Word: kumin
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...pastry-shop bakers come to this unusual little school to refine their confectionary skills. The curriculum includes seminars devoted to such succulent topics as breads and doughs, sugar, cake decorating and, during this week, the complex and artful world of chocolate. The presiding guru is Herr Doktor Albert Kumin, 76, the Swiss dessert genius. Although he has never published a cookbook, in the rarefied world of professional chefs Kumin is regarded as a viscount of chocolate, a prince of pastry. He is the creator of the dessert menu at Manhattan's Four Seasons and a former White House pastry chef...
...Kumin moves with greyhound grace through the quiet kitchen. Despite a lifetime of working with high-calorie fare, he remains admirably thin. One reason: he rarely stops for lunch. In Kumin's world of mixtures, textures and boiling points, hands are sensitive instruments. With the touch of a finger, he can tell the temperature of chocolate to within 2 degrees. Although his English is pretty good, Kumin might not understand the concept of the temperamental chef. He is usually as sweet as milk chocolate, yet no pushover like the Pillsbury doughboy. He stops on his rounds to correct a technique...
...Kumin's fascination with sugar and chocolate began early. Growing up in Switzerland, he tarried before the windows of bakery shops on the way to school. After a thorough indoctrination in exacting Swiss hotel kitchens, Kumin arrived in North America in 1948. He became pastry chef at Montreal's Ritz-Carleton. In 1958 he was hired by Restaurant Associates, the Manhattan- based concern that operated the Four Seasons and the Forum of the Twelve Caesars...