Word: kumin
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...memorable creations is modeling chocolate, which he perfected while working at the Four Seasons. It is a blend of semisweet chocolate, corn syrup and water that solidifies in any shape it has been sculptured into. The stuff tastes like a Tootsie Roll, but its durability was the key to Kumin's perfection of flourless cakes. He constructs artful boxes of modeling chocolate and fills them with rich puddings or mousses...
...Kumin became pastry chef at the Carter White House. "Politics? Who cares?" says Kumin with a shrug. "It was really a very good restaurant kitchen." He does remember, with just a pinch of vanity, that Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin doted on his praline mousse during talks with the President at Camp David. In 1980 Kumin came to Country Epicure, where four years ago he helped open the school. Kumin feels the position has all the right ingredients. "I cannot take my knowledge along," he says. "So I want to leave what I know...
...midafternoon, Kumin calls the class together for a demonstration. The table before him looks more like one found in an art class than a restaurant. To make a chocolate figure of a geisha for the top of a cake, Kumin begins with an egg-shaped chunk of chocolate for the torso, then adds arms and legs and makes a dress from a sheet of modeling chocolate. "Men and women both make the same mistake when making a lady," Kumin says with an embarrassed smile. "They put her breasts up under her chin. Remember, the breasts go halfway between shoulders...
...Kumin sculptures chocolate roses with the same passionate care that he bestows on his real garden in nearby Brewster. First he rolls a cone of solid chocolate. Then, with a few deft moves of what looks like an artist's palette knife, he shapes petals from modeling chocolate. His large fingers gently wrap the leaves around the cone and suddenly a perfect rendition of a rosebud glistens in chocolate. As the students move to their own tables to practice, Kumin takes a short break for a cigarette in his tiny office. "Teaching is wonderful," he says, "but soon I need...
...chocolate remain so important? Says Hirsch: "You can read people a list of a dozen unique desserts in a restaurant and they'll say, 'What was that chocolate thing you said? I'll have that.' I don't know why, but Saturday night in America is chocolate night." Kumin and his growing legion of graduates seem intent on spreading the sweetness across the whole calendar...