Posted on 04/27/2005 4:58:06 AM PDT by BigWaveBetty
Hail to the chef: Former White House pastry guru shares his sweet secrets
Imagine spending almost 25 years in the White House pastry kitchen as the executive pastry chef for five presidents and first families, doing your work surrounded by pounds of butter, chocolate, cream, fresh fruits and sugar. While the job may sound like a dessert lover's dream, it's not always as sweet as it seems.
Just ask French-born patissier Roland R. Mesnier, who retired last July. Lately he's been traveling throughout the country promoting his first cookbook, "Dessert University" (Simon & Schuster; $40), which took four years to write with help from Lauren Chattman. The 545 pages are filled with all kinds of show-stopping desserts, many from his White House years.
During his time in the White House (1980-2004) he designed and created some 3,000 different desserts with the help of one full-time assistant.
"It was a great challenge. I didn't have much of a personal life for 25 years," Mesnier says.
He was in charge of ordering all the pastry ingredients and arranging for pickup. "There was no delivery at the White House - and all vendors were checked by the Secret Service."
Starting with Nancy Reagan, Mesnier presented dessert tastings to the first ladies for approval, prior to state dinners. After a lot of research, he always tried to include something in his desserts that reflected the invited leader's country. For instance, blown-sugar giraffes for Kenya, flower leis made of sugar for the Philippines, tiny chocolate replicas of Big Ben for England, and a white tiger out of white chocolate and a lotus flower out of sorbets for India.
"Mesnier never repeated the same dessert in all the state dinners," notes Francois Dionot, owner/founder/president of the culinary school L'Academie de Cuisine in Bethesda, Md., who has known the pastry guru for 30 years. "To me, he is the king of sugar work - spun sugar, poured sugar, rock sugar, pulled sugar. Very few people know how to do this anymore. He makes roses that look real."
Mesnier was known for making cakes just so he could put them under a sugar piece. "He's very talented in everything in desserts," says Dionot.
Every first lady put her stamp on the White House - and Mesnier says he's enjoyed them all.
"Mrs. (Rosalynn) Carter spent less time worrying about what was served at a dinner party, but she loved desserts," he says. During Nancy Reagan's time, "the White House became a showcase of grand cuisine. She was determined to have new desserts for every dinner, and she was very demanding."
Mesnier recalled the time, two days before the arrival of the queen of the Netherlands for a state dinner for 150 people, that Nancy Reagan rejected four different desserts. She told him to make 14 sugar baskets decorated with half a dozen sugar tulips and filled with assorted sorbets and fresh fruit. She then said, " 'Don't forget you have two days and two nights,' " Mesnier remembers. The chef pulled it off without any help: "Mrs. Reagan made me a better pastry chef," he says.
With the witty and smart Barbara Bush, "the house took on a different dimension - with children laughing, dogs barking, etc. She didn't make waves with what was served.
"The Clintons, very charismatic people, were very casual - and the only family that ate in the kitchen. Mrs. (Hillary) Clinton was very political - it was like having a second president in the White House." During their eight years, the number of people invited to the White House increased dramatically, as did Mesnier's work load. Mrs. Clinton favored leaner cuisine and plated service for desserts.
"First lady Laura Bush is meticulous - and the house is sparkling," he says. "She has a great knowledge of food and how it should be prepared and (how it should) taste."
Over the years, Mesnier has focused on reducing calories in desserts but without sacrificing flavor. His strategies include reducing sugar, butter, cream and eggs, using low-fat or regular milk instead of cream and sometimes cornstarch to make a thicker base.
"There are at least 50 recipes (out of 300) in the book that would qualify as low-calorie desserts."
His penchant for desserts dates back to the summer fruit tarts of every color and flavor he enjoyed during his childhood. "My mother was a wonderful chef - an unbelievable home cook."
His five golden rules for making great desserts: "Learn the basics and then practice, practice, practice; respect the classics; value economy and simplicity; focus on flavor; and be an artist, develop your talent."
CHEF PROFILE ...
