“What do you call a chef who only knows how to cook with four ingredients…?”

“A PASTRY chef!” (Ha ha! Ba dum, ching! Ahem…)

But seriously, it’s amazing how many different directions you can take a few simple ingredients, and nobody knows this better than pastry chefs. How do they get such stunning results, such fineness and variety, with just sugar, eggs, butter, flour and a few other odds and ends? The answer, I’d say, is “technique.” While all cooking requires some kind of technique, pastry is really, truly about technique.

During her COOK Masters class, Chef Christina Diekewicz from Barclay Prime taught us how to make meringues and buttercreams, and she had lots of advice about other subjects, too — like how to tell if your croissant has nasty shortening in it instead of delicious butter, the virtues of color emulsion gels (in comparison to liquid food coloring), and how to fill your pastry bag without looking like a dirty shoemaker — but I think her real lesson was about the importance of technique in cooking.

“Technique” means getting into the how, the why, and the feel of your cooking. Whether you’re checking the glossiness of whipping egg whites, melting sugar to drizzle into an Italian meringue or piping swirls of buttercream onto a cake, you’ve got to know how things work and have an intimate feel for your ingredients. That way you can predict how they’re likely to behave and get them do what you want more easily. Consider egg temperature, for example; granulated sugar added to cold egg whites won’t dissolve properly and your meringue will be gritty. Nobody likes a gritty meringue, so make sure the whites are at room temperature, not cold. For making brioche dough and popover batter, on the other hand, cold eggs are better. These are things you have to know. They’re part of your technique.

Many cooks regard pastry as a science requiring extreme precision, and that scares them away. But consider this: Christina Diekewicz says she never even learned how to use a candy thermometer (that most scientific of culinary tools): “One of my early pastry instructors didn’t allow them; he said it was more important to learn to judge things by looking and feeling and understanding.”

So while most of us are sticking thermometers into boiling sugar and fretting over the difference between soft ball and hard crack, Diekewicz is dipping her fingers into ice water and then into boiling syrup and back into ice water to roll the stuff between her fingertips. Yes, touching it! This alone is a bit shocking to most savory cooks, who tend to regard boiling sugar as “culinary napalm” (which it most certainly is!). Fortunately, there are less drastic clues you can use, like watching the size and speed of the boiling bubbles, and how they start to pile on top of each other as the temperature rises. You can even blow sugar bubbles, like kids do with soapy water on a summer day, and look at the shapes they make. Yes, Christina Diekewicz was blowing bubbles with boiling sugar and catching them in her hand!

“There are some good books on pastry technique, like Understanding Baking by Joseph Amendola,” says Diekewicz, “but I rarely make anything from recipes in books; I just have hundreds of recipes and ideas in my head, or scribbled on the backs of receipts and scraps of paper, from whenever I’ve gotten an idea.” Ultimately, you have to cook more with your senses than your intellect. Don’t overwork the dough, and don’t overthink the cooking.

Diekewicz gave us a quick lesson in piping buttercream into a few basic shapes. I’d done billions of butter rosettes during my years in the catering biz, so I found those easy enough. The other shapes were more challenging, and most of us spent a half-hour piping out lopsided swirls, ungainly seashell chains, and smooshy rosebuds. Diekewicz was a patient teacher, though, demonstrating the techniques again and again as needed, and quick with a word of praise when we got it right, encouraging with bits of advice when we made a complete hash of it. I sort of figured out the seashell chain and reverse scroll, but all my roses looked like monstrous little sunflowers — far from the gentle blossoms that flowed so effortlessly from Diekewicz’ hand. As soon as I get home, I’m getting some pastry tips and a can of shortening to practice with.

There are lots of reasons for savory chefs to get into some pastry technique. First, it’s just plain fun and satisfying, once you’ve nailed a few sweet techniques. Secondly, tidbits from the pastry kitchen can be welcome additions to many savory dishes: “Meringue tuiles on a beet salad, for example,” suggested Diekewicz. (She’d brought a few for us to try, flavored with lime zest and coconut, which were excellent.) Or marshmallow in carrot soup like they do at Supper. Carrot soup is good as is, but carrot soup with a swoosh of perfect fresh marshmallow around the inside of the bowl is a very fine treat indeed! Pastry chefs also have the excellent habit of working in a very clean, orderly fashion, because their fine results depend on it, and plenty of savory cooks could take a lesson from that. Most importantly, though, may be the meticulous attention to technique that fine pastry demands. Sugar, eggs, butter, and flour are among the most sensitive ingredients in the kitchen, and the difference between a merely good dessert and a truly great dessert can be in what you know about them and how you’ve handled them. It’s not a coincidence that the finer the restaurant, the more the savory entrees take on the detail and finesse of fine pastries. It’s worth looking into.

Knowledge. Understanding. Feel. Intuition. Technique. All things to keep in mind as we journey down the culinary road. Thank you, Chef Diekewicz, for reminding us!