WEBVTT 00:00:00.001 --> 00:00:06.000 Hey, I'm Mark Bittman, and I'm grateful to Signature Kitchen Suite for bringing me here in New Orleans. 00:00:06.000 --> 00:00:15.000 A city like no other, thanks to its blend of cultures, its incredible architecture, its amazing food, its joie de vivre. 00:00:15.000 --> 00:00:24.000 I'm here today to meet with a young chef who's returned to her community to create a cultural exchange with her amazing creations. 00:00:24.000 --> 00:00:28.000 And, quite literally, through her kitchen windowsill. 00:00:28.000 --> 00:00:35.000 [Music] 00:00:35.000 --> 00:01:01.000 [Music] 00:01:01.000 --> 00:01:07.000 Making French pastries beautiful, delicate, and appealing is a lot of work. 00:01:07.000 --> 00:01:11.000 The craft requires a determined spirit and the heart of an artist. 00:01:11.000 --> 00:01:15.000 And that describes Caitlin Gurren to a T. 00:01:15.000 --> 00:01:20.000 And she knows her little masterpieces are only as good as what goes into them. 00:01:20.000 --> 00:01:25.000 So fresh ingredients are paramount. 00:01:25.000 --> 00:01:26.000 Hey. 00:01:26.000 --> 00:01:27.000 Hi Mark, how are you? 00:01:27.000 --> 00:01:28.000 Good to meet you. 00:01:28.000 --> 00:01:30.000 Welcome to New Orleans. It's a pleasure. 00:01:30.000 --> 00:01:31.000 It's great to be here. 00:01:31.000 --> 00:01:33.000 Well, we're at the Elysian Bar. We're heading inside. 00:01:33.000 --> 00:01:35.000 Yeah, let's go talk some pastry. 00:01:35.000 --> 00:01:36.000 Absolutely. 00:01:36.000 --> 00:01:41.000 [Music] 00:01:41.000 --> 00:01:45.000 So, Caitlin, you're from here, right? Originally? 00:01:45.000 --> 00:01:46.000 I am from here. Born and raised. 00:01:46.000 --> 00:01:47.000 And what was it like? 00:01:47.000 --> 00:01:51.000 It was, I guess, like an experience like no other. 00:01:51.000 --> 00:02:00.000 Festivals multiple times of the year, Mardi Gras, Jazz Fest, you know, you're just always having a reason to celebrate. 00:02:00.000 --> 00:02:01.000 Always. 00:02:01.000 --> 00:02:02.000 It's amazing. 00:02:02.000 --> 00:02:04.000 Right? There's always something to celebrate. 00:02:04.000 --> 00:02:10.000 There's always a reason to eat good food, to be around family and friends, and always a reason to come together. 00:02:10.000 --> 00:02:13.000 And at some point, you left? 00:02:13.000 --> 00:02:16.000 After undergrad, I went to California. 00:02:16.000 --> 00:02:19.000 And what took you to California? 00:02:19.000 --> 00:02:22.000 I studied dance and exercise science. 00:02:22.000 --> 00:02:29.000 And that's kind of when I realized that I love to express myself through movement, and I love to be creative through movement. 00:02:29.000 --> 00:02:35.000 But there was another opportunity to create and be expressive through my art. 00:02:35.000 --> 00:02:39.000 And that was through pastries and baking desserts. 00:02:39.000 --> 00:02:42.000 Tell me what you were cooking when it started. 00:02:42.000 --> 00:02:45.000 I started making a lot of really bad cakes. 00:02:45.000 --> 00:02:46.000 [Laughter] 00:02:46.000 --> 00:02:48.000 That's always kind of how it starts, right? 00:02:48.000 --> 00:02:50.000 And you went to culinary school in...? 00:02:50.000 --> 00:02:53.000 In Napa, I went to the Culinary Institute at Greystone. 00:02:53.000 --> 00:02:56.000 I'm really happy that I made that decision. 00:02:56.000 --> 00:03:04.000 Right. I think that cooking, you can learn intuitively, you can teach yourself, etc., etc., but real pastry making, you need lessons. 