Dominique Ansel, named the world’s top patissier, shares his yuletide recipes for snowflake beignets, chocolate tres leches cake and champagne morning rolls
Christmas has always been exciting for Dominique Ansel. Growing up in the small city of Beauvais, an hour north of Paris, he experienced it as period of plenty in an otherwise lean existence. “My family didn’t have much,” he recalls. “My dad used to work in a factory and there wasn’t always a lot of food on the table, but Christmas was the time when we were saving up and having a big feast. It was the time when we were really enjoying ourselves with food.”
His father and grandmother did most of the cooking, although when he started his chef training at 16, Ansel found himself inheriting kitchen duties at home. One year he cooked cassoulet and “everyone was so happy eating it, because it was cold outside and it was such a warm, tasty dish. Every year after that they were asking for it.”
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