If you were patient enough to wait in the very long line for French specialties at the food expo Chicago Gourmet back in September, you were rewarded with some of the most beautiful, most delicious chocolates made in town today. Filled with smooth spiced pumpkin and white chocolate ganache, the glossy hand-painted bonbons in vibrant shades of orange, yellow, and green were made by Chris Nugent, the executive chef at Les Nomades, where they’re among the mignardises served at the end of meals. Now Nugent’s gearing up to sell them, for the first time, to the general public.
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Although Nugent, 37, has no formal training in chocolate making, his interest in sweets goes way back. When he was 11, his mother died; his parents were divorced, and he was taken in by John Daly, a friend of the family who was the chef at the Drovers Inn in upstate Vestal, New York. Daly would bring him to work after school to keep an eye on him, and by the age of 14, he’d learned all the stations in the restaurant’s kitchen and volunteered to apprentice with the freelance German patissier who supplied the desserts. “They were so wonderful, I just wanted to learn how to make them,” he says. Over the next three years, he did just that. Upon graduating from high school, he faced a dilemma: whether to enroll in Johnson & Wales University’s culinary program or its baking and pastry program.
Next stop was the private Mid-America Club, where he was executive sous chef from 1998 to 1999, followed by a year and a half at MK, a year at Park Avenue Cafe, and then his first executive chef position, at Bêtise in Wilmette—where he doubled as pastry chef. But he wanted to get back downtown, so when Les Nomades’ Mary Beth Liccioni approached him about becoming executive chef, he accepted. He’s been there since January 2005.
Ganache recipes differ for each flavor, but the basic principle is that cream sweetened with glucose (which doesn’t crystallize like sugar syrup) is mixed with the flavoring (hazelnut paste, pumpkin puree, etc), a little vanilla, and a dash of salt, then heated and whisked until smooth and strained into a cylindrical container with the chopped chocolate in it. Nugent uses an immersion blender to combine the hot and cold ingredients, incorporating softened butter last to complete the emulsion. The ganache is poured into the molds, leaving a little room for the chocolate cap, and they’re tapped again to even out the filling and remove any bubbles.
Available in collections ranging from four for $14 to 36 for $99, chrisnugentchocolates.com.
