Heather MacWilliams | atGeist.com

Hawthorns Country Club Peter Schmutte, Pastry Chef

“Leave the gun. Take the cannolis.”
-Peter Clemenza, in The Godfather.

Peter Schmutte, pastry chef at the Hawthorns Country Club in Fishers, shares his famous bread pudding recipe.

They are words to live by for Peter Schmutte, pastry chef at the Hawthorns Country Club in Fishers, who is determined to have his diners follow in the footsteps of the don’s henchman. But these days, convincing Hoosiers to order dessert isn’t as easy as Peter Clemenza’s moral manifesto.

Take one look at Schmutte’s culinary creations, however, and even the most conscientious calorie counter will become powerless to its prowess.

Thousands of Hawthorns members can attest. For more than a year, the Indianapolis native has been cranking out everything from coconut and passion fruit mousse cakes to lavender short bread in an effort to meet the demands of the 60,000-square-foot facility which houses three full-time restaurants. “I’m like a pastry Swiss Army knife. I’ll do whatever’s needed at any given time,” says the 35-year-old, his soft voice masking intense determination. Swiss Army knife indeed.

Each week Schmutte not only provides plated desserts for the clubhouse’s two sit-down restaurants, “The Overlook” and “The Player’s Lounge,” but also creates – from scratch – an array of cookies, brownies, and fresh pastries for the more casual “Arbor Grill” which is open for breakfast, lunch, and dinner seven days a week. It may sound like a tall order, but it’s one for which Schmutte has thoroughly prepared.

The Indianapolis native has worked at Chicago’s TRU and NoMI restaurants as well as Wolfgang Puck’s now defunct eatery inside the Indianapolis Museum of Art. In fact, Schmutte had almost 10 years of culinary experience before even walking through the doors of The French Bakery School in Chicago where he became well versed in the fundamental practices and techniques of creating pastries. “People have been feeding themselves for tens of thousands of years. To say you know how to do it all is pretty ostentatious.”

His baking philosophy is anything but. While he may follow techniques from esteemed French master pastry chefs like Pierre Herme and Stephanie Glacier, Schmutte manages to create his amazing recipes with only a few key ingredients. “You take flour, water, butter, and yeast and you’ve got a baguette. There are so many different things you can do with the same ingredients.”

His trick: exploring the multi-tasking potential of everything from Texas toast (as a base for his bread pudding) to Hershey’s syrup (a whimsical throwback to his family desserts of yesteryear). “There’s something so gratifying about putting those ingredients together and putting something in the oven and pulling something out that’s greater than the sum of its parts,” says Schmutte, who appears to take as much pride in ironing his impeccably-pressed chef whites, as he does in the workmanship of his product.
“If you have a good base recipe the sky’s the limit.”

The secret to good baking, he contends, is patience and trial and error.

“It’s like these macaroons,” he says, gesturing towards five multi-colored gems on a stark white plate. Their colors are bright, flaunting themselves, unashamed under the kitchen’s fluorescent lighting. “I’ve been making and eating macaroons for years. But it took me a lot of practice to get them where I wanted them. Now 12 years later, I think I finally have them how I want them,” he laughs. Any foodie knows macaroons are the aristocrats of pastry; these brightly-colored mini meringues, daintily sandwiched together with gooey filings, have become a holy grail for cookery fanatics and even have food blogs dedicated to the delicacies.

Schmutte doesn’t disappoint. His shells are crispy on the outside, smothered with soft ganache in the middle, and have a lovely little crunch when eaten. Macaroon virgins will be amazed at how much flavor is contained in such a tiny biscuit.

“(With the desserts here), I’ve tried to push it as much as I can here to get people to venture out and try something new – without scaring them off.”

That’s why when developing his menu, Schmutte didn’t stray far from his Hoosier roots. His menu reads “tradition meets innovation with a side of passion and feel-good sincerity.” “I scaled back the menu this year. I try to do things that are a little bit more comforting and a little more recognizable,” he says.

“An apple pie shouldn’t be good because it has 17 different ingredients in it. It’s about using the freshest apples possible,” a viewpoint that isn’t so radically different that it’s either ground-breaking or completely crazy.

Take, for instance, his bread pudding. For Schmutte, it’s about nostalgia – a yearning for a simpler time when dessert was made from a few common kitchen ingredients. With a few updates, his version of bread pudding remains a soul-satisfying treat with the comfort and ease of a delicious, virtuous meal in a cup.

