Milk Maven: This Chef Is the Queen of Gourmet Dairy

It's always rewarding to learn a chef's secret technique, but doubly so when that trick is simple and easily transferred to one's home kitchen. Such is the case with a favorite flavor enhancer of Dominique Crenn, the much-heralded Chef de Cuisine at Luce, in San Francisco's InterContinental Hotel. Crenn's culinary resource is milk— more specifically, milk she infuses with flavor, then uses in purees, sauces and sometimes ice cream.

Her distinctive coffee-celeriac purée begins with roasted coffee beans tied in cheesecloth and soaked overnight in milk. The next day, the warmed, coffee-infused milk provides an added dimension to the root vegetable mash. In like manner, Crenn's parsnip puree gains sweet, nutty notes from a hazelnut milk infusion. Note that her technique comes with a couple of cautions: "You must use whole milk, not 1 percent or 2 percent," she says. "And never boil the milk."

By remaining open to all possibilities, Chef Crenn has even employed this technique to fashion a fetching blue cheese ice cream, infusing milk with local Point Reyes farmstead cheese.

Coffee-Celeriac Purée by Chef Dominique Crenn (4 servings)

Ingredients:
1/2 pound of roasted coffee beans
1 liter of regular milk
1 cinnamon stick
1 star anise
3 whole celery roots
1 tbsp. of butter
Salt and pepper to taste
Cheese cloth

Procedure:
1. Wrap the roasted coffee beans in cheesecloth and soak in milk overnight.
2. The next day, remove the coffee beans and cheesecloth. Set aside.
3. Peel the celery root and quarter them.
4. Put the celery root and the coffee infused milk in a saucepan with cinnamon stick, star anise and simmer until celery root is tender.
5. Remove from heat, discard cinnamon stick and star anise.
6. Mash the celery root and pass it through a fine sieve.
7. Add salt and pepper to taste.
8. Serve hot with any meat dish.

— Written by John Grossmann

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