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A Pinch of Salt Makes the Truffles Awesome! Katherine Clapner, Executive Pastry Chef at Stephan Pyles Restaurant By Patricia D Sherman |
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Chef Clapner works with Chef/Owner Stephen Pyles on dessert menu development and execution and credits this collaboration for leading her to some of her most inspired discoveries. “Stephen has been a constant inspiration for teaching me that savory can inspire my work with chocolate and for never having enough truffles,” she says. “For instance, he and I were talking about salts before the restaurant opened. So I researched salts, looking for the best that could be had. One day I just experimented and threw in a handful of Maldon Salt when I was making truffles. Since it is flake instead of grain, it really doesn’t dissolve. So you get little flakes that pop in your mouth with a chocolate and a clean slightly mineral finish—awesome! I have become a huge fan of adding Maldon Salt for its flake dynamic in my truffles.” (Note: Clapner uses about one fourth cup of Maldon Salt in the ganache when she is making about a one-and-a-half-pound batch of truffles.) Other savory compliments to her chocolate creations include pairing beets with dark chocolate, such as in her recipe for Venezuelan Steamed Chocolate Cake with Roasted Beet Sorbet, and adding vinegar and spices to enhance the chocolate flavor. For the chocolate itself, she is very definite: “ I am a tried-and-true, diehard fan of El Rey and just recently I’ve started adding Xocopili from Valrohna. It has nice savory notes of cardamom, curry, paprika, and chili. When it comes to eating, the darker the better. Never white.” Considering the nearly two decades of her culinary career, which has taken her to great restaurants in Europe and the U.S., she observes, “I should have known that this was going to be my field when in elementary school I made chocolate mousse filled crepes for a class project.”
Chef Clapner has also worked at Charlie Trotter’s in Chicago, The Windsor Court Hotel in New Orleans, Hotel Cipriani in Venice, and The Savoy Hotel in London. Chef Clapner’e association with Chef Pyles began at Star Canyon, AquaKnox, and Taqueria Canonita, where she developed desserts to accompany his wide array of cuisines. A native of Texas, she attended the University of Texas at Arlington and earned an Associates Degree in baking and pastry from the Culinary Institute in New York.
She has been a featured pastry chef in
Bon Appétit, The Chicago Tribune, Gambit Weekly,
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chic new
restaurant named for the famous chef, cookbook author, and
television personality, who first came to national attention in the
90s as one of the originators of “Cowboy Cuisine.”
Before joining Chef Pyles at
his new restaurant in 2005, Chef Clapner was Pastry Chef at the
Hilton Hotel in Austin, where she was responsible for the pastry
department's culinary direction, including oversight of the menu at
the hotel's three restaurants, food service for the 800-room hotel,
and catering for up to 3,000 guests. Prior to that, she spent five
years at Central Market working on the corporate side of culinary
business development, store openings, and creating new dessert
items.