UPDATED: If you follow St. Regis Bal Harbour pastry chef Antonio Bachour on Facebook, you’ll be treated to a steady stream of stunning sweets: intricate bonbons, ornate petit fours, composed plates of sorbet, cake and pastries as colorful as a summer bouquet. Soon many of these creations will live in print, along with their recipes, in Bachour, Recipes for the Professional Chef.
“It’s a dessert book focusing on everything I make in house at the St. Regis Bal Harbour,” says Bachour. This includes macarons, entremets, and plated desserts like Basil Mango Vacherin/Lemon Cremeux with Pistachio Sponge Cake and Greek Yogurt Sorbet/Poached Pear with Honey Cream, Ginger Streusel and Pear Sorbet/Passion Fruit Macaron/Key Lime Tart.
Bachour, who has been executive pastry chef at the St. Regis Bal Harbour since 2011, has been honing his craft since he was young, spending time at his family’s bakery in Puerto Rico. He came to South Florida in 2001 as executive pastry chef at Talula, and made Italian delicacies at DeVito South Beach and Scarpetta at New York and Miami. He was part of the opening team at the W South Beach and was responsible for all pastries at the Trump SoHo hotel and restaurants. In 2011, Bachour was a finalist in the International Chef Congress Pastry Competition and was selected by Dessert Professional magazine as one of their top 10 pastry chefs in America. Johnson and Wales University selected him for their Zest award.
While his desserts have been featured in publications, including Gourmet and trade publications, and his recipes were featured in (Alan) Battman’s dessert cookbooks Pudding (2010) and Pies (2011), this cookbook is Bachour’s own project. “It’s my dream,” he says. “I want to give really nice recipes to young cooks. I think this book will help a lot of cooks.” Many of the dramatic culinary projects are geared toward more advanced cooks, he says, but ambitious young cooks needn’t despair— Bachour has bigger plans. “Maybe the second book will be for home cooks!” he adds.