ROLAND R. MESNIER
Age: 60.
Profession: Pastry chef.
Hometown: Bonnay, France.
Food background: Mesnier began a three-year apprenticeship in a pastry shop near his home at age 14. He went on to stints as a pastry cook/assistant in pastry shops and hotels in Paris, Germany (Hannover and Hamburg) and London. Eventually, he became head pastry chef at the Princess Hotel in Bermuda.
After a stint at The Homestead, a resort in Hot Springs, Va., he landed the ultimate pastry job: In December 1979, Rosalynn Carter hired him to be the White House pastry chef - and for almost 25 years his desserts were on view to the world - until he retired in July 2004. Kitchen secret: Work with all of your ingredients at room temperature (including eggs).
Three favorite foods: A good steak, a good apple pie a la mode, honey ice cream.
Favorite junk foods: A good hamburger and a good doughnut.
Foods he hates: Cilantro, dill, onions.
Secret food passion: A good pate.
Favorite kitchen gadget: A homemade cherry pitter (made with a wine cork and a ladies' hairpin).
Pet peeve: Mediocrity in the hotel and pastry industry. Ideal vacation: Alaska.
Favorite restaurant: Jean Marc Raynud in Tain L'Hermitage (near Lyon), France.
Pastimes: Fishing, gardening, cultivating roses, working on recipes for upcoming cookbooks (a cake volume is in the works).
Family: Wife, Martha, and a 35-year-old son, George. If he couldn't be a pastry chef, what would he be?: An actor.
Worst White House kitchen disaster: The time the eggs for the hot raspberry souffles for a state dinner wouldn't whip (guests were in the dining room). "I was sweating bullets (and could visualize this as my last day at the White House)." But fortunately, he started with new egg whites, adding sugar to them instead of an Italian meringue, to gain time, and the souffles came out beautifully. Worst part of being the White House pastry chef: "The inside politicking among the White House staff."
Very funny! There was no way on earth I had the stomach to watch Rosie O'Donut chew her way through a role as a mentally handicapped person.
Oh, my. I thought that was Tim Russert!
What's he been doing in Maya Angelou's closet?
I thought I'd stumbled upon an alternate universe when I surfed my way to the country music cable channel, and there was Maya Angelou commenting on the greatest country songs of all time. She's just everywhere!
So that's what it's like to have ice tea shoot out your nose!
Sting is soooo hot.
The VRWC is alive! Just ask Hillary.
NEW YORK — The Web is proving to be fertile ground for efforts to try to derail Sen. Hillary Clinton's future political ambitions.
A Web site that will feature documents alleging the New York senator knew about illegal activities surrounding certain campaign contributions was launched Tuesday night.
Clinton's camp claims the efforts are just a small example of how Republicans are going to use the former first lady as a whipping post in 2006 and possibly beyond.
"We know one thing for sure, the Republicans and their right-wing allies are going to be hitting us hard with false charges," Clinton wrote to potential donors, according to The Associated Press, calling herself "the Republicans' number one target in 2006."
The Web site launched Tuesday night, www. Hillcap.org, is a joint effort between former Clinton fund-raiser Peter Paul and the self-confessed conservative group U.S. Justice Foundation, who are calling it the Hillary Clinton Accountability Project.
The site is being created by the same technical producers behind the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth Web campaign that helped defeat 2004 Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry.
Meanwhile, longtime GOP operative Arthur Finkelstein on Tuesday launched a "Stop Her Now" effort, warning that Clinton and her husband, former President Bill Clinton, are trying to "pull the wool over America's eyes once again."
Finkelstein, who said he hopes to raise $10 million from his effort in which he has partnered with New York Republican Party Chairman Stephen Minarik, has been a top adviser to New York Republican Gov. George Pataki and worked on the campaigns of other Republican lawmakers.
In April, Bill Clinton went after Finkelstein because of the anti-Hillary effort. The former president said there might be "some sort of self-loathing" in Finkelstein, a gay Republican who married his partner in Massachusetts.