Home cooks be not afraid. Armed with the basics (eggs, milk, sugar, and sour cream) even mere mortals, Schmutte says, can whip up this last course in no time. “You can add a little orange zest to it, throw a little ginger in it, or fresh berries dusted with a little powdered sugar and a slice of vanilla bean and make it your own.” Even if you don’t have the correct vessels (think ramekins), the bread mixture can simply be baked inside ceramic coffee mugs and served with a spoon.

The biggest mistake in baking, he says, seems like the most obvious.

“Don’t open the oven door, because every time you open the door you lose so much heat. Then you wonder why it’s not getting done. It’s because you’ve reduced the temperature by 150 degrees.”

But just when you think his days are filled with fondant, crème brulee, and crepes, think again. Schmutte’s thin crust pizza is a clubhouse favorite. Its sourdough crust took more than six weeks to perfect and uses a 150-year-old heirloom starter that has been passed down from generation to generation.

“It’s been alive for a long time.”

And given the popularity of his dishes, keeping his customers’ cravings alive won’t be difficult. As long as the last course continues to get top billing, Schmutte, it seems, should be able to keep even the likes of Don Corleone happy – one cannoli at a time.

Bread Pudding Recipe

Bread Pudding

Granulated Sugar 1 C
Unsalted Butter – Room Temp 1 Stick
Eggs 5
Vanilla Extract 1 T
Cinnamon 1/8 t
Heavy Cream 1 C
Sour Cream 1 C
Texas Toast or other soft bread (Brioche, Donuts, etc.) 6-8 Slices

Preheat oven to 235 degrees Fahrenheit. (210 for confection oven)
Cut crust off bread. Slice into 1” cubes.
Place butter in bowl of a stand mixer and beat at medium speed for 2 minutes. Add granulated sugar and beat 2 minutes more. Turn off.
Scrape the butter off the sides of the bowl and add the eggs. Beat 1 minute. Turn off and scrape again. You are making sure all the butter is mixed with the eggs and none of it remains stuck to the sides of the bowl.
Add vanilla and cinnamon. Mix 30 seconds. Turn off mixer.
Add sour cream. Mix 30 seconds. Turn off mixer.
Add heavy cream. Mix 1 minute. Turn off mixer.
Place bread cubes into the mix and completely submerge all pieces. Mix with hands to ensure all pieces are coated. Let soak for 30 minutes.
While bread is soaking, spray 6 eight-ounce muffin ramekins with release spray. If you don’t have ramekins, you can use porcelain coffee cups in their place.
Divide the soaked bread into the prepared vessels, filling each once halfway to 2/3 from the top with the bread. Pour the remaining mix over the top to fill each cup up ½ “ from the top.
Place cups on a baking pan into the oven for about an hour. When finished the mix will have puffed up a bit over the tops of the cups and will be slightly firm and spongy to the touch. Pull from the oven.
Let set for 20 minutes.
To remove the puddings, simply invert the cup and shake or tap and the mix will come free. Dust with powdered sugar. Serve with caramel sauce and whipped cream.
This is also great with some seasonal berries tossed with a little granulated sugar and vanilla bean.
*This base recipe can be flavored any number of ways. Add some orange zest to it, cocoa powder, coffe extract, almond extract… Come up with your own combinations.

Chef’s Secrets: Seasons 52

Before you walk into the Seasons 52 Restaurant, conveniently located at Keystone at the Crossing, you should know one thing: They don’t have butter in the restaurant.

“It’s not like we use it sparingly. We don’t have butter in the restaurant,” confides Executive Chef Bill Erath, who unabashedly offers this fact without blinking an eye. In fact, he’s proud of the ingredient’s omission.

“That’s like in every chef’s back pocket. Throw some more fat in there it will taste great. But to me there’s a responsibility,” says Erath who hails from Indianapolis and trained under the watchful eye of Seasons 52’s corporate culinary director Clifford Pleau.

Every item served on the Seasons 52 menu is less than 475 calories – but your taste buds won’t know the difference. “With us the biggest difference in how we approach flavor is how we prepare it – how we cook it as opposed to what we add to it.”

Erath achieves an intense depth-of-flavor in each of his dishes by employing cooking techniques such as wood-fire grilling, brick-oven cooking, and carmelization to let the ingredient’s natural flavors shine through. This fact is evident the moment you walk through the front door and are greeted with the sensual aromas of oak wood and mesquite charcoal crackling just a few feet away.

The atmosphere at Seasons 52 is drop-in casual, always busy but never raucous, with an open kitchen that feeds energy into the room. More often, those rooms are filled by the buttoned up white collar crowd, interspersed with the ladies who lunch – both groups keenly aware of what they are putting into their bodies. The result is sophisticated, understated elegance – not painfully hip.

