Archives for September 2010
Creme Brulee Can Suck it.
26 September 2010 | custard, delicious, dessert, plated dessert | 22 Responses
Seriously, ordering a Creme Brulee is like purchasing a golden retriever. Have some fucking imagination. I mean, its like saying you favorite Simon &Garfunkel song is “The Boxer,” I have had it on my menu for so long for a couple reasons, first and foremost: It sells. People identify with it. Much like the golden retriever, it’s an easy out, you don’t have to think about it. Also, I have the molds, and I have the process down cold. I don’t even use a water bath to bake ‘em. I could caramelize a creme brulee in my sleep. In fact, I’ve often done so in my nightmares. You see there’s this snake in a vest rolling a big doughnut, and he’s standing over this table that goes on forever, with and endless supply of custard waiting to be torched. I always wake up screaming.
So enough ranting about custard that can suck it, let’s talk about something that is almost exactly the same but somehow different. It’s like the difference between spaghetti and penne. It’s made from the same ingredients; but is texturally different, it somehow “tastes” different. Pot de Creme and creme brulee are almost identical recipes. Sweetened dairy product thickened with eggs. One has a caramelized sugar crust and one does not. One is typically baked in a low flat dish and one in a cup or “pot.” One in my mind is totally played out and annoying, and one is pretty cool. Anyway, here’s a recipe. My method may seem overwrought and finicky, but it works every time.
Caramel Pot de Creme
yields 14 - 4 oz molds
Re: Tart.
18 September 2010 | blueberries, delicious, dessert, faithful readers, recipe | 8 Responses
A fruit tart is a ubiquitous pastry, as old school as it comes and typically sells really well on any menu. I’ve done them in the past and will no doubt do them in the future. The large varietal, the ten to twelve inch pastry shell loaded down with pastry cream and too much fruit, can basically blow me. Sure they look nice whole, but how do you get a clean slice out of an artful display of fruit that’s brushed with simple syrup or apricot glaze? I can’t. Best I can hope for is a mashed up mess of cookie, cream, and fruit. The precision baker loathes a large fruit tart, least ways one intended to eat. I can understand the exactitude required to make a showpiece, but you don’t eat a showpiece.
Now the individual variety, as pictured here, is something I can get behind. It arrives on your plate as a simple showcase of quality ingredients. In this case, the plate is smeared with a buttery lemon curd, the thin pate sucree shell next, a vanilla white chocolate mousse is piped in, Viridian Farms blueberries arranged, and then the cocaine. This is assembled a la minute and that is the key. When a tart of this nature is filled to far before it is meant to be eaten; the crust gets soggy, and faithful readers now that soggy crust is straight bullshit. So fill your fruit tarts to order or to hell with you. The recipe below I’ve used for years, is used without permission from one of my most beloved cookbooks: Desserts by Charlie Trotter.
Pate Sucree
