Hi everyone, welcome to Botlog Food Talks.
Today we have a special guest.
I'm with Yingxin Huang.
She's a pastry chef residing in Paris.
We met in Paris like on my last trip and it was my first lunch in Paris.
Some friends brought me to her place and I remember it was a grill and she was doing
some amazing food.
It was like my first taste of Paris.
And today we're going to talk about China and France and pastries.
Yes.
How are you?
Hello Erika, I'm very fun.
Thanks.
We have to talk a little bit about sweets and desserts and you're Chinese and you're
also a pastry chef.
So what's the deal with sweets and desserts in China?
Because I've been to Chinese restaurants and it's very different like from Europe and the
West it's more like candy, fruits, right?
Like this kind of thing.
Yeah, yeah.
Well, can you tell me about the main difference between China and Europe and sweets?
Okay, so it's quite different.
I can say two things different.
So first things is like the Chinese pastry, for example, for the Pasta Nata in Portuguese,
the puff pastry is made by butter.
But in China, if we make puff pastry, it's usually made by the grass of pork.
Okay, that sounds amazing.
Yes.
Yeah.
So it's different.
It's like one is from the cow and one is from the pork.
I know for sure.
There are like many, like many old desserts here in Europe as well that use pork fat and
animal fat instead of butter.
Yeah, so in China they use the pork fat to do the puff pastry.
So what's the difference?
It's like the puff pastry, they can give texture much like much more soft, much more crunchy.
Also like grainy, right?
Yeah, it's like a very soft and very...
Like a pate brisé, something like that?
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
It's something like that.
It's like when you eat it inside and it's like it melts.
So it's different from the puff pastry here in Europe.
Yeah, what you're describing reminds me of in South Spain, there are like the polvorones.
I don't know if you know them.
No.
They're also made with, if I'm not wrong, with pork fat.
So maybe it's the same...
Yeah, it melts in your mouth and it's also like, it feels like a very fine sand, something
like that.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
You got that.
So that's one thing that's different from the Europe pastry.
And the second thing is, you know, that in China, a lot of dessert, Chinese dessert is
like it's liquid.
Yeah, I was in a Chinese restaurant in Singapore and the dessert was like a candied fruits,
kind of in a very liquid something that you would eat with a spoon like a soup.
Yeah, yeah.
So the reason I think is like maybe people in Asia, we usually like something hot to
make the cocks feel hot and warm.
So that's one reason why we have some dishes, we are much more liquid than in Europe.
And after that, it depends on province one more time.
So for example, the province from the south, we have much more sunshine, so we have much
more fruit.
So we can do a lot of liquid dessert with the fruit.
For example, with the mango, with the pomelo, with coconut, a lot of fruit can be used to
do the liquid dessert in our province.
And otherwise, some province like in the north of China, they do some liquid dessert with
the sesame, with the almond to do like a pasta of this nut.
So yeah, so it's a difference for the liquid dessert in China.
Okay.
And yeah, the other thing I wanted to ask you because I've seen in your Instagram, you
have like hundreds of pictures of amazing pastry shops in Paris.
It looks like you go a lot to try new sweets in the city.
And Paris is probably one of the best cities in the world to eat desserts.
Yes.
Could you share, I don't know if you have like favorite places and favorite things to
eat.
I remember going of course to Pierre Hermes, which I think is a must.
I had like about 15 different macarons and I also tried the ice creams and it was like
I would definitely go back.
It's amazing.
Yeah, you should.
And yes, of course after, well, so Pierre Hermes is one of my favorites in Paris.
It's really, really so good.
He's like the master Picasso, we call him Picasso of the pastry because he has a lot
of good flavor and inspired a lot of people who love pastry.
I started cooking almost 20 years ago and he was big back then already.
I remember back then like having books of him and looking for his recipes and learning
a lot about desserts from his books and everything.
Yes, yes, that's it.
And so after Pierre Hermes, I would love to recommend La Duqe.
And it's not because it's very, you know, La Duqe is very famous because it's a big
meisson, it's like also famous for his, for the macarons, something like this.
But I recommended it because the pastry chef, the head pastry chef who leads the La Duqe
meisson is a chef that I love a lot and all his creations, it's amazing.
So that's why I recommended La Duqe.
And the chef of La Duqe, his name is Julien Alvarez.
