Babá al rhum

The stickiest buns

...I hate sticky, goopy, sweet-tasting, fruity stuff...

I have never worked in a restaurant large enough and organised enough to have a dedicated pastry chef, let alone a dedicated pastry section, let alone a dedicated pastry kitchen. A lot of the time – not all of the time! – pastry (which covers all sweet and baked things) is done resentfully by the most junior or bullyable chef. Some reasons suggested for this:

• pastry requires “precision” and “mathematics” rather than an artistic / improvisatory approach (I dislike this argument, mainly offered by chefs I would not trust unsupervised in the kitchen)

• pastry generally requires dedicated hands-on time – while you can cook four sauces or soups or stews all at once quite easily making four tarts or whatever just takes four times as long (fair)

• relatedly pastry requires space (to roll, to rest, to chill) and often space somewhere which isn't too hot. I have worked under a chef who was formerly a pastry chef and the tart pastry recipe they insisted on us using was literally unworkable in the kitchen space we had, melting away on the concrete countertops (match your recipes to your kitchen and to the skills of your team!)

  or

• nobody really cares about pastry / desserts are for girls.

This is an attitude espoused throughout Kitchen Confidential as quoted above: real cooking happens in fire and smoke, and nobody serious likes pudding anyway – have a cheese board for god's sake! It is an attitude I have often been guilty of, although in my defence I do really love cheese. (Too many cooks take the young Bourdain of KC as a model for the good life rather than a warning; they don't read until the end, or past it, into the wiser Bourdain of his later writing, his travel television – but I'm not here to dispute or discuss Bourdain.) A restaurateur I worked for had a different idea. It's the last thing they eat! he would tell (harangue?) the kitchen when he thought they weren't taking pudding seriously.

IT’S THE LAST THING THEY EAT!

This has stuck with me.