Paul Not a Gadfly But a Felon
The Hillary Clinton Accountability Project features information provided by Paul, who is involved in a civil suit against the Clintons and is being represented by the U.S. Justice Foundation. Paul claims that his information clearly shows that Clinton knew of the actions taken by her finance director, David Rosen, when he failed to adhere to federal campaign regulations.
Rosen is facing a four-count indictment charging that he "knowingly and willfully caused to be made materially false, fictitious, and fraudulent statements" to the Federal Election Commission regarding more than $1 million in campaign contributions in 2000. Each of the four felony counts carries a possible penalty of five years in prison and $250,000 in fines. His trial was supposed to begin Tuesday but apparently has been rescheduled to begin May 17.
Hillcap.org lays out Paul's case that he spent more than $1.2 million to host a Salute to President Clinton Hollywood gala that featured big names like Cher, Melissa Etheridge and Diana Ross. The event, held Aug. 12, 2000, raised $1 million in "hard money" contributions for Hillary Clinton's Senate campaign.
Hillcap.org claims that by "falsely reporting those costs as $401,419, the Clinton campaign avoided paying at least $800,000 in hard money" during the final weeks before the election. Paul told FOXNews.com on Tuesday that he held the event in exchange for Bill Clinton's support on a business venture. He also charged that Sen. Clinton knew about the reporting discrepancies.
A spokesman for the Justice Department, Bryan Sierra, told The New York Times in February that Sen. Clinton was not a subject of the investigation that led to the indictment and no one else had been accused of any wrongdoing arising from the accusations against Rosen. ...
Rest of story at http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,155425,00.html
I'm glad you got a new 'puter and are back among us!
Remember the good old days when the Hallmark Hall of Fame produced really good movies? Well, those days are long gone.
I'm glad we have courageous souls with cast iron stomachs to live blog it.
Whew, me too! Still catching up...
Boo hoo hoo. Oh, I'm going to cry a river for old lardbutt. It amazes me still that Hillary and her toadies continue to float the "false charges" that GWB lied to get us into Iraq. But then I'm just an innocent that still believes that elected officials and the like should tell the truth. (aren't I adorable?)
Algore's invention will be the end of Hill, Bill and the rest. They never counted on being held accountable for their lies and as the Internet continues to grow, as the truth starts to filter out, Hillary is going to get a nasty wake up call, if not in 2006, then in 2008. Little tidbits like this will haunt her forever.
In an interview on Thursday, Mrs. Clinton called Admiral Jacoby's statement "the first confirmation, publicly, by the administration that the North Koreans have the ability to arm a missile with a nuclear device that can reach the United States," adding, "Put simply, they couldn't do that when George Bush became president, and now they can."
They can do it because your hubby permitted them to lay the groundwork, bee-yatch. In any event, the White House has responded:
White House chief of staff Andrew Card fired back at New York Sen. Hillary Clinton on Sunday, pointing out that North Korean dictator Kim Jong Il obtained his first nuclear weapon while her husband was president. After citing Mrs. Clinton's claim Friday that Pyongyang developed a nuclear intercontinental ballistic missile capable of reaching the U.S. during the Bush administration, NBC's "Meet the Press" host Tim Russert asked Card: "Could it be said that President Bush was so focused on Iraq that another far greater threat emerged - and that six nuclear bombs were developed by North Korea on his watch?"
Card shot back: "Or on President Clinton's watch. Some of those weapons may well have been produced as they were violating the agreement they had with President Clinton. That's what a North Korean delegation said to an American diplomat. And they said it with great pride." ....
In fact, two years before her husband left office, a Congressional study warned that North Korea would soon gain the capacity to make nuclear bombs thanks to the plutonium produced by two light water nuclear reactors given to Pyongyang by the Clinton administration.