00:03:04.000 --> 00:03:06.000 You do. You do. 00:03:06.000 --> 00:03:16.000 To have hands-on, full-time experience working in a kitchen with professional instructors and chefs, you know, I learned so much in such a short amount of time. 00:03:16.000 --> 00:03:25.000 So you had sort of achieved pretty quickly what you wanted to, and yet when you came back here, it sounds like you kind of realized maybe that wasn't what you wanted. 00:03:25.000 --> 00:03:34.000 It was actually less about being in the kitchen space and more about taking an opportunity while I'm in New Orleans to invest back in the city. 00:03:34.000 --> 00:03:35.000 Right. 00:03:35.000 --> 00:03:36.000 Yeah. 00:03:36.000 --> 00:03:37.000 So tell me how it started. What happened? 00:03:37.000 --> 00:03:39.000 Well, the pandemic happened. 00:03:39.000 --> 00:03:40.000 Yeah, I remember that. 00:03:40.000 --> 00:03:41.000 Yeah. 00:03:41.000 --> 00:03:48.000 I was making pies for my family friends and delivering them as best as I could, you know, March of 2020. 00:03:48.000 --> 00:03:58.000 And I thought, "Well, this is a great time just to kind of gather any ingredients I can before everything really shuts down and just start making pastries for folks." 00:03:58.000 --> 00:04:04.000 So I started off doing assorted pastry boxes, and then lagniappe became lagniappe. 00:04:04.000 --> 00:04:09.000 Not everybody is from here, and the word lagniappe is not. 00:04:09.000 --> 00:04:13.000 I don't think it's English. I don't know what it is. Is it Creole? 00:04:13.000 --> 00:04:14.000 French Creole. 00:04:14.000 --> 00:04:16.000 It means something, right? 00:04:16.000 --> 00:04:17.000 It means a little something extra. 00:04:17.000 --> 00:04:19.000 There you go. So great. 00:04:19.000 --> 00:04:22.000 I might give you something, but I'm also going to say, "Here's a little lagniappe." 00:04:22.000 --> 00:04:23.000 That's great. 00:04:23.000 --> 00:04:24.000 You know, so. 00:04:24.000 --> 00:04:33.000 It's okay. I mean, I love the weekly pastry box thing. I mean, to me, that's the coolest thing ever. But you evolved. Things changed. This is, we're in 2020 still, right? 00:04:33.000 --> 00:04:40.000 I've been running them outside of the house and transitioned my kitchen, my living room, to be an entire industrial kitchen. 00:04:40.000 --> 00:04:41.000 Really? 00:04:41.000 --> 00:04:46.000 Yeah. But I have this windowsill in the kitchen that opens up to the side yard. 00:04:46.000 --> 00:04:55.000 So what happens is that now lagniappe, you come in through the side yard, and you come into this windowsill, and you get to receive the pastries from me through the windowsill. 00:04:55.000 --> 00:05:03.000 It's just, it's become such a cute, like, charming experience that I think is something you can really only get in a place like New Orleans, you know? 00:05:03.000 --> 00:05:05.000 I mean, it sounds wonderful. It really sounds lovely. 00:05:05.000 --> 00:05:06.000 Take care. 00:05:06.000 --> 00:05:15.000 So there's a way in which we've been talking about this as if you were a student. And indeed, all your stajas, the CIA, all your jobs, and so on. 00:05:15.000 --> 00:05:25.000 But now we're here. You've arrived. And you're doing this amazing stuff. And you have this super interesting, built-from-the-ground-up business. 00:05:25.000 --> 00:05:27.000 We're talking to an expert here. 00:05:27.000 --> 00:05:28.000 Thank you. 00:05:28.000 --> 00:05:29.000 Congratulations. 00:05:29.000 --> 00:05:33.000 Thank you. It is, yeah. I feel like there's still a lot more to learn. 