BEAU part 1

Hi long time friends.

It's been a while since I posted on this blog, thought I'd catch you up on what I've been up to since the last time we chatted, and about why I decided to open my own bakery!

pic by thefoodiemag.com

Me in the BEAU kitchen

Ian Chin @bakingchin

Since my return to Jakarta in late 2013, I'd been busy planning and working on opening a bakery / patisserie of my own. The collection of ideas, inspirations and wishes from my travels became what is now succinctly called "BEAU". After months of trial and error with Ian Chin - a friend from Le Cordon Bleu, and later joined by Christina Min, a rogue pastry chef from Hawaii, we came up with a repertoire for the bakery.

Christina Min @minychefy

These days I wear many hats, I wear a chef’s hat to create new cakes and products, am an entrepreneur to ensure the smooth running, creative development and expansion of my business. I am easily bored and love it when I am challenged. People say I am a perfectionist, but I don’t think this is the case, because I am a big believer in letting things happen. My father always says that business is an art; I just have a very strong idea of how our brand needs to be represented through our products and services.

Overseas, being a baker and pastry chef is seen as a respected occupation that feeds, serves and entertains society. People take huge ownership and pride in their work; their individuality is expressed through their products and style. However, when I came back to Indonesia, I saw a lot of the same products repackaged and resold in establishments. My experiences abroad encourages me to think of pastries and breads as “creations”, and that respect to the technique, fundamentals and applying originality is important, like any other creative field.  This was one of the reasons why I wanted to open my own bakery in Indonesia.

Added to this, growing up on my mother’s cooking, I feel like I have an Indonesian palate. I have a good grasp on what Indonesians like to eat, and which flavor profiles that evoke a feeling of comfort and nostalgia. I like to give a local twist on our products by using local ingredients wherever possible. Like music, I believe that food is a universal language. At an international stage, it is about making sure our products have a strong message, impactful and meaningful. Really owning our heritage and being proud of our national identity can achieve this.

One of the chefs I respect very much is Dominique Ansel. I respect Ansel’s work because it is an amalgamation of both of his worlds – being a French chef in New York. He marries his sensibilities as a Frenchman as well as influences living in New York and creates things that are reflections of his own experiences. He is able to funnel his many years of experience and expertise into something that is ingenious and so simple! Legendary jazz bassist Charles Mingus once said that “Making the simple complicated is commonplace; making the complicated simple, awesomely simple, that's creativity." I truly believe Ansel’s creativity was in the way he was able to make something that is so complicated into something that appears to be so simple and “no-brainer”. This is what we try to achieve with our own products at BEAU.

Our pastry line up; all free from artificial colourings

Our viennoiserie collection

Our artisan breads

I take the most pride in the creation of original cakes for our bakery. In my opinion, the art behind the design and fabrication of entremets can be summed up using our bakery’s tagline #tastetextureform. There are many factors that need to be weighed when deciding on components for an entremet. Taste, structure, flavor balance and aesthetic all need to be considered individually, as well as how they would taste together in a bite. Each layer needs to have a function and needs to contribute to the overall taste and texture of the cake as a whole.

ASTRID: Raspberry, pistachio, white chocolate and yogurt

So an entremet needs to:

1. TASTE balanced,
2. have contrasting TEXTURES and 
3. be structurally sound and look good aesthetically with good FORM. That is the challenge and what makes it fun! They are the most time consuming of any pastry that we make. Usually taking one whole day to make each of the components. There can be up to 8 components in a cake, which need to be made and layered separately and neatly.

At BEAU, we also offer a wide selection of artisan breads. The bread that is commonly found in Indonesia is the filled bun, usually soft and sweet. At BEAU we try to keep our breads as classically European as possible. We make traditional sourdoughs, French baguette as well as traditional Italian breads such as ciabatta, focaccia. These kinds of breads are delicious to use in sandwiches, and as a hearty accompaniment to any meal.  We also do not use any kinds of preservatives, bread improvers or pre-mixes in any of our breads. We also use whole-wheat flour and a plethora of seeds and grains in a number of our products. This ensures that our breads are as authentic, natural and healthy as they get.The intriguing thing about sourdough bread is that its “starter” is naturally cultured through the natural fermentation of flour and water.  Unlike normal bread, which uses commercialised yeast, we are able to obtain a “signature” taste using our leaven through our unique processes.
Each loaf is also hand shaped, hand scored and then baked in a steam injected deck oven. This means that no two loaves look the same; as our bread is artisan made.

