How Korean Pastry Master Eunji Lee Makes a Pear Tart for Two-Michelin-Starred Jungsik — Plateworthy

It almost takes you on a journey. Right, on the plate. Yeah, in your mouth. Yes, journey in your mouth. Really excited to be here at Jeonsik with Chef Eunji, the pastry queen of fruit. Going to learn her process, walk through her dish, and super excited to learn her art. Where are we today? We are at Jeonsik restaurant. Amazing. In Tribeca, and I am executive pastry chef at Jeonsik. Yeah, you are. What are we making today? So we're gonna make the pear tart. Amazing. Cool. In Korea, we love Asian pear. I mean, our pear is Asian pear. Yes. I wanted to use this one in my dessert. It's my favorite pear, for sure. Oh, really? I just love the water content in it. Very texture, crunchy. Juicy crust. I really love the texture. We have a few pears here. What type of pear is this? This one is a commis pear. It's from... May I try it? Yeah. I really like this pear because it has floral flavor, and the texture is so soft. We can find it in Europe and in America. This one is from California. It's a local pear. So that's why I chose this pear. And another one is from Korea. Okay. So I chose the Asian pear. The Asian pear. Yeah. Kind of partial to that, I imagine. Do we start with the tart first? Yes. So tart, it's gonna be here. Okay. Like something like this? Yes. Small, kind of like this one. Okay. There is a commis pear. Do you mind if I... Please. Yeah. We can do it together. There is a commis pear like this, and Asian pear whole. And there is compressed small Asian pear. So we have compressed Asian pear. This is a fresh Asian pear, micro retro. Yum. So we have three types of pear preparation. Four types of pear preparation. I can say five, including the pear sorbet. Five types of pear, amazing. And the sorbet. Yeah, and the sorbet. It looks beautiful. It's almost delicious enough to eat on paper. And sujeonggwa, like sujeonggwa. It's a sauce? It's like juice. Usually we are drinking sujeonggwa at the end of the meal to digest and then refresh our palate. Okay, like a digestive and like the French cuisine. So how do I pronounce? Sujeonggwa? Sujeonggwa, amazing. You can put the butter at first, and we can put the icing sugar into the butter. Icing sugar next. So first step is creaming butter and sugar together. Flour goes in. Is there anything that we need to look out for on this stage? Can you overmix this? For the butter and sugar part, it's okay. But whenever you put the flour into the mixing bowl, you need to be careful about overwhipping because whenever you overwhip, there is gluten into the flour, so the texture is not correct. Okay, so something like this, you want more delicate as opposed to bread where you want to develop the gluten. So we're adding the egg. And what the egg is going to do is sort of add a little bit of protein structure to the dough. Yes, so tart dough is done. Now we rest the dough into the refrigerator for 24 hours. And then after the rest, I will roll it out. This is what we have after rolling out and punch it. So it's ready to mold the tart. Yes, chef. You are like a magician. You did that so quickly. And what is important when structuring our tart shell? Your hands. Not too hot. Okay. Fingers because there are a lot of detail work when you mold the tart. Put on the ring. After that, you're gonna pull it inside. You can push into the... Push and turn. If you see like this, we need to... This part, we need to fill it with the dough. So I'm using my finger to push it. How many times do you think you've done this? Like 10,000? I think. At least. Yeah. So this allows maybe air to escape a little bit and it won't have like a... Breathe through the holes. Beautiful. That's really nice of us to let these tart shells breathe. What is a pastry cream? Pastry cream is a basic French cream. So in the bowl, we have egg yolk. Yes. In the bowl, we have egg yolk. And then I will add the flour and cornstarch. This pot, there's milk and cream. So I will add the vanilla bean. So now I'm going to boil it. Then I can add the cream. So we're gonna add cream and milk and vanilla into our egg yolk mixture. I love pastry cream so much. It's like a really good vessel to be a conduit for flavor. Then I will put it back to the pot. The pastry cream, you need to make the day before