C.R.E.A.M.: an intro with thoughts on schlag, butter, & pasteurization, & of course wu-tang!

peter luger is serious money.  i can't remember if we made a reservation, or not, but it was in celebration with my foodie father - could have been the fact of simon & schuster liking my manuscript - the details are vague...
& one of the reasons for this is that the meat - fabulous - perfectly marbled, aged (feelings out there are mixed - do you prefer aged or un-aged meat?  does it gross you out?) to a melting texture that slid down the gullet & begged more from the belly - was completely eclipsed by something called schlag.

who wants to put that in your mouth, you ask?  anyone that loves butter, whipped cream, milk, ice cream or used to but can't anymore b/c of lactose intolerance -

schlag.

the answer - or in my case, the question:  how is this crap made?

a bit about the thought process of this particular chef/blogger, & the reason for this blog, really.

i have been a kitchen professional since 1989 let's not go into a full-blown resume here, but by way of introduction, i will spell out some of my experience:

i started as a tender (potty-mouthed) youth in LA - strange, as i am a native of NY & LA is not exactly known for its food culture as every anorexic must be camera ready, but in my case, this was very healing:  on the left coast, the girls are in charge.  without that backbone of experience, i don't know how i would have weathered the hurricane of misogyny called east coast kitchens.

the first gig was @ a place called Queen of Cups, a psychic cafe - more on this as the blog progresses.  in 1991 i was picked up by Evan Kleinman & Vianna La Place, two savvy lady chefs whose cookbooks i owned @ the time - a concentration on lightening up traditional traittoria cuisine.

but we agreed to no resume, right?  every high point - & i leave out no low point - will appear either anectdotally, organically, or as part of a recipe, but let's leave it @ this for just now:  in NY i did the circuit, including Union Square Cafe when it was Union Square Cafe, although i was nothing but a lowly oyster shucker/garde manger chick.  however the story was much different for Aqua Grill, since i was on sautee the night that the New York Times awarded that despot his first stars - yes.  he threatened my life.  & yes, he ate his words by the time the kitchen wrapped that night.

this is becoming suspiciously resume-ish, so the point is, that in addition to the aforementioned restaurant experience, i have run my own catering company (in fits & starts) since 1995, when i catered my first (tragically) low budget film, for my grrrrrrrrrrl joy phillips - not name dropping.  reminiscing.  since then, my love affair with food has taken me to more than one continent, all over the country, into the intimate settings of some of the most interesting people, & my @ home entertaining has allowed me to dance with the muses & keep the creation process consistently evolving.  food, & the spirituality of its preparation has saved my life, sanity, & kept some of my lovers around long past the point of diminishing returns.  in reading around @ some of the wonderful food blogs out there (goddess knows there are enough) i noticed one thing missing:

my voice!

& why do you care?

because i am a maniac.  there is nowhere i will not go to get the special ingredient, to link the ancient cuisines for identification, to find out the special method & make it accessible, so that you, my friends/readers, not only CAN make that seemingly impossible creation, but that you WANT to.

& something else, friends, here is where i will be releasing excerpts of my upcoming cookbook, HEAT in serial form.

by the way of introduction, i will make two promises.  i will never leave you without a recipe, or something to chew on, or both -  LOL!

Back To The Schlag:

Gourmet used to have a column called You Asked For It:  they would go to various HIGH END restaurants & charm them out of their most coveted, popular recipes, which would come out in the magazine in a monthly advice column format.  i invite you to send in your most burning questions about favorite dishes in favorite restaurants, but i think the folks @ Peter Luger would probably punch my nameless ass in the mouth if i rolled up talking about, can you give me this recipe for publication, so i obsessively researched the components, & this is what i came up with - oh last thing - i am trying this out by the weekend, so next monday, look for the step-by-step with pics.

& yes, my theme song is C.R.E.A.M. i must have some sort of a soundtrack when i cook - it may or may not be music from the country of origin, but it must be inspiring.  more about my husband Method Man later.
ok, here goes:

i think we left off @ the name:  schlag.  how unfortunate.  but when i had this atop apple strudel (& i am much more of a salty, fatty meat girl than a dessert girl)  i wanted to lay down & die of happiness.

it was like whipped cream, only much better.  somehow thicker AND lighter.  i thought, this is what all whipped cream wants to be...
but on every blog i encountered, the answer was disappointingly  simple: whip cream until almost butter-like.

{the purest BS - for my 8th birthday, my mother, on my suggestion, made strawberry shortcake, & even though she is third generation genius cook (she opted out of becoming an actual chef like her grandmother all in the name of feminism), she made the classic rookie mistake - whipped the cream to almost butter - & it was good, but it wasn't no schlag.}

no, that didn't sound right @ all - more research confirmed this, upon my purchase, a few weeks ago of  raw, unpasteurized grass-fed cream, which has a layer of sexy, thickened cream ON TOP of the liquid.  this had to literally be squeezed from the bottle.

finally in the REPLY section of one food blog, i came across a product from Germany called 'Sahnesteif' - a modified starch thickener/stabilizer.  some lovely soul remembers her grandmother adding it to schlag when she was a wee lass - oh wait that's irish, right? - i knew that this was part of schlag's velvety secret.

Ingredients:

1 cup grass fed heavy cream (preferably Milk Thistle Farms - the best!  & local to NY!)
1 packet Sahnesteif
1 tsp bourbon vanilla
1 tsp sugar - if you want to go heavier with sugar, you can, but i would go even lighter - lets the cream taste come through

Method:

1 - whip all together either by hand with a whisk or in a mixer with a whisk attachment until the cream is a texture between extremely stiff peaks & butter. 
2 - you do not want for the liquid to separate from the cream; just extremely stiff peaks.
3 - when you serve this with dessert, yell, 'mit schlag!'  - apparently that's how the germans do it - means, 'with schlag!', lol.

a word on Method:  as in Man. as in Method Man, as in my Other Husband.  it is my dream to interview him - why would i need to interview him if he is my husband, you ask?  oh well, we'll get to that later. - in my segment on hallucenogenic foods - that's a roundtable with my other two husbands, Tommy Cong, & Dave Chappelle.

so okay, look out for pics next monday. if you try it before me, PLEASE let me know how it worked out. i won't be trying it out until sunday, when i can blast 36 chambers, & dance around with my daughter Nashira.

cash rules everything around me...

see you next week, & thank you for your time!