The same can be said for the menu – which boasts everything from a succulent Piedmonte steak perfumed by smoke and served over a bed of creamy corn risotto to their take on the proverbial Caprese salad.

In this appetizer, the chef mimics fried mozzarella by toasting panko (Japanese breadcrumbs) ahead of time, which are then sprinkled over the cheese before being slid into a brick oven and warmed. Afterwards, the baked mozzarella rests on the ripest tomatoes in town which are left to luxuriate in the restaurant’s signature marinade made of sherry vinegar, extra virgin olive oil, and a basil pesto.

Each dish is indicative of the chef’s passion for letting the product do the work, using only high-quality, seasonal ingredients when possible. Hence the name Seasons 52: “Seasons” since the menu is changed with the solstice and “52” because the side bar portion of the menu changes every week.“It’s pretty cool to work for a restaurant that changes the way we think about dining out,” says Erath.

Inspired by the farm-to-fork movement, Erath not only has an aggressive commitment to freshness, but tries to use local, sustainable, organic, and all-natural products whenever possible. “Right now we can get really great asparagus so we’re going to.”

For example when the restaurant can’t get local tomatoes, they outsource from Cal Organics located near the Mohave Desert where they sublease fields, says Erath, easily rattling off from memory where his lettuce, chicken, and beef are sourced. “For us we actually go out and visit the farms where our product is from. They know that one of our people will come out and visit them any time of the year; and if it’s not right, they lose their account right there on the spot.” The result is a safer and more consistent product that just so happens to be good for you.

Take, for instance, the confidently simple cedar plank Sockeye salmon.
Preparation for this dish can be traced back to the Native Americans who once roamed the Pacific Northwest. “They’d catch a piece of salmon and actually plank the cedar and then cook it over an open fire,” Erath points out. So if it ain’t broken why fix it?

Instead of spear fishing, Erath has a good fish monger. “Know your supplier. Because a lot of places are going for the cheapest salmon and some of those farms are modifying the genetics to get a better yield. But where you really get into trouble is the feed that the salmon are getting. Mother nature intended for salmon to have an all-natural seafood diet.”

Erath then adds a few modern day twists by soaking a cedar plank (about 3/8 of an inch thick) the day before, and bathing it in a mustard marinade that morning. Then like all good red-blooded Americans, Erath fires up the grill and cooks the fish on indirect heat. Your plank should smolder and burn around the edges. “You get that grilled, smoky undertone. That’s the real secret,” says Erath as a grin spreads across his face.

The end result showcases the natural richness of the salmon kissed by smoke and accompanied by a seductive array of seasonal produce. Any delicate fish such as a Chilean seabass or Arctic Char will work with this recipe. Just remember: the denser the fish, the more resistant it will be to the smoke.

The portions are small compared to Hoosier standards, but Erath says Americans simply have a skewed perception of value. “When I’m cooking for my family at home, I don’t take a 16-inch oval platter and mound it up there. So why do we expect that when we go to a restaurant?”

Instead, realistic portion sizes make way for the diner to indulge in more appetizers. Try the lobster and shrimp spring roll filled with lightly blanched carrots, snow peas, red peppers, and shitake mushrooms accompanied by a lemon curry; tomatillo; and sweet and spicy red chili sauces.

Or the not-to-be-missed Portabella mushroom flatbread with truffle cream sauce and a balsamic drizzle. Instead of being cloyingly sweet, the vinegar is reduced and carmelized which intensifies the natural sugars without all the calories.

And feel free to clean your plate. Even the mashed potatoes are guilt free but packed with a punch of which even Paula Deen would be proud. Instead of cream, the chef uses 2% milk, non-fat sour cream, and roasted garlic to enhance the spuds.

Wash it all down with a glass of wine selected by the 152nd Master Sommelier in the world, George Miliotes.

“I love the feeling our customers get to feel when they walk out the front door. It’s like a breath of fresh air. You’ve relaxed, you’ve indulged yourself, but you don’t feel bad about it. You haven’t ruined your evening,” Erath says.

And if all that doesn’t make you feel guilt free this will: Once a week Seasons 52 makes a big bulk edible donation to the food pantry Second Helpings which then splits up the food and disperses it to the hungry – quite possibly changing our community one meal at a time.

(If you have a recipe for which you’d like us to find the chef’s secret, e-mail Heather at: heathermacwilliams@yahoo.com.

Be sure to visit her cooking website: heathershautecuisine.com)