National Culinary Review - July/August 2010

item to serve because it gets people talking about the restaurant, and that gets people who have not visited the restaurant want to come in for a meal—and the waffle dessert.” Carlson charges $7 per order, with an 18% food cost.

SWEETS BETTER SERVED LAST “Breakfast items tend be on the sweet side, which actually makes more sense for them to be served at the end of a meal,” says Lauren Fortgang, pastry chef at Paley’s Place, Portland, Ore.

Fortgang’s buttermilk panna cotta with
huckleberry compote and granola shouts
breakfast (she also changes the recipe to
be a yogurt panna cotta with rhubarb jam
and granola). “I follow a traditional panna
cotta recipe and method, but substitute
buttermilk (or yogurt) for part of the cream.
The substitution adds a bit of tanginess to
the dessert and cuts through the sweetness
of the jam or compote,” she says.

“Granola makes perfect sense to
complement the creaminess of the panna
cotta, because it has a contrasting texture
with so much crunch and an abundance
of flavors coming from coconut, oats,
sunflower seeds, hazelnuts, olive oil, maple
syrup, brown sugar and salt.”
She also menus the breakfast indulgence
brioche pain perdu, which, translated literally,
means “lost bread.” Traditionally, stale bread
is soaked in an eggy mixture. Fortgang
soaks her brioche in a bread-pudding-type
custard made with cream, egg yolks, sugar
and milk. She also sugars the outside of the
brioche before cooking it in a sauté pan with
butter to give the toasted bread a bit more
crunch when bitten into, as well as a bit of
caramelization and sweetness.