"IT'S like biting into air and getting a mouthful of sweet goodness," someone once told me, of the macaron — a diminutive double-disc of light, crisp meringue held together by the merest whisper of buttercream or silky smooth ganache.
The perfect French macaron (pronounced mah-kah-ROHN) is definitely more than just a pretty face. The crisp, rainbow-bright shell that cracks at the faintest dental pressure; that soft, delicately chewy, nutty interior, to say nothing of the ganache which sandwiches the two halves together: quite simply, they're sublime, one of the finest examples of the French patissier's art.
Ubiquitous, perennially cute and eminently giftable, the macaron has definitely gone from fad to fixture in the last decade. "There may not be the same mania around them as before, but they're as timeless and as popular as ever," insists Edwin Chan with a grin.
Of all the food crazes of recent years, are macarons really worth the hype and all the trouble of creating it? Macarons (they deserve the dignity of a fancy French name, let's face it) strike fear into any decent baker's heart.
They're notoriously finicky and demand both precision and patience. Beat your egg whites too little or too much and you're left with flat macarons. Fold in your powdered sugar and almond flour too many times and the tops crack. Even a rainy day (something completely out of your control) can ruin them.
You could follow a particular recipe to the "T" and things could still go horribly wrong. You could easily be left with cracked, bumpy and/or lumpy shells and a dejected, heartbroken soul.
The fact that despite following a recipe with the most care and attention one could STILL not end up with picture-perfect macarons is the bit that terrifies bakers. Well, apparently not ALL bakers.
"Well, I liked macarons because of the challenges baking them pose!" the founder of Elevete Pattiserie tells me gleefully. Not exactly the answer I was expecting, of course. No starry-eyed odes to the sweet, airy confectionery are forthcoming.
He likes it because it's hard to make, and the boyish chef with a perpetual smile on his face, stands by his answer. "I'm not kidding!" he protests with a chuckle. "I chose to master the art of macarons because they're technically the hardest to make. I mean, everything else becomes easy by comparison!"
He admits to enjoying the complications and the fiddly process of creating the perfect macarons. "It seems like I'm a glutton for punishment though," he muses, before breaking into laughter again.
The macaron isn't going anywhere, insists Chan. For one, he has contributed to its permanent place in the pantheon of creative patisseries with flavours like his signature Ribena, Salted Caramel and Honeycomb.
And then there is the promise of perpetual reinvention. "Taste drives everything we create so the options are boundless. So long as the flavour combinations are interesting and good, anything goes," he adds enthusiastically.
LANGUAGE OF FOOD
"I don't speak 'cheffery'," I confess, which elicits another bout of laughter from him. "That's okay, I'll try not to resort to jargons," he promises, grinning. Well, he could start by explaining what being a sous chef means. After all, Chan was a sous chef before turning to pastries.
"Ah…" he nods, eyes lighting up with barely suppressed glee. "Here's how I would describe it," he begins, smiling mischievously, before adding: "Essentially, you report to the head chef, and ensure that every team member under you is doing what they're supposed to do. If anyone of them screws up, you are in trouble!" Ah, like the village henchman. He laughs hard. "Yes…yes! Something like that!" he agrees vehemently.
The sous chef, explains Chan, is the second in command of a professional kitchen and works directly under the executive chef. Sous chef is a French term that actually means "under chef". As the chef's primary assistant, the sous chef is expected to take on a lot of responsibility in the kitchen and is the liaison between the executive chef and the rest of the kitchen staff.
He trained at Taylors Culinary School and was fast closing in on a career as a chef. "It was a baptism of fire," he recalls, adding: "There's nothing like the buzz of service when it goes right. But when it goes wrong, it's the worst thing ever. I mean, if it's a hot kitchen and the orders are pouring in, you're bound to get well… screwed!"
It's not easy, he continues. "But I've always had an appetite for hard work and a taste for new experiences!" But there were moments he battled with self-doubt. "Of course, as you're working so hard sweating buckets in a hot kitchen, you tend to question your choices. I know I did! I often wondered why I picked this profession!"
Not everyone wants to be a chef. It's not exactly the "holy grail" of ambitions. He laughs, before confiding: "I never dreamt of being a chef. But I knew that I didn't want to get stuck in the dreary routine of an office life either."
It helped that cooking was a family trait. After all, Chan's uncles used to own a heritage restaurant in Petaling Street, specialising in Cantonese cuisine and pastries. "My uncles are all cooks, and during Chinese New Year, they are the ones who get together to cook up a feast!" he recounts.
It was his uncle who urged him to go to culinary school, reveals Chan. "When my uncle found out that I wasn't sure what I wanted to do with my life, he encouraged me to take up culinary arts. He was a lecturer at a local institute and observed that those students who graduated with a culinary arts degree were the ones who were able to cari makan (make a living) even when the economy wasn't doing too good!" he explains, adding: "He (my uncle) ran the family restaurant so he knew what he was talking about."
As a child, Chan would observe them carrying out the restaurant's day-to-day duties. "…but I never knew cooking and never tried it at all. I only helped them sell mooncakes as a child!" he adds blithely. The only experience he had, Chan shares with a grin, was cooking fried rice for his mother on Mother's Day.