The report by the House North Korea Advisory Group also flatly stated: "Unlike five years ago [before the Clinton administration's Agreed Framework was implemented], North Korea can now strike the United States with a missile that could deliver high explosive, chemical, biological, or possibly nuclear weapons." News Max
Angelina and Brad's passion awakens the guards at 2AM in Kenya with machetes drawn... http://entertainment.excite.com/celebgossip/pgsix/id/05_04_2005_6.html
The only thing I can think of is that, God forbid, the day the GOP again becomes the minority they'd have to do the on-the-floor filibuster and/or they're a bunch of lazy butts who just can't be bothered with a real filibuster?
Help me figure out why the GOP aren't painting a clear picture of what a filibuster is used for. It was pointed out to me recently the reason why legislation is filibustered and judges are not. Legislation can be compromised on, certain segments of a bill can be added or deleted for an eventual outcome, a new bill that makes everyone happy. A judge however is a person. One can't compromise, add or subtract from a human being. The person is who they are, therefore a filibuster on an individual would never be able to come to an end or agreement.
It's an up or down vote folks.
U.S. Rep. Stephen Lynch (D-South Boston) spent $1,231 on makeup services during a two-week stretch in March, according to his most recent FEC report.
``Congresssman Lynch had a pretty intensive round of TV interviews due to the baseball steroid hearings, the Big Dig hearings and his Iraq trip,'' Lynch spokesman Matt Ferraguto said.
1200 bucks on make-up in two weeks?! So of course I have to see what Mr. Lynch looks like.... Now I'm thinking, $1200 wasn't enough.
This information also got me to thinking... How much did Kerry spend on his hair, make-up (and/or spray on tan) and nails (whoops, don't forget the new tooth) during the campaign? Did he use campaign funds to pay for it all? Will we ever know?
Washington Gov. Christine Gregoire, left, waves as she hugs Sen. John Kerry, D-Mass., Monday, May 2, 2005, at a healthcare forum in Seattle.
What's Christine all excited about? Oh wait, that picture was taken before the judge ruled he will allow the republican's statistical methods and results at trial.
Did Christine have to pay the fuel bill for his trip over on the Flying Squirrel or is that included in the Kerry 'How to be a LOSER' lessons?
But the advantages Kerry enjoys from winning his party’s nomination last year are balanced by the consequences of having fallen short against Bush in the general election, a race that many Democrats feel should have been won.
“I think he proved he cannot connect with people,” said Joe Cari, who served as national finance director of the DNC in 2000 and who estimated that he had raised about $100,000 for Kerry’s presidential campaign. “I don’t see his candidacy going anywhere. You tell me people in the Democratic Party are going to live, eat and breath John Kerry again. I don’t see it. I don’t see any fervor.”
“He really angered a lot of people by keeping all the money that he did,” Cari said, referring to close to $17 million left unspent in Kerry’s campaign account after the election.
“I wrote and asked for my money back,” said Cari, who gave $2,000 to John Kerry for President Inc. and $2,000 to Kerry-Edwards 2004 Inc., the general-election legal fund. “When you hold back $17 million, there’s no way that you can say that ‘I gave it my best shot.’”
Other Democratic fundraisers and strategists, who declined to speak on the record for fear of angering friends and professional acquaintances, offered similarly harsh assessments of Kerry’s candidacy. [snip]
Michael Bauer, a fundraiser and activist based in Chicago who gave to more than 30 Democratic candidates for the 2004 election, said he also asked the Kerry campaign for a refund after the race. Bauer, who gave $2,000 to John Kerry for President Inc. and $1,000 to Kerry’s general-election legal and accounting-compliance fund, said he threatened to sue for misrepresentation because Kerry left a substantial portion of his money unspent.
“I think he was woefully inadequate,” Bauer said. “He was an amazingly lousy candidate. He worked hard to lose that election.”
Kerry has seemed to try to make amends for finishing the campaign with so much left in his account. So far this year he’s given $1 million to the DNC, $1 million to the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee and $500,000 to the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee.
Seems like Hillary will have a fight on her hands. She'll have to raise money for '06 and '08 but the hard part will be she'll have to do it within the law this time, what with her campaign finance guy on trial and all.
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