Bread by BEAU

The amazing man behind our bread is Ian Chin. I met Mr Chin during my studies in Le Cordon Bleu in Paris. He was working in New York City and we hung out several times during my few months there studying bread. At the time he was working long hours at Sullivan Street bakery and had expressed to me discontent about his work. I had mentioned half-jokingly that he should come to Indonesia to help me get the bread section of the bakery started. It turned out he took it seriously and now he’s here. When he first came to Jakarta, my kitchen wasn’t yet ready due to construction delays. So we ended up testing our recipes at home using my small home oven. He would test and tweak his bread recipes one at a time using a combo cooker. Every day we’d slice them open and analyse each bread to see what can be improved. It took us about 4 months to come up with a sourdough recipe we were happy with.

Our bakery has a motto we always stand by: Respect the technique, respect the ingredient and respect the customer.

• Respect the techniques: we need to get the fundamentals right before anything. There’s no use doing all the fancy stuff if you don’t know the big picture and how it relates back to the core concept and ideas behind each individual product. For example, we respect the age-old way of baking sourdough using natural leaveners instead of just using premixes and selling it as authentic “artisan sourdough”. 
• Respect the ingredients: We are blessed with noble ingredients that we should treat with care. It is only right as chefs that we learn how to process each ingredient to make full use of its flavor and potential. We want to always choose the best ingredients and make sure that the products that feature them are able to represent the ingredients in a successful and impactful way. 
• Respect the customer: We need to treat our customers as discerning people. Every so often, sub-par products are sold to customer because the producers think that the customers do not care or cannot perceive the differences. I also believe that I would only serve them products that I would serve my to my own kids in the future, products which are wholesome and healthy. This means they don’t contain anything that might harm your health such as artificial colouring, flavourings, additives and preservatives. 

Because I trained as a jazz musician, I perceive pastry as being my “instrument” I can create and compose with. I couldn’t really explain what drew me to choose the double bass as my instrument, but only to say that it represented my voice and that I am able to express myself thoroughly with it. Both music and pastry need a happy heart while you are making it, or else the products will not be good. Both need to be done wholeheartedly with a heart full with passion to be carried out the right way. Both call for a good amount of creativity and ingenuity to find new combinations, new techniques and reach new grounds. To me, both are a reflection of your lives, personality, tastes and culture. If you are able to learn more about yourself, your culture as well as your own likings and inclinations, you would be able to create something that is truer and nearer to your heart.

BEAU's opening team April 2015

Anyway thanks for taking the time to read this long blog post folks! Part 2 is coming soon where I'll talk about our pastry products in more detail! For the time being you can find our more about us on our website www.beaujkt.com and you can also find us on instagram @BEAUjkt!

Always keen to hear from like-minded, passionate chefs from around the world, especially if you're keen to join us in Jakarta! Please email me at talita@beaujkt.com to chat more :)

x Tal

JAVA CARAMEL CAKE

It sure doesn't feel like it, but I've been back in my birth country of Indonesia for a little over a year now. Friends still laugh at my tries at talking in colloquial "Bahasa Indonesia", call me a "tourist" when I get lost on the roads and are always super worried when I eat food from street vendors. Haha! But I think having spent most of my life overseas, has allowed me to appreciate this country a lot more. This is especially true with the kinds of ingredients that I get to experiment with on a daily basis. The common ingredients that are usually taken for granted, I still approach with a mind full of curiosity and questions. I didn't believe it when one of my role models Will Goldfarb (pastry chef of Mejekawi and Room for Dessert in Bali) said a year ago, that Indonesia is the best place to do pastry. But the more I explored the local ingredients, the more I agree with Will. I think he's truly onto something.

Yes, life in the metropolitan city of Jakarta has been pretty fast-paced and hectic. As fellow bloggers would attest to, writing and uploading blog posts can be quite a laborious feat that I sneakily keep putting off! But after receiving an email from the now-London-dwelling-cool-as-Kiwi-chick Natalie Smith about a collaboration between Talita's Kitchen and Baileys Irish Cream, I couldn't possibly turn it down! I thought it would be the perfect opportunity to combine local and Western ingredients into a cake that is truly new, unique and delicious. 

Well this is what I came up with:

Baileys Java Caramel Cake

This cake is comprised of arenga sugar and white chocolate sheets (inspired by pastry guru Goldfarb himself), caramel sponge cake, Baileys mascarpone cream, caramelized "sisir" mini bananas, and some oh-so-French caramel tuiles to top the confection off. Stacked and layered like a Mille-Feuille I feel like this cake is a delicious amalgamation of the east and west.

Watch me make this cake on Episode #11 of Junior Masterchef Indonesia that aired on June 15th 2014

x Tal

Coco Mango Lassi Entremet

Happy New Year valued readers! I hope you've all had a lovely holiday season with your loved ones. A new year usually means new resolutions to live healthier lives. Though I always try to balance my sweet toothed tendencies with a relatively active lifestyle, due to Jakarta's gridlocked traffic and being in the car for hours everyday this is not always easy. So when Rian from The Foodie Magazine asked me to come up with a guilt-free dessert, I jumped at the opportunity to do so. I thought it would be good for me to start to find ways to limit my use of sugar and flour and still make a visually appealing and tasty cake to satisfy my cravings.