00:05:33.000 --> 00:05:42.000 But this, for me, is the new chapter of where this business is going and how I'm going to continue learning and evolving the pastries into something new. 00:05:42.000 --> 00:05:43.000 Right. 00:05:43.000 --> 00:05:48.000 So some of the things you've talked about are local ingredients, seasonal ingredients. 00:05:48.000 --> 00:05:53.000 Let's, what I really like to do is dig into these literally, but let's dig into these figuratively. 00:05:53.000 --> 00:05:59.000 And yeah, talk about how this stuff reflects what you're thinking about in pastries these days. 00:05:59.000 --> 00:06:04.000 Yeah, so I think a lot of what we touched on is that these are intricate pastries, right? 00:06:04.000 --> 00:06:09.000 This is days' worth of work. It wasn't all done in a few hours. It's impossible. 00:06:09.000 --> 00:06:15.000 One of my favorite items on this table right now is the Meyer lemon curd tart. 00:06:15.000 --> 00:06:18.000 Citrus is seasonal in wintertime, obviously. 00:06:18.000 --> 00:06:22.000 And I think just a couple weeks ago at the farmer's market, we started seeing citrus pop up. 00:06:22.000 --> 00:06:25.000 Satsumas, navel oranges have always been here. 00:06:25.000 --> 00:06:28.000 Kumquats, I've got kumquats on top of the moose cake here. 00:06:28.000 --> 00:06:31.000 But I love Meyer lemons. 00:06:31.000 --> 00:06:35.000 And I would never think of them as a southern fruit. 00:06:35.000 --> 00:06:38.000 I love to utilize all parts of Meyer lemon. 00:06:39.000 --> 00:06:45.000 And each of these things gets made obviously separately, and each of them is stored, as you said, 00:06:45.000 --> 00:06:48.000 in a different temperature, a different way, a different length of time. 00:06:48.000 --> 00:06:50.000 And it's pretty precise. 00:06:50.000 --> 00:06:54.000 Yeah, yeah, it has to be. I mean, these pastries are temperature controlled, 00:06:54.000 --> 00:06:57.000 so they maintain their balance of flavor and texture. 00:06:57.000 --> 00:07:00.000 Time is the biggest factor on your side, right? 00:07:00.000 --> 00:07:04.000 It's a matter of, can I produce this element in one day or four days? 00:07:04.000 --> 00:07:10.000 And I think what's really important is having control over those particular degrees. 00:07:10.000 --> 00:07:14.000 These are pastries that I love to make for myself and for other people. 00:07:14.000 --> 00:07:18.000 I love to make these for my friends, for family, for holiday celebrations, 00:07:18.000 --> 00:07:21.000 outside of just pastry boxes and for my business. 00:07:21.000 --> 00:07:22.000 There you go. 00:07:22.000 --> 00:07:26.000 They're so pristine and beautiful. I mean, everyone deserves to have something like this. 00:07:26.000 --> 00:07:30.000 I mean, one of the things I love about stuff like this is that everybody loves them, 00:07:30.000 --> 00:07:37.000 and they bring people together, and you have such a great scene with your side yard and your window sill. 00:07:37.000 --> 00:07:39.000 But I'm especially happy that these have brought us together, 00:07:39.000 --> 00:07:45.000 because it's really been a joy to meet you and fun to talk with you, so thank you for that. 00:07:45.000 --> 00:07:47.000 Thank you, Mark. It's really been a pleasure as well. 00:07:47.000 --> 00:07:50.000 So enough talking. Let's eat some pastry. 00:07:50.000 --> 00:07:51.000 Absolutely. 00:07:51.000 --> 00:07:53.000 I'm going to go for a little. 00:07:53.000 --> 00:07:55.000 Okay, Kurt, I'm going to go for a little. 00:07:55.000 --> 00:07:56.000 Thanks. 00:07:56.000 --> 00:08:25.000 [Music] 00:08:25.000 --> 00:08:31.000 [Music] 00:08:31.000 --> 00:08:33.060 you