So when you heard Alvarez, yes, he's a Franco-Espanol.
And so he won the champion of the pastry, world champion pastry for Spain.
Okay, do you have like a favorite thing to eat there?
His lemon tart is the one thing that I love the most because in fact before I don't really
like the lemon tart because I usually found that there is the flavor of the egg inside.
So I don't really like that.
But his lemon tart that changed my mind because his lemon tart is with a lot of combinations
of flavor inside that take off the flavor of the egg white and that changed my mind of
the lemon tart.
Actually the one that I would always make was a recipe from Pierre Hermes and it was
like I remember it would have like a lot of butter.
It's like 80% butter and lemon.
Yeah, so it's old school and new school, we can say that.
Yeah, it was incredibly delicious.
And yeah, so La Duqe, if you go back to Paris, you need to go to try his lemon tart.
And the third one I would recommend is the chef from the Hits Hotel.
So the chef is called Francois Pérez and his pastry is impressive because he's like
doing something like the, in French we call that the tempore, that means he does the same
pastry but it's not the real pastry, it's different from Cédric Collin.
His pastry is, for example, one of his famous ones is the Madeleine and his Madeleine pastry
is not just a Madeleine cake, but it's like an ultimate, it's like a pastry.
And he does that like Madeleine form, but inside they have the cream, they have the
mousse, they have the caramel, they have the biscuit and it's like a combination of the
pastry.
So it looks like a Madeleine but it's like a petit gâteau of something like that?
Yes, yes, that's it.
And it's really, really so good.
And the flavor, the combination, and it's very light and very delicate.
And it's like, wow, you're feeling you had a very good moment every time when you taste
his pastry.
I love when desserts are like that, when desserts are subtle, low in sugar, low in strong flavors,
that is something really, really delicate and subtle, not like this, pam, lots of sweet
and lots of everything, you know?
Yeah, yes, yes.
You mentioned Cédric Collin, he became quite a pastry celebrity.
Famous pastry, yeah, he's very famous and especially he's very famous for his...
Mimetics, right?
Like the things that look like a fruit but it's something else.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, he's very interesting too and I think he's also a very big creation
that he's doing and he inspired a lot of people who are doing the pastry in his way.
So yeah, I think he's also a quite big chef that inspired a lot of people.
Yeah, I follow him on social media and it's always fun to see how he makes these things
that look like something else.
Yeah, amazing.
Another one is called Yankoo, I don't know if you've ever heard of him.
And yeah, he's also a pastry chef, he's doing quite a good pastry.
He used to be a pastry chef in a big hotel and then he opened his shop.
I think now maybe he has four and five, I don't remember, but anyway he has some pastry
shop now in Paris and what he's doing, the pastry is like the pastry, simple and natural,
that means you know that some pastry chefs love to use the color for the preparation
but all his pastry is natural, it's like he doesn't add any color or anything addictive
to his pastry.
I think it's really important because nowadays we always want to eat much more healthier
and lighter for the pastry or even for a lot of things.
So I think the way he's doing the pastry is good for the future because everyone wants
to eat healthier.
Yeah, it's a big topic as well, especially a lot of pastry chefs use a lot of artificial
flavors and sometimes you're like, oh this is really nice and then you check the ingredients
and it has like artificial aroma of whatever and that's actually not good for flavor perception,
like you lose the contact with the flavor, the real flavor of things in my opinion.
Yeah, yeah, yes.
I wanted to ask you about being Chinese and being a pastry chef in Paris, do you use your
cultural heritage in your desserts?
Do you add Chinese components when you create a new dessert or something?
I'm someone with an open mind so that means I would love to try a lot of things different
and do some combinations.
So I already did some pastry or some plate dessert like a Franco-Chinese combination.
That means I do a pastry with some Chinese ingredients but with the French technique.
For example, I did a biscuit supply and I do the form, all the skill comes from the
French skill but for the supply biscuit, for example, I put some sesame inside and I put
some flavor that we use a lot in the Chinese dessert inside to make the supply biscuit.
I once tried a soy sauce merengue, it was really interesting.
Yeah, it was like a great merengue, it was actually not for a dessert, it was for a savory
dish but it was really crazy because you would try these things and it would pop in your
mouth and you had like this intense soy sauce flavor, it was really nice.
Yeah, I think it's different.
