauce, mozzarella, ricotta, mushrooms, artichoke hearts and parmesan. Pizzas are $10.95 for a small, $19.95 for a large, and $24.94 for an extra-large.

The one and only Ruth Reichl. (Photo by Fiona Aboud)

Ruth Reichl at Stanford University

Join former Gourmet magazine Editor-in-Chief Ruth Reichl at a free event at the Cubberley Auditorium on the Stanford University Campus in Palo Alto at 6 p.m. March 29.

Reichl, now an editor and author at Random House, will be speaking on “The Intersection of Food, Culture and History.”

A Different Look at Vanilla, Saffron and Chocolate

Sure, they taste good. But did you know all three of those ingredients are rife with politics?

Learn all about the intrigue in getting these three ingredients from harvest to plate at “Politics of the Plate — What’s Behind the Silky Sexiness of Vanilla, Saffron and Chocolate,” 6:30 p.m. to 8:30 p.m. March 16 at the Unitarian Universalist Church of San Francisco (Starr King room), 1187 Franklin St. at Geary Street.

Experts Patricia Rain (vanilla), Juan San Mames (saffron) and Mark Magers (chocolate) will be on the panel with moderator Janet Fletcher, a San Francisco Chronicle food writer.

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Decadent Baked Brownie Mixes

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Brown sugar blondies made from the new Baked bakery's mix.

Brooklyn’s Baked bakery makes irresistible modern-day, home-spun desserts. These aren’t dainty, precious, overly fancy sweets. They’re the type of treats that you grew up with — only way better.

Now, you can make the Baked brownie and two other variations easily in your own home kitchen, thanks to Williams-Sonoma, which is now selling Baked brownie and blondie mixes.

Choose from: Deep Dark Chocolate Brownie, Peanut Butter Brownie, and Brown Sugar Blondie. I had a chance to try samples of each.

The mixes are packed with premium ingredients, including Guittard Cocoa Rouge,  and Callebaut semi-sweet chocolate and milk chocolate.

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Take Five with Bill Corbett, the Pastry Chef Who Dreamed of Being a Heavy Metal Musician

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Absinthe's Bill Corbett dishes on how he became a pastry chef. (Photo courtesy of the restaurant)

If you think Executive Pastry Chef Bill Corbett of Absinthe Brasserie & Bar in San Francisco has always dreamed of making desserts, you’d be wrong. If you think he enjoys indulging in dessert on his days off, you’d be wrong about that, too. And if you think he can’t get enough of deep, dark chocolate, well, you’d be striking out three for three.

Despite those contrarian characteristics, Corbett, a native of Waterloo, Canada, has done all right for himself. Indeed, the 36-year-old, who probably would have been a heavy metal musician if he’d had his druthers, has made quite the name for himself, having worked at such esteemed establishments as WD-50 in New York, Michael Mina restaurant in San Francisco, and Coi, also in San Francisco.

Recently, I had a chance to sit down with Corbett at Absinthe, where he started in January to oversee the sweets there, as well as at Arlequin Cafe and Comstock Saloon. I also had a chance to try a couple of his elegant desserts: an Earl Grey pavlova with vivid mint ice cream, and a modern take on German chocolate cake with coconut foam that totally changed my mind about the traditionally too-gooey version.

Corbett's German Chocolate Cake. (Photo by Carolyn Jung)

Q: What brought you to the United States?

A: I didn’t have a clue what I wanted to do for a living when I was a kid. I was into music, especially punk music. I worked in a video store in Canada. When it closed, a friend got a job as a dishwasher at a restaurant. So, I did, too.

I’d still love to be in a band now. If I could be in a heavy metal band, I’d do it in a heart beat. But I’d have to set aside time to actually learn to play an instrument. (laughs)

I moved to Florida from Canada, because I had friends in bands there. I had no work visa and only $800 in my pocket. So, I worked at a cafe in Tampa and was paid under the table. It was called the 7th Heaven Psychic Cafe. We served salads and sandwiches, and there were psychic readings.

Q: Seriously?

A: Seriously.

Florida was where I met my wife, too. I ended up moving to Toronto for a year to work in an all-you-can-eat buffet place. But then I moved to New York because my wife was going to school there. She’s a graphic artist.

I started to realize that I couldn’t just collect a paycheck, even if it meant I could buy records. And the more I learned about cooking, the more I started to really love it.

Q: Why did you decide to focus on the sweet side, rather than the savory one?

A: Forced into it is probably the wrong way to put it. (laughs) I wanted to cook. I was trying to get into culinary school in the United States. I could work here, but I couldn’t get loans here.

I was working at a bar in Brooklyn when I was 28. One day, a woman told me that Lincoln Carson, who is now the corporate pastry chef for Michael Mina, had a place and that I should go do a stage there. I barely knew what ‘stage’ meant. The fact was that nobody wanted to hire me because I had no culinary school training and no New York experience.

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