I am pretty happy with the cake that I came up with. It's great to be able to use local mangoes and freshly grated coconut flesh in this cake for added nutritional value and fiber. To replace the sugar I used stevia, and used honey to lightly sweeten the mango mousse. My friends have commented that the resulting cake did not taste "healthy" at all, and that they couldn't believe that it was guilt-free. Well though the cake is certainly not "calorie-free" it is free of refined sugar and processed white flour. That alone for me, is a pretty cool achievement. So try this cake out for yourself at home, and let me know what you think!

x Tal

Milk Chocolate and Jasmine Tea Eclairs

It's the rainy season in Jakarta. With it so dark and stormy outside, I'd resolved to work from home this day. The dreaded Friday traffic jams, coupled with rain and flooding is a recipe for a sure case of car-cabin fever. But enough talk about those gloomy things, let's talk about pastry.

Well, the eclair is still one of my favorites. The "cream-puff" oftentimes is one's first exposure to the wonderful world of pastry. To me it brings back childhood joys of savoring the crispy, buttery shell and sweet creamy center of "kue sus" (Indonesian-style cream-puff) my grandma used to make. During my stay in Paris, a trip to the neighborhood boulangerie for the daily baguette would more often than not include a sneaky purchase of dark chocolate eclairs I'd bite into, as soon as I step out of the shop.

They're so simple, nostalgic, classic and beautiful. But so hard to get just right! The shell has to be crispy with just the right amount of salt to offset the sweet pastry cream. The cream has to be thick and gooey with a balanced milky richness. Eclairs are usually finished with a generous layer of fondant, but the recipe I'm going to share with you today omits this and  puts in its place a "craquelin" crunchy crust. The "craquelin" popularized by Philippe Conticcini of Patisserie des Reves adds a gorgeous crunchy texture and "umami" element to these pastries. Made with flavorful sugar such as palm or muscovado sugar will make these eclairs dangerously addictive. Proceed to the recipe with caution, dear friends. You have been warned!

x Tal

White chocolate, Strawberry and Pomegranate

When I received the email bearing the offer to contribute a few recipes to Femina magazine, I couldn't click that reply button fast enough to say a big fat "YES". I'd been lucky enough to have recipes featured on a few publications, but for me Femina is very special. Why? Because it's the magazine that my mother has been getting weekly eversince I was a kid. It's the magazine I use to see lying around all around the house, and it's the magazine I would see her try recipes out of from time to time. I guess you can say that Femina holds a fair amount of my sentiment. So to not only be featured in the 2014 Annual edition of Femina but also be placed alongside my bold and talented friend Arnold Poernomo and the sweet Amelia Listianawati is pretty damn unreal! (And I don't swear that often on this blog)

So today I will share a variation of one of the recipes that is currently featured in the magazine. The White Chocolate, Strawberry and Pomegranate Tart. 

One cannot deny that the contrast of the red pomegranate over the smooth white chocolate glaze is super eye catching and intriguing. Perhaps it will entice you to give this recipe a go. 

x Tal

The Astrid

Hello my dearest kitchen dwellers, how are you all doing? I am writing this post filled with a lot of excitement, eager to show you all this latest cake of mine. I've been thinking a lot lately about how to construct a successful entremet. I've tasted some wonderful layered cakes in the past, but have also tasted ones that did not live up to their colorful promise. There are many factors that need to be weighed when deciding on components for an entremet. Structure, texture, balance and aesthetic all need to be considered individually, as well as how they would taste together in a bite. Each layer needs to have a function and needs to contribute to the overall taste and texture of the cake as a whole. For me, it was a fun challenge trying to balance pistachio, white chocolate and raspberry so that no flavor would overpower the other. I wanted the fragrance of pistachio, the acidity of the raspberry and the sweet, roundness of the white chocolate to work together in a nice tasty symphony.

The cake that I came up with is by no means perfect, but I am very proud of it. This cake was tasted by 15 foodie friends and most of them thought that the balance was right and that the flavors work well together. They found also that the pop-rocks in the "pistachio crunch" as a nice wee surprise and adds playful texture to the cake. I topped the cake with some freeze-dried raspberries and pistachio sand to add a burst of color and flavor while still keeping the decor simple and minimalistic.

The layers are as follows:

White chocolate brownie

Pistachio sand, pop-rock crunch

Raspberry cream

Raspberry jelly

Pistachio dacquoise

Vanilla Creme Brulee

White chocolate cream

White chocolate glaze

Pistachio sand and freeze-dried raspberries

Bon Appetit!

