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DamGoodSweet: Desserts to Satisfy Your Sweet Tooth, New Orleans Style
by David Guas, Raquel Pelzel
ISBN-10: 1600851185
ISBN-13: 9781600851186
ISBN-13: 9781600851186
Region: USA
Publisher: Taunton
Publication Date: November, 2009
Recipe Index
Publishers Information
About DamGoodSweet: Desserts to Satisfy Your Sweet Tooth, New Orleans Style
Publisher Web Link: http://store.taunton.com/
The International Association of Culinary Professionals (IACP) has named DamGoodSweet by David Guas and Raquel Pelzel a 2010 Cookbook Award Finalist in the American category and Baking and Dessert category for the 2010 James Beard Foundation Book Awards.
50 down-home dessert recipes from New Orleans. Don’t miss this delicious opportunity to experience the tempting treats of this richly diverse city in a fascinating cookbook that’s part travelogue and part memoir.
A rich gumbo of authentic Southern sweets. You won’t be able to decide which one of these amazing recipes to try first! Finally, the culinary secrets and stories behind the exquisite sweets unique to the heart of Louisiana are revealed. Along with the insights that only a native son -- and a cooking pro - can provide.
Beignets to peanut brittle to bananas Foster! Now you can recreate the to-die-for sweets - pralines, heavenly hash, and, of course, pecan pie - that are synonymous with New Orleans. Just a taste of what awaits you...
- Sweet Potato Tart Tatin
- Calas Fried Rice Fritters
- Lemon Icebox Pie
- Cafe au Lait Cème Brûlée
- The GAP’s Fried Apple Pie
- Mahatma Rice Pudding
- Cane Syrup Ice Cream
- Black & Blue Crumble
- Red Velvet Cake and more
Pastry Chef of the Year. That’s just one of the accolades awarded author David Guas. This outstanding chef-turned-restaurant-consultant captures the essence of down-home cooking he learned as a teenager in his Aunt Boo’s country kitchen. And writer Raquel Pelzel contributes her vast culinary experience as a former editor and cookbook author.
A lagniappe at its very best! A chapter of this book is devoted to “lagniappes”, a Southern term for small unexpected gifts. And it’s a fitting way to describe this cookbook - a gorgeously packaged sampling of New Orleans’s sweetest treats!
Author Information
About David Guas
Author Web Link: http://www.damgoodsweet.com/
In September 2007, Pastry Chef David Guas exchanged his longtime corporate role for an entrepreneurial path that includes private consultation, boutique catering, cookbook authoring, and, eventually, his own retail bakery. Damgoodsweet Consulting Group, LLC, the irreverent name he has given his company, is the perfect description for all of his work.
In the beginning, however, odds were against the native New Orleanian having a culinary career at all. His family expected him to become a doctor. It was clear to this young man, however, that becoming a chef was his calling and the only path he could ever consider. Fortunately for Guas, his family background actually helped him chase his dream, all the way to the nation\'s capital where, for nearly ten years he was the Executive Pastry Chef of Acadiana, Ceiba, DC Coast, and TenPenh restaurants.
In the Guas family, all gatherings and entertainment centered around food. From a very early age, during visits from his Cuban relatives, the curious boy seemed always to be playing indoors and not outside with the other kids. In this family, it was not always the women taking charge in the kitchen. Guas\' first mentor, his grandfather, inspired and taught him that being in the kitchen did not make him any less of a man. \"Abuelo\" (grandfather) opened Guas\' eyes to appreciate the cuisine of his Cuban heritage. \"When Abuelo was visiting, my lunch changed drastically and my classmates knew from a single whiff of my lunch bag who had packed it that day.\" Guas has fond memories of the pressed Cuban sandwiches with extra pickles and mustard. Whenever Abuelo visited, he prepared a new Cuban dish for his family to taste. \"If only I had written down the recipes, I would have my first cookbook already,\" Guas laments.
There was, in fact, a strong feminine influence as well, right in his own backyard, in the form of his grandmother from Amite, Louisiana. \"Granny\" could often be found in the kitchen \"burning\" flour and butter in an iron skillet and promising that it was \"goin\' to be good eatin\'.\" She taught Guas to appreciate the fruits of Louisiana\'s soil, cooking with seasonal blackberries, strawberries, and even wild berries from the back woods. \"It was so much fun picking berries or visiting nearby fruit and vegetable stands with my cousins first thing in the morning,\" remembers Guas. Unlike most native Louisianians, who used large amounts of sugar and butter in everything they cooked, Guas\' Granny stewed and puréed the fruits naturally, often blending them with savory herbs to flavor poultry and meats. Sunday morning breakfast was a ritualistic gathering, with buckwheat or cornbread pancakes and puréed fig preserves or fruit syrup, all natural and no sugar added. (But don\'t think for a minute that Guas didn\'t sneak any of the butter tucked away in the fridge, which was, after all, an acceptable sneak with Granny – because she had made it!) Unwittingly, the young Guas was learning techniques he would eventually incorporate into his future desserts.
