My name is Carlos Enriquez, I have been cooking for 15 years now, strictly pastry. The most fundamental thing I learned about cooking was the hard work that goes into it. Drilled into me by my mother and aunt, they taught me the meaning of working hard, that in life nothing comes easy and you have to work hard to achieve your goals. I work hard everyday toward obtaining my goals and thanks to my mom and aunt I now know what it takes to achieve these goals..
Early in my career I had the opportunity to work with whom I consider some of the greatest chefs and mentors in my career. Here is the path I have thus traveled...
I first learned artisan breads, viennosserie and bread showpieces from Stephane Morabit. He was the Assistant Pastry Chef at Paris Las Vegas under MOF Jean Claude Canestrier. He showed me how to start, feed, kill and mature mother leavening. How to properly laminate croissant, brioche and danish. How to create showpieces out of salt, wheat and dead doughs that looked like chocolate work. But most of all, he showed me how to be responsible, how to earn the respect of my team by example and how to take meaning by our actions. He was a true professional in every sense of the word.
In 2002 I met Sky Goble. We worked together at the Brown Palace Hotel in Denver Colorado & later in Yosemite National Park, California. I credit him for showing me wedding cakes. At the Brown Palace we where making 300 cakes a year which gave me a lot of practice. Sky was a great teacher, very patient and forgiven in all that we did. He also taught me how to run a multi unit operation. We where responsible for all 5 restaurants, tea service, banquets and room service for the hotel.
In 2006 I had the opportunity to work along side Frederic Larre at the Hard Rock Hotel & Casino in Las Vegas. Freddy has had the opportunity to work for some of the greatest chefs in the culinary industry such as Francoise Payard, MOF Jean Phillip Maury, MOF Jean Claude Canistrier, Alain Ducasse, Frederic Robert and many more. He embedded in me that whatever it is you make, you make it absolutely perfect, regardless of the volume. He would also say to me that if you wanted to make a great product, you have to have the best ingredients and tools. "If you start with shit, you end up with shit". I still to this day take those words seriously.
Since then I have worked mostly in the restaurants industry. I enjoy working in a restaurant setting more than a hotel setting because restaurants operate under a faster pace, from production to service. I am also able to work with seasonal ingredients, choosing the freshest products possible on a daily basis and where they come from which enables me to create what I would like at my discretion. I also enjoy working with a small group of people which the restaurant industry usually condones. Working together with them day in and day out you are able to assemble a "family" team. The family works together with the same goals in mind, to create/make the best most satisfying desserts possible for people to enjoy.
What I have learned over the years is that the culinary world is an evolving, ever so changing metamorphosis. The only way for us to keep evolving is to share the knowledge and teach others the skills of hard work and perfection in all that we do, so that the next generation of Pastry Chefs do not solely focus on foams, spherifications, fluid gels, compressions, etc...
I look forward to sharing with you in my blogs my ideas, mistakes, recipes and everyday life in my kitchen. So lets get started....
"black forest cake"
microwave chocolate cake, nitro brownie powder, compressed cherries, cocoa nib nougatine, mascarpone gelato, white currants.
"melon"
cantaloupe, honeydew & yellow watermelon sorbet terrine, spicy red watermelon soup,
cassava "caviar", lime "pop rocks"
"chiboust"
compressed exotic fruit salad, passion fruit chiboust, coconut sorbet "cigarette", freeze dried mango.
"creme brulee"
vanilla brulee, pickled raspberries, lychee ice, rose water meringue, prickly pear pudding,
raspberry paper
A quote I heard from Chef Thomas Keller in 2010 at the ICC in NYC,
"It takes a great deal of time to become a great craftsman before becoming a true artist".
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