Feel free to talk to me or let me know what you think on twitter or instagram @TalitaSetyadi

x Tal

ps. sorry I've decided to keep the recipe secret for this one ;) 

Apple, Caramel and Walnuts

Dearest beautiful people, it has been too long since my last post. For that I do apologize, things have been pretty hectic down my way. It has indeed been a challenge juggling pastrying with postgraduate studies and work responsibilities. 

Last week I taught 2 back-to-back pastry classes at Pantry Magic in Kemang, Jakarta. On the menu were Chai and caramel choux, thyme and mushroom gougeres, mango and mint tarts, strawberry and mascarpone tarts and green tea/raspberry financiers. Though I was utterly exhausted by the end, I had an incredible sense of pride and relief, surviving my first pastry classes in Jakarta in one piece.

Just when I thought I'd finally get some rest over the weekend, a friend of a friend asked me to prepare some pastries for her birthday luncheon on Sunday. Though usually I don't accept orders outside of direct friends and family, I was compelled to accept the request as I have been wanting to experiment making Apple Tatins! So here's a nice, shiny new blog post for you all, my rendition of a French classic; Pomme Tatin aux Noix Caramélisées.

Just to remind you again, you can find me on twitter @TalitaSetyadi and instagram @TalitasKtchn

Have fun with the recipe guys and girls.

THE WHOPERA

Hello my sweet-toothed friends. I hope you've all been having a good a week as I have been having so far! I've just returned from a week's stay in my second home of Bali meeting some friends from New York and showing a buddy from Seattle around a bit. Bali is the place that I intend to open up my first cafe/bakery in a couple of years. So I've taken it upon myself to get to know the island well and visit as many of its awesome (and some not so awesome) restaurants, bakeries cafes as I can. So it's always a pleasure to show off the place to visitors, it really is still one of the most cultured and beautiful places in the world.

One thing that annoys me about being in Bali though, is that there is no oven installed in our villa. While that of course needs to be changed ASAP, I spent most of my idle times there fantasizing about the kind of cake to make upon my return to Jakarta, especially with my mum's birthday coming up the very next day. So, during my Balinese massage and full-body papaya scrub, this is the cake I came up with, something that I was sure my mum and family was sure to love:

Keeping the flavors classic and simple, I layered coffee-imbibed chocolate joconde biscuit with bitter chocolate ganache and caramel mousseline. As the French don't seem to like to make their cakes too high, the inspiration for this cake is the Indonesian delicacy "Lapis Legit" which translates to "sweet layers", a delicate cake composed of layers upon layers of delicious buttery sweet cake. So this cake is sort of like my version of a chocolate Opera cake x 3..
I think I'll call it the Whopera.

Eat eat eat...

x Tal

A Mango Cake

Hello dears, how are you all doing? So I've been back in Jakarta for about two months now, thought I'd give you a general update on how I've been faring. In a few words, it has been an awesome time! Last night a visiting French friend pointed out aptly to say that there is no recession here and everyone looks happy and positive. Though there are of course still many underlying problems in this country, the general aura of the masses is good. Therefore, returning to my birth country after 15 years abroad, I feel welcomed and optimistic. The people I've been able to meet in the industry so far have been so supportive and encouraging towards my passion, and I am pumped to finally start a career here.

Since I did my last post on the ubiquitous banana, today's cake utilizes another one of Indonesia's best fruits - MANGO! (Relax guys, it's not the durian post yet. Lol.) The mangoes in Indonesia are truly some of the best in the world! There are many different varieties such as the aromatic Harumanis, citrusy-sour Gedong and sweet Manalagi. Mangoes come in season when climate reaches its hottest and driest, so right now is the perfect time to make yourselves a mango mousse cake!

This mango cake is comprised of mango mousseline, vanilla syrup genoise, sour red fruit and hibiscus compote and crunchy almond and brown sugar layer. It is decorated with macaroons, for which you can find the recipe in my previous blog post. 

Before we go to the recipe, I'd just like to remind you that you can follow me on TWITTER and FACEBOOK and INSTAGRAM to be the first to hear about new recipe posts.

Thanks guys, enjoy the mango cake!

x Tal

Secret Macaroon Video

Hello sweetlings, how are you all doing? So, I've got to come clean about something.. I've been sitting on a French macaroon instructional video for several months…! I know, I'm sorry for holding out on all of you. You see, it was my first attempt at an instructional video and it contains many 'cringe' moments! But recently, I was assured by a Youtuber friend of mine that nobody's expecting perfection from a Youtube video as long as the content is good. So after some thinking, I've finally gathered the courage to let this video go live on the blog.. a lot of hard work went into it after all.

This vid was shot at my house in Auckland by some good friends of mine Clinton Chang and Martin Paris. I wrote the song playing in the background, and it's called "This Winter". It is performed by my band Teacups and recorded by another buddy of mine David Parker. If you like it, you may download our record here.

So here's my "Secret Macaron Video" for all of you lovely readers..

Ssshhh...