CHEF CHAT : Staying at the top

CHEF CHAT : Staying at the top.

Gregor Pfaff, Executive pastry chef, The Dome and lebua, at State Tower

CAMUS

Gregor Pfaff began his career as a pastry chef at a place that many would regard as the top: the Hotel Sacher in Vienna, home of the celebrated Sachertorte created by Franz Sacher for the Congress of Vienna in 1814.

"Basically, Sachertorte is a chocolate cake with layers of apricot jam covered with chocolate icing," Gregor explained. "Each one is hand cut and hand made and packed in a little wooden box for shipping to the best patisseries all around the world. The hotel didn't like to be too free with the recipe, so the pastry chef and his sous chef were in charge of making it. I was in charge of breaking the eggs!"

Gregor had grown up in the family hotel owned by his father near Frankfurt, and when his father retired and sold the property, he had a clear idea of what he wanted to do.

"I enrolled at hotel school as a confectioner. The confectioner is the one who makes all the cakes, tarts and strudel," he explained. "Then as a pastry chef I was doing show pieces and a la minute cooking and making souffles."

After a year at Sacher followed by a year at its sister hotel in Salzburg, Gregor worked at the Black Forest spa hotel regarded as the best in Germany, the Buhlerhohe, and then, still staying at the top, he went to the Ritz in London.

"I had been in German speaking hotels and now I had more of a chance to learn English," he said. He also made a discovery that was to be valuable in the future.

"Afternoon tea at the Ritz," he explained. "It was amazingly popular. The tea lounge was full every afternoon."

This introduction to English teatime rituals was significant as Gregor is now the executive chef at The Dome and lebua, the State Tower's boutique hotel and one of his responsibilities is afternoon tea at the lebua lounge.

It was there in the dark wood-panelled comfort that we met him, and although every outlet at The Dome and lebua, from Sirocco to Breeze, are in his charge, it was the lebua tea lounge that was currently demanding his attention. He is especially proud of his scones, which he pronounces as "scons" the way they do in Scotland, land of their birth.

"At the Ritz, we made 600 scones a day," he said. "They are perfect for eating with cream and jam because they're quite plain and not sweet. For afternoon tea at lebua lounge guests have 20 different kinds of tea to choose from, ranging from pure Assam dark and strong to delicate blends of fruit and spice flavours. Tea has a refreshing quality, but it also contains caffeine, so one of them is a decaf tea.

"We considered making flavoured scones as well, but in the end decided that we should only make the classic kind. A scone should be a scone with nothing added, except for raisins which are traditional, so we make half of them plain and half with raisins."

The scone is obviously the rock on which a successful afternoon tea is built - although that might not be the most appropriate term to use. But Gregor insists that a successful tea must follow the same principles as any other culinary endeavour of quality.

"Finest ingredients certainly, and always fresh. If there is a secret for success, that is it: everything must be made fresh to eat fresh. Nothing frozen to be used later, nothing kept in the fridge overnight. To make it good, make it fresh, and we make our scones every hour."

There is another teatime tradition he is keen on, and that is applying clotted cream to the scones instead of butter.

"It is possible to buy it here, but we import ours from Devonshire in the English West County, or if it's not available, from the Yarra Valley in Australia. It is the richest kind of cream you can get, and so it's likely to have the most fat content. The farmhouse method of making it is to pour milk into shallow pans and scald it for an hour so that the fat goes to the top. It develops a buttery character and a golden crust of cream forms on it.

"Strawberry jam is the usual accompaniment, but I like to make a passion fruit jam, too, as I find the slightly bitter taste goes well with the cream.

For filling our pastries and cakes we make cream that isn't really cream at all, but it is all made from fresh ingredients, like eggs, butter and fine sugar."

On the top tier of the cake stand he placed a choux a la creme, a hollow globe of choux pastry filled with vanilla-flavoured pastry cream, a green tea raspberry cake with layers of raspberry and pastry cream with green tea crumble, small tarts with perfect, evenly sized strawberries or raspberries, English fruit cake and the classic Opera cake. But the recipe we requested from Gregor was the exotic scone.

"This is the recipe I brought back from England," he said. "I've made it for 20 scones, but obviously, just halve the ingredients to make 10 if that's more suitable. A word of advice, though, for when you're making cakes of any kind: stick to the recipe. Use a scale, weigh the exact amounts and follow the method precisely. Then you can't go wrong."

Classic scones

Ingredients

800g Cake flour

150g Sugar

150g Softened butter

75g Baking powder

4 Eggs

225g Milk

200g Raisins (for raisin scones)

Method

Put all ingredients into a mixer, reserving a little milk and egg yolk for glaze. If mixing by hand, place in a mixing bowl, beat the eggs and stir them in then add the milk a little at a time. If making raisin scones, add the raisins last.

Mix ingredients into a soft, smooth dough, about 2 minutes in the mixer. Remove and let rest for an hour.

Roll out the dough slowly to a thickness of about 2cm (it will rise to 3cm or more). Cut out scones with round cutter. Pre-heat the oven to 200 degrees. Brush scones with mixture of egg yolk and milk and place on baking tray 3cm apart.

Bake in oven for 10 minutes and allow to cool. Serve with French butter if clotted cream not available, and good quality strawberry jam. The recommended method is to cut the scones in half horizontally.

Bangkok Post
Friday January 12, 2007