Chef Leticia Cooks up a New Book

Jan 24, 2007

By Katharine Dyson
Reprinted from Acorn-Online

A cake created by Chef Leticia

When Leticia Schwartz first told her parents she wanted to be a chef, they were astonished. After all, she had grown up in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, where her family relied on a full-time cook for their meals. Yet Leticia, a very pretty, vivacious woman who now lives in Weston, said, "From the time I was very young, I loved being in the kitchen. I would spend hours there with Dilma, our cook, and even kept notes about how to makes things dating from when I was eight years old."

When Leticia was 15, she spent 3 months in Switzerland. The idea was for her to learn French but she says, "What really happed was that I became enchanted with the Swiss chefs. I saw they were so highly respected in their field."

Still following in her parents' footsteps, Leticia set out to pursue a career in the financial arena, studying economics in college in Rio and finally going into the banking field. But she says, "Wherever I went, I would cook for my friends. I was always cooking, helping people with parties, making cakes."

Finally, she told her parents, "You know, I don't want to work in a bank, I want to be a chef." At first she said they resisted the idea thinking the financial field would be the best place for her, but today, says Leticia, "They totally support me. At first I thought about going to Paris to study cooking, but it was easier for my parents to come to New York than to France, so in 1997 I came to New York and enrolled in the French Culinary Institute."

While Leticia was a student she interned at Le Cirque and trained under some of the world's best chefs like Jaques Pepin, Jacques Torres, Andre Soltner and Alain Sailhac. Later she worked as a line chef in La Caravelle and La Grenouille and did another internship at Payard Patisserie and Bistro.

When she married her husband, Dean, they moved to Norwalk eight years ago and Leticia decided to teach culinary classes. After their children, Thomas, now five, and Bianca, now three, were born, Dean and Leticia decided to move to Weston.

Their house has an enormous kitchen with a very long granite island, a full-size stainless steel steam and convection Cadco oven, a large Wolf gas stove, and another set of gas burners in the island. She says her favorite thing in her kitchen is the Cadco.

"One thing I always tells my students is to know your oven," she said. "Every oven is different. The space makes it different, the way the fans move the air around makes it different. You learn how your oven works by practice. When I was choosing my main stove and oven, so many people kept telling me Viking, Viking, Viking, but I went with the Wolf because it had two fans."

As interest in her cooking classes grew, so did requests to help out at parties and other events. Finding the time to do all this and not cut into her family life was another matter, so Leticia decided to take on a different challenge: writing a cookbook.

To make it happen, two months ago Leticia decided to let up on her class schedule and catering and focus on the cookbook. Now the proposal is complete and she is moving to the next step, selecting a book agent.

The 120 recipes for her cookbook, which is tentatively titled, "Brazilian Cuisine made the American Way," are rooted in the traditions of Brazilian food, but have been modified for American cooks. "One of the things I realized was that if I just wrote a very sophisticated cookbook, my audience would be very narrow. I am more interested in making these recipes accessible to many people using ingredients you can find in local markets," she said.

Creating these new recipes is, for her, an exhilarating process. "I am so excited because I just developed a recipe for your article at 10 o'clock last night," she had told me when I arrived to do the interview. "I was thinking since we're getting closer to Valentine's Day, a chocolate dessert would be great. It usually takes a few trials to develop a recipe but this one came out almost right the first time though I may want to cut the sugar by 1 Tbsp.. You can tell me what you think."

All during our interview, the smell of the chocolate cooking in her oven had become more and more tantalizing. Finally when she served what she called a Molten Brigadeiro Cake and I pressed my fork into the center of the cake, the hot chocolate ran deliciously out onto the plate. Instead of just a polite bite or two, I consumed it all, and that was after eating three warm, irresistible "Paode Quejos" (cheese balls).

The new cake recipe is an obvious hit and will no doubt be added to her photo album which contains a impressive range of cakes and dishes - multi-tiered birthday and wedding cakes, desserts with spun sugar "cages" and artfully presented salads and main courses.

Feliz Dia dos Namorados! (Happy Valentines Day)

Molten "Brigadeiro" Cake

"Brigadeiro is a delicious little chocolate fudge ball, the size of a truffle, usually rolled in chocolate sprinkles. For this recipe, I wanted to have a full-size dessert as opposed a bite-size dessert so I developed a Molten Brigadeiro Cake. I like to make my own ice cream and very often I pair ginger with chocolate."

For the "Brigadeiro":

For the cake:

Make the "Brigadiero":

Place condensed milk, cocoa powder and chocolate in a saucepan, over medium heat. Whisk constantly until mixture begins to bubble.

Stop whisking and continue to heat the mixture for another 1 to 2 minutes. Slide the batter into a bowl. (Do not scrape with a spatula - you don't want the burnt parts from the sides of pan.) At this point, the mixture should look like chocolate fudge. Reserve.

Make the cake:

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Butter and flour foil cups. Shake off the excess flour. In a medium saucepan, melt butter over low heat. Add the "brigadeiro" and whisk until well mixed. Remove from the heat.

In a separate bowl, beat together eggs, yolks, salt, sugar and vanilla.

Incorporate the "brigadeiro" mixture and whisk until well mixed. Add the flour and mix just until blended, using a spatula. Carefully pour batter into foil cups, filling almost to the top.

Bake in the oven for 7-9 minutes, or until the edges are firm but the center is still soft. Invert into a dessert plate. Serve with ice cream. (4 servings).

* Leticia used Stop and Shop brand.
** Leticia used Scharffen Berger for this recipe, but feel free to use other brands, as long as it is 70% cocoa solids.

Moqueca de Peixe

Brazilian Fish Stew

Using a zip lock bag, marinate the fish, one night before cooking, with half quantity of onion, garlic, jalapeno, ginger, herbs, and 4 Tbsp. dende oil.

In a large sauce pan, over low heat, sweat the onions and pepper in the remaining dende oil. Add the garlic and ginger and cook 2 minutes more. Turn heat to high and add the stock. Reduce by half. Add the coconut milk, and boil until sauce starts to incorporate and thickens a little. Turn off the heat and cover the pan.

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Place the fish and all marinating liquid in an oven-proof dish. Just before putting the fish in the oven, sprinkle the top with lemon juice. Put dish in the oven for about 10 minutes or until fish is almost cooked. Using a slotted spoon, transfer fish to the "Moqueca" sauce. At a very low heat, add hearts of palm, tomatoes, and salt and pepper to taste. Finish the dish with some fresh herbs on top. Serve on top of cooked white rice. Serves 8.

*For the "Dende Oil" you can substitute olive oil.

Baked Cheese Balls

Leticia says, "Pao de Queijo (cheese bread) is a very traditional snack in Brazil found in every coffee shop, on every corner of the street. Many times, people want to make them but don't know where to find Yucca flour or the Queijo Minas - the traditional way of making Pao de Queijo. Although Yucca flour and Queijo Minas are easy to find in specialized stores around Danbury or Bridgeport, they are not usually found in regular supermarket. This is the reason I developed a recipe that I call Baked Cheese Balls, equally delicious to Pao de Queijo, but easy to make here and to find the ingredients."

Place butter and flour in a bowl and smash with your hands until just combined. Add cheeses. Season with salt, pepper, and nutmeg. Using your hands, shape the dough into a ball and place in bowl, covered with a towel. Let it rest in the refrigerator for at least 1 hour. Make small balls of the dough about the size of a golf ball, and bake in a preheated oven at 350 degrees, for 10-15 minutes, or until golden brown. Makes about 15 balls.