In Asia, maybe, I don't know, but I feel that people are always very open-minded to do some
new creations, some new combinations between different cultures.
And in Europe, maybe I can understand because people are very proud of their culture, their
creations, so they always want to do something to keep it.
To preserve the tradition.
Yeah, so they are not very easy to accept to do something like mix with different cultures,
I found.
Yeah, and for me it was super funny in Singapore, there were like these burger places or pizza
places and you would see the Asian twist like, burgers with, I don't know, like a Thai
curry kitchen or something like that.
Yes, that's it, that's the funny thing that I love a lot in Asia because you can find
a lot of things different and funny.
For example, last month when I had two friends who came to China to visit me and pass the
Chinese New Year with me and then one day we passed by Domino, you know, we also have
Domino in China and it's very funny that the Domino, they are doing a pizza like, it's
a pizza but it's with Chinese flavour, it's like with Chinese sausage inside and with
Chinese seafood they put the squid.
In Asia we can do a lot of different interesting funny combinations that maybe you can't never
find that in Europe.
Yeah, in Europe for sure not, in America maybe.
Yeah, America maybe because people, I think it's important to be open-minded, to have
an open mind to do something like this because with open mind you can discover a lot of things
and you can taste a lot of a little flavour and yeah.
Yeah, yeah, I completely agree.
So talking about Europe, China and this, there is this restaurant that really interests me
in Paris called Yamcha that is like a small Chinese tea place with Yamcha which is actually
a way of eating and drinking tea if I'm not wrong, but this is like a French chef, like
what's the deal with this place?
Have you been there?
Well, actually I used to work inside for one month as a pastry chef but then I left because
of the working time, I can't bear working time because you know it's in the restaurant,
then it's a Michelin restaurant, it's like you work from day to night and even the weekend,
the only thing that I can do is just like on my bed.
So yeah.
Yeah, I've been there.
So it's too much for me the working time.
But the concept of having the tea with different tea for different step for different plate
is a very creative and testing menu and a very interesting menu for people who want
to discover the mixture between the Asian cuisine and the European cuisine.
So I think it's really nice to do that.
Yeah, that's a place I would like to visit.
It's super small, right?
It's like 12 seats only, something like that.
Yeah, and actually they have three places.
So the one I worked is one Michelin star restaurant, so they have something like 20-25 places and
they also have another bistro, it's called L'Ait-Tart, it's like a restaurant but a lot
of Michelin restaurants and maybe they have 30 places, something like that, that you can
have some tea there, you can have some small plates there.
It's also very nice.
And the third one is the tea shop, it's also their first one, that the boss, Monsieur Lai,
he do the tea in his tea shop and we can also taste the boss there with the tea.
So it's their first shop there.
Okay, nice.
You said it's super interesting the way they do pairings with the food, with the different
dishes and the tasting menu.
Are there a lot, do they use classic teas or something really crazy?
A lot of different teas from China because the boss, the owner, he's from Hong Kong and
he knows a lot of different teas from China, so in his tea shop he suggests a lot of different
teas and also he's doing a tea for the day, like today he has one tea that is the tea
of the day, you can taste that and after that he suggests three or four different teas on
the menu and if someone knows a lot of tea and you ask him, maybe he can do another tea
that you ask for.
And what is Yamcha in China?
Is it like a way of eating and drinking tea?
So Yamcha, that means drink tea, Yamcha.
Yam means drink, cha means tea, so Yamcha is drink tea.
And so as you know the owner, Mr. Lai, he came from Hong Kong, so Hong Kong is just
close to Canton, so close to our province Guangdong and our province Guangdong, Hong
Kong and Macau, we have a culture very similar, that means Yamcha is like something we do
a lot and in fact Yamcha, when we say, for example when we meet some friends or when
we go to eat with our family and we say, hey let's go Yamcha, that means let's go and
to have the breakfast together.
So Yamcha is become an activity that it's like we are going to have breakfast together.
Why is it breakfast?
Because when we have the breakfast with the dim sum, we always have some tea together.
We drink teas, we eat dim sum and we take time to spend with family, with friends and
we can do that every day if you have time of course.
Every day you can do that as the breakfast.
Otherwise usually it's like it's a weekend with the family, we do that like a brunch,
something like that.
That's it for this week's episode of Potluck Food Talks.
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