and then set one night. After that, I can add the gelatin. And this gelatin, what form is this? This one is from, I made with the fish gelatin powder. When we add to the pastry cream, does that give the pastry cream any sort of fishy aroma? No, the fish gelatin is a neutral flavor. So there is no flavor. I, all I smell is toasty vanilla. Now we add the butter. And I should just whisk the butter in? Yes. And this one is not like smooth yet, like perfectly smooth yet. So I will finish by the hand blender. And the sweetness comes basically just from honey, no sugar. No sugar. Excellent. Nice base. Sushonggwa. Yes, now we will make the sushonggwa. Very excited to learn how to make this. And there is a water, we add the cinnamon stick, tan sugar, ginger, brown sugar, and then honey. And honey, amazing. So we need to boil, make it boil. And then after that, we need to kind of reduce around about like 30 minutes. Okay. At least 30 minutes. Bring to a boil, turn down to a simmer. So it almost feels like, like it has that idea of warm baking spices with the ginger and the cinnamon, right? Not too sweet. It's kind of refreshing flavor. Should I start peeling the pear, chef? Yes. Time to respect the fruit, right? Yes, time to respect fruit. Chef, do you have any sort of top five favorite fruits? Do you have? I do. Okay, top five off the top of my head. Put me under pressure. Top five favorite fruits. I love passion fruit. Uh, five, four, three. I love persimmons. I love pois du bois. Yes. I love, oh my gosh, right? It's the most delicious. I am going to table the rest. I have two more and I'm going to come up with them in a moment. And commis pear, I want to make a shape like a supreme of citrus. Same style as citrus, where you'd go in and kind of cut through the pith. Yeah, because commis pear is soft too, like softer than Asian pear. So when you make the bowl, like it could be hard to make a nice shape. Yes. So that's why I decide this shape. Then we can soak into the yuzu syrup. And the yuzu syrup, what's here? Just yuzu juice. There's yuzu juice and water and yuzu jam. So now we can make the pear compote with the scraps. So the leftover scraps. Oh snap, you are so sustainable. So we have cut all of the supremes out of the pear. And instead of getting rid of that, we actually cut the rest of the fruit off and create something with the fruit. Beautiful. No, no, no. We respect the fruit. No waste, respect the fruit. This one is just very easy and quick. You can just cut it, chop it, the pear into the pot. Okay. So citric acid, diced pear, just cooking down a little bit, break down and evaporate a little bit of the water, concentrate the flavor. Asian pear peel. The texture is completely different. Very crisp. Now we're going to make the Asian pear bowl. I like to use the bowler because you can make a really nice shape and pretty shape. Clean. It looks beautiful. And it's going to go into a honey syrup? Yes. So we have three different types of color. So this one is like little light yellow, and this one is like brown, and this one is white. Chef, your mind is beautiful. It's awesome to see this production because ultimately you're going to have three different textures. You have a little bit acid forward, bright. This is kind of like sweet, like on the back of the palate, like rich, right? And then you have some beautiful sort of like crisp, fresh pear. Then you have the pear compote. And then you have the honey playing with the honey pastry cream. It's just next level, man. Fail. Okay, I'm not going to do that on the next one. I clearly can't do it. As I grew up in France for 10 years, I got an experience, amazing experience for the pastry and bakery. All the French techniques and then French like ingredients and knowledge that I learned, I think I matched it with my Korean heritage using Korean ingredients like a sujeonggwa or Asian pear and Korean touch, but based off the French techniques. So when we present to our guests, it's like this. Then open the plates like that. And we're going to pour the sujeonggwa onto the plates. Bon appetit. With the pear sorbet. These are the type of desserts I really enjoy eating. It's very unobtrusive on your palate. You know, it's really going to round out your savory experience and kind of hug your soul a little bit. Wow, we did it, chef. Thank you.