Cooking skills are easy enough to learn. But to carve a path — like Chan — a chef needs two things that cannot be taught: a great palate and a deranged sense of perfectionism. "I was always a picky eater since young," he reveals.
The youngest of three boys, he tells me that his brothers aren't into food as he is. "They're into different things like IT and business," he explains, grinning. As for Chan, his love for food, a picky palate and learning his way around the kitchen sparked a passion that grew bigger as time went by.
"Paying attention to the language the chefs used in the kitchen, how they knew when something was right — these were clues for how to become a better cook. I learnt so much over the years," he shares thoughtfully.
Ah, "cheffery", I point out again. And we both break into laughter.
SWEET SPOT
Why patisserie? Was the challenge in the hot kitchen too much to take? "On the contrary," he retorts. "The easy way out is cooking. You can always repair a bad dish. I mean, throw in some Ajinomoto into a bad fried rice, it becomes edible! But patisserie is a whole different ball game altogether!"
Cooking is a method that allows for lots of substitution and improvisation. You might not need a general note on the specific amount of spices you need to add to make a pot of soup as all that is required is a general idea. Just a pinch of salt here, a slice of tomatoes there (or a dash of Ajinomoto, according to Chan with a mischievous glint in his eye) could make up a nice cooked meal.
Baking, says Chan, requires precision in its recipe application. There is usually a standard measure of substances which you must put together to achieve a desirable result. It also requires a total mastery of temperature and understanding how it could affect the interaction between ingredients. Also, there is almost no room for substitution.
Moving into pastry was just a matter of hanging out with a chef friend who was into patisserie. "I had an annoying friend who kept arguing with me on the right way to bake cakes and macarons," he recalls, laughing.
Over time, Chan discovered he had an aptitude towards baking. "Something just clicked," he says. "It excited me far more than cooking over a hot stove; I could express myself more with dessert menus."
"You can't screw around with pastry," he adds matter-of-factly. "You just need patience and a lot of practise. Practise, practise and practise! There's no other formula in pastry."
After graduating from culinary school, Chan went on to work for a restaurant franchise. "I did learn a lot," he admits. "You learn how to manage your resource, systems, mass productions and I picked up on a very different aspect of the food industry. Those were very invaluable skillsets to acquire, especially when I decided to open my own business not too long after."
After one and a half years, Chan decided to take a leap of faith into starting his own pastry business. "I was 24 and eager to be my own boss," he recounts, adding: "Back then, there was a cafe boom and I felt that I could actually venture into catering and supply cafes with macarons!"
IN THE DEEP END
"That's quite a risk to take," I observe, before pointing out: "Giving up a full-time job to venture into catering. Did you ever regret that move?" "Oh, every other day!" he replies, laughing hard. "It's funny to look back and think how far I've come since I made the decision to quit my job!"
He blithely confessed to bouts of tears in the kitchen and sleeping in the kitchen. "It was hellish," he recounts. "It was overwhelming and crazy."
His mother wasn't pleased, of course. "She was fine until I destroyed her kitchen," he tells me ruefully. "My mum was supportive until I crowded her space with kitchen equipment. She put her foot down and urged me to find another place."
He went on to rent the house in front of his family home. "I messed up that house too," he admits a little shamefacedly. "With the increased number of orders, it soon became clear that I needed a bigger space."
Chan finally moved his operations to a cafe/bakery in Taman Mayang. Open in 2014 and specialising in macarons, desserts and cakes, Elevete was born. "It was a great time to venture into desserts," he muses half-wistfully. The cafe boom in the Klang Valley continued to thrive, and plans to set up a central kitchen was underway when the pandemic hit.
"We had to rethink the way we do business," explains Chan soberly. With the normal barriers to starting a business gone and the usual pressures of the marketplace scrambled, a wonderful, desperate creativity has flourished.
Professionals like Chan are exploring their medium to see where it can take them. "Elevete had already been a part of the online cake delivery platform, but obviously it was time to step out of the comfort zone," he adds.
Chan and his team officially moved to the central kitchen three months ago. Not exactly the most opportune of time to expand, but if Chan has learnt anything in the pandemic, it's that a sizable audience is out there, eager to try whatever he dreams up next. "What we've seen in the last year is there's obviously a demand for dessert," he insists. "We still need a little sweetness to deal with stress!"
With a total of 60,000 desserts baked to date in Chan's 201-square metres central kitchen, there's still hope for dessert lovers in the Klang Valley — pandemic or no pandemic. There's certainly no looking back, says the 31-year-old, admitting: "It's not easy. I mean no two days are alike in my line of work. But I love every minute of it!"
So there should be plenty of macarons available for dessert fans out there, I tease. "Oh definitely!" he responds with a wink. "My uncle was right," he continues with a grin. "You can still survive… if you know your way around the kitchen!"
ABOUT ELEVETE PATISSERIE
Elevete Patisserie is an online bakery that offers customers a large variety of pastries, ranging from delectable macarons to elegant cakes. For further details, go to www.elevete.com.my.
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