The base provided by Guas\' family was strong. Add to that a natural talent and a passion for updating timeless desserts, and you have a recipe for success. Guas doesn\'t boast a formal culinary degree, but a few specialized cooking classes at a small culinary school in New Orleans taught him the basic, classical preparations, as well as certain cutting-edge techniques he needed to secure a job in a high-profile kitchen. As an associate pastry chef at the Windsor Court Hotel in New Orleans with Executive Chef Jeff Tunks at the helm, Guas churned out thousands of desserts per week to the delight of locals and national critics alike. Tunks took notice of this talented young assistant and began courting him: Tunks was leaving New Orleans to open his own restaurant in Washington, DC, and he needed a pastry chef. Guas packed up his bags and went off to Washington. DC Coast opened in June 1998 to critical acclaim. TenPenh followed two years later in August 2000, to more of the same, and Guas became Executive Pastry Chef, splitting his time between the two restaurants. In September 2003, he drew deeply from his Cuban heritage to create Latin American- and Caribbean-inspired desserts for Ceiba. And two years after that, in September 2005, with the opening of Acadiana, Guas developed sophisticated interpretations of his hometown dessert favorites from beignets to Bananas Foster.
During his years with Passion Food Hospitality, Guas\' desserts were recognized and praised by such publications as Food & Wine, Chocolatier,Santé, Cooking Light, Food Arts, Where Washington, Restaurant Digest,Restaurant Business, National Culinary Review, and Nation\'s Restaurant News. In September 2003, Bon Appétit featured Guas as one of eight \"Dessert Stars\" in the country. In 2004, the fourth year he was nominated, Guas was named Pastry Chef of the Year by the Restaurant Association of Metropolitan Washington. He is listed in The International Who\'s Who Of Chefs, and has appeared regularly on The Today Show, demonstrating his expertise on national television. Of Guas\' sweets, the restaurant critic of The Washington Post writes, \"I have yet to find a single dessert I can say no to,\" and the critic ofWashingtonian magazine states emphatically that Guas\' desserts are \"worth saving room for.\" Very sweet, indeed. (damgoodsweet.com)
Cookbooks by David Guas
About Raquel Pelzel
Author Web Link: http://www.raquelpelzel.com/
Former Cook’s Illustrated editor Raquel Pelzel is a freelance cookbook author and food writer. Her first solo cookbook project, New Flavors for Dessert, part of a Williams-Sonoma’s cookbook series, was released in November 2008 by Oxmoor House and features forty-four of Pelzel’s original recipes. Two Dudes, One Pan (Clarkson Potter, 2008), a cookbook she collaborated on with Food + Wine “Best New Chefs” Jon Shook and Vinny Dotolo has received widespread acclaim, including having been featured in The New York Times’ annual cookbook roundup, on National Public Radio as one of their top ten cookbooks of the year, and in the LA Times’ Cookbook Watch column, which described it as one of six cookbooks in fall 2008’s “dazzling cookbook lineup.”
American Masala (Clarkson Potter, 2007), a cookbook Pelzel authored with chef Suvir Saran, was included in The New York Times’ cookbook roundup for 2007; called one of the “top ten culinary books of 2007” by the editors of Martha Stewart Living magazine; “one of the best cookbooks of 2007” by epicurious.com; and named “one of the best new food books” by the New York Daily News. Pelzel collaborated on Simply Delicioso (Clarkson Potter, 2008) with Food Network talent Ingrid Hoffman which debuted at the number-one slot for the Latin and Spanish categories on Amazon.com; contributed 70 original recipes and text to the James Beard Award winning cookbook, The Quick Recipe (Boston Common Press, 2003); and wrote the IACP nominated Food Network cookbook Making It Easy(Meredith 2004).
Upcoming cookbooks being released in November include DamGoodSweet(Taunton Press) a New Orleans dessert cookbook Pelzel wrote with pastry chef David Guas and Dollars to Donuts (Rodale), a budget-driven cookbook written with Oklahoma restaurateur Dawn Welch. Pelzel is currently working on two cookbooks with chef Suvir Saran: Masala Farm (Chronicle, 2011) and The Country Cooking of India (Chronicle, 2012).
In addition to writing cookbooks, Pelzel’s is a special issues editor for Fine Cooking Magazine, and her recipes and articles about food and travel have appeared in The Wall Street Journal, Saveur, Cook\'s Illustrated, Edible Brooklyn, Edible Manhattan, Prevention, Country Home, Country Living, Everyday Food, The Robb Report, Intermezzo, and in Whole Foods Markets’ in-store materials. She has written restaurant reviews for New York Magazine\'s website and Time Out New York guidebooks and was featured inThe Hedonist’s Guide to Eat New York (Hg2, 2008).
Pelzel studied the culinary arts on a professional level at the School of Natural Cookery in Boulder, Colorado and Johnson & Wales University in Rhode Island. She worked in the kitchens of some of Boston\'s most highly regarded bakeries and restaurants including Barbara Lynch\'s No. 9 Park. She lives in Brooklyn with her husband and son. (raquelpelzel.com)
