Photo-Illustration: The Strategist; Photo: Tamara Gillon; Illustration: Joe McKendry
We asked chef Dominique Ansel — who collaborated with Flexipan to create a cookie shot mold — about the French butter, smoked cinnamon, and rotary tool kit he can’t live without.
Pastry is science. You have to be precise. I grew up and lived in Europe for most of my life, where everything is in metrics. Metrics is very, very precise. It’s a lot more precise than inches. The great thing about the scale is that you can convert from U.S. measurements to metrics in case you have to use both. My favorite feature is that there’s a little screen right in front that you can pull out. So you can put a larger pot or container or mixing bowl on it and you can actually see what you’re scaling and it’s not hidden underneath. You pull the little screen out. I also love that there’s a light there. Some kitchens can be a bit dark, so you turn on the light and you can see very clearly what you’re scaling.
I use this for everything: to fix things in the kitchen, to drill, to polish. As part of making molds, sometimes I will use clay, let it dry, and then carve it or polish it with this tool. Sometimes I use this to cut small pieces to do molds, stencils, and decorations.
I love butter. I love it so much. Isigny Ste-Mère is a butter I’ve been working with for a few years now and it’s great in terms of texture, quality, and consistency. You have to experience it to be able to understand it. It’s higher quality than most butter you can find in the U.S. because of the cows and what they eat in France. It’s from Normandy. The quality is just exceptional and the texture is great for making croissants. I use it at home as well. It’s just this deep, rich, almost nutty flavor. And it has a little bit of texture to it, which I love. There’s a tiny bit of elasticity. It’s made in the old-school way. They still do larger productions, but it’s done in a wooden barrel and they have paddles that mix the cream. It’s very unique.
Lior Lev Sercarz, a friend of mine, is the owner of La Boîte. We used to work at Daniel together. We’ve been working together for forever, since he opened his own business. He’s from Israel and he wanted to launch his own spices. He imports spices from all around the world and does his own mixes as well. He’s a chef by nature, so he understands very well how chefs work. He does spices for all the chefs in the city. I’ve used a lot of different spices throughout the years. There’s one that I particularly love and it’s the smoked cinnamon. We add it to our meringue and it has a little flavor of savory, but it’s sweet at the same time. It’s just great. He uses the best ingredients. I don’t only use smoked spices, but the smoked vanilla he has is also exceptional. I also love the smoked paprika that we use for our gougères. It’s a little spicy but very savory and nutty. There are some good flavors.
I wash my hands a lot. Aesop just feels great. It feels fresh and light. It has a citrusy, herbal scent to it. I just love it. The first time I used it, I was like, “What is this?” When you wash your hands so many times in the kitchen, especially for me, my hands tend to get dry after a while, especially when the weather is cold. And this soap just makes you feel fresh and good and it’s such a pleasure to wash your hands with it. I’m very sensitive to smell. After I wash my hands, I keep on smelling them because they smell so good. It feels like you just took a shower or a bath and you smell really fresh and good every single time you use it.
I grew up in a very humble family in France. Once, when I was going to work — I was working in a restaurant and it was my first year in the kitchen — I saw one in the trash and picked it up. I was like, “My God, this is so precious.” It was probably very old and I tried to turn it on, and of course it was not working. I opened it up and found that one of the gears was broken. So I replaced it and I used it for another 10, 15 years. I thought it was so precious and I couldn’t understand why someone would even think of trashing it. Now we use it in every kitchen. It’s very convenient for small mixes. It’s very reliable, very strong. I like using the glass bowl, which is great when you do photos or videos so people can see inside and see the texture changing of what you’re working with.
Oh my God, I have so many at home. I have one that’s yellow. I also have red, gray, and brown. I like to use a big one when I do a cassoulet for the holidays and we invite friends over. It’s probably at least 20 inches wide and pretty deep. It’s good because it’s hard to keep pots like this at home. But you know if you buy this, you keep it for the rest of your life. It’s unbreakable, it’s sturdy, it’s strong, it’s heavy, but it’s something that you don’t replace. You keep it with you for the rest of your life and I’m probably going to hand it down to my kids. You can cook pretty much everything — anything that’s a stew, any French dishes. I like the texture inside; it doesn’t really stick. I did a bouillabaisse for Christmas. You can roast meat, you can cook fish in there, pretty much anything, and bake in it as well.
I don’t sleep much but when I sleep, I like to sleep well. It was only after I’d been in the U.S. 10, 15 years that I started to appreciate bedsheets. Before that I never bought anything nice. But one day I bought nicer bedsheets and I found I slept so much better. You want something comfortable that’s going to make you feel good. Bedsheets are actually important when I think about it. I remember going to a very nice hotel once and slept so well, then looking at the bedsheets and they were the same ones. They’re smooth, soft, and high quality. There are a lot of small things I started appreciating at a later age in life. When I was younger, there were a lot of things I couldn’t afford or enjoy as much. Now these small things make the experience a little bit more special. Just like your bedsheets. I didn’t think that bedsheets would affect the way I sleep, but they do. Now if I sleep in a bed with bad bedsheets, I don’t sleep well.
Records are not things that people use anymore. I think there’s a romance to it. My wife bought me an Edith Piaf record from a very long time ago and I like to show my son how to use it. Now it’s easy to listen to music. You turn on your phone, open an app, and press play. But when you actually take everything out, put the record on the turntable, and start playing it — it’s beautiful to hear what we recorded so many years ago, almost a hundred years ago, and to still have a trace of it — I think there’s a romance to it in the way it sounds. It is not as perfect as what you can play on your iPhone. Now we go home and almost every night, my son likes to pull it out, set it up himself, and play music. He dances around it. It’s really cute.
For weather like today, I love it so much. This is a jacket that fits me very well. There are strings you can adjust to make it stay close to your body and still look dressed up. It’s warm from the bottom up. I don’t like the cold at all, and I don’t feel cold in this jacket. You can adjust the size and fit a little bit based on your body type. There’s no wind going through. It’s very comfortable. It keeps you warm for a long time.
I fell in love with these years ago. I used to wear kitchen clogs and they were very heavy. The ones I bought from France were actually made out of wood. You get used to it. Your legs are a little sore in the beginning, but after a while, I realized that my back started hurting and that was maybe not the most comfortable. I had friends that wore regular sneakers in the kitchen but they were a little slippery. These sneakers from APL are so comfortable and light. You feel almost like you’re flying. That’s what I love about them. They’re not designed for the kitchen, but they’re very, very comfortable and my back pain just went away. When I switched to these, everything changed. I feel less tired. My legs don’t hurt as much, and my back doesn’t hurt anymore.
I’m a pastry chef and I love building things. It’s in my nature. I always love creating my own molds, and it’s hard to get it right. I’ve been working with Sasa Demarle, which makes Flexipan, since the beginning of my career and I’ve always loved what they do. When the time came to create my own molds, I thought it would be cool to feature some of my creations. So I worked with the brand to create a beautiful silicon mold that people could use at home. The mold is made out of a nice silicone and it’s really reliable. I know it’s the best quality. You can use it thousands of times and it would still be in good shape. I wanted to do something simple, something that people could do at home, and the cookie shot requires a silicone mold. That’s how we cook them in our kitchen. I wanted people to have a chance to experience the mold at home without having to use five, six, seven recipe dishes. This is one. It’s simple. Everyone can do a cookie at home. The steps are a little bit more specific because you have to roll the dough, get it into a rectangle, and then slide it inside. But it’s actually fairly easy, and I wanted people to have a chance to do it at home.
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