What’s more comforting to faithful readers like yourselves than a hamburger and hotdog? For me, I always want to eat one or the other of these invented elsewhere but perfected by America delicacies. I eat hot dogs or hamburgers more than anything else, Shorty can verify, and there are few things that I will argue more vehemently than the proper way to make/cook a burger. It’s my favorite food, there I said it. I am a simple man with simple tastes.

For tentop’s Junk Food dinner, we spun the old classics into something we could call our own, It’s just how we roll. The dog we did in the style of choucroute, the classic Alsatian dish of sauerkraut, sausage, pork belly, and sometimes potatoes. We followed through on the theme with a soft pretzel bun and whole grain mustard. We made our own smoked andouille sausage, a milestone for me. I’ve seen sausage piped into casings dozens of times, but have never done it myself. It’s easier than it looks, but it ain’t exactly easy.

The burger was a version of something I’ve been wanting to try for awhile, which I discovered here. It’s one of those “because fuck you that’s why” kind of dishes. We took truffle mac e chee, solidified it in the fridge, then cut out round discs which we stuffed into the burgers. The trim left over we breaded and deep fried as a side, and just called it “hamburger with truffle mac e chee,” making the stuffed part a surprise. The buns were a recipe I’m coming to lean on more and more from Ideas in Food. By the way, every time I say “Ideas in Food,” I think of something else.  It’s a simple dough that is highly adaptable to many applications; foccacia, loaves, buns, etc. I even used it once as a spare tire on my car. Anyway, I stole it from one of the best books released this year, go buy a copy. But first make this bread.

Fail Safe Bread by Ideas in Food.

975 g AP flour

4.5 g dry active yeast

12.5 g sugar (or honey, or maple syrup, or brown sugar)

18 g salt

2.5 cups water, milk, tea, beer, etc warm like bathwater, not too hot

oil for brushing, semolina for tray.

• preheat the oven to 400 F. Line a sheet tray with parchment paper. Oil a medium large bowl.
• Weigh all the ingredients into the bowl of a stand mixer fitted with the dough hook. Mix just until a ball of dough forms. cover the bowl and rest 15 minutes.
• After the rest, mix on second (medium) speed for 7 minutes. Mold the dough into a ball and transfer to the oiled bowl. Cover with plastic wrap. Let rise two hours, or until doubled in size.
• Punch the dough down and let it rise again until not quite doubled in size, about one hour.
• Portion the dough into roll size (3-4 oz) divide in half and roll into loaves, or maybe a loaf pan? Or flatten onto a oiled sheet pan for foccacia. Bake for ten minutes at 400, then rotate the pan reduce the temperature to 325 and bake an additional 12 minutes

Sadly, in my excitement; I only got this one crappy picture of this truly delicious awesomeness before it was descended upon like so much carrion by vultures. In truth, half the pie made it over to Clyde, where it was traded to glassy-eyed bar tenders for artisan cocktails. Anyway, I’m getting ahead of myself, faithful readers. Let’s set the way back machine to two months ago, right around Pi Day.

The creation of this pie was yet another result of my highly perked job as manager of KitchenCru’s glorious facility. It all started with leaf lard, which I obtained via our high profile clients; Tails & Trotters. They had a bunch of trimmings that they didn’t have the time or inclination to do anything with, so they passed it along to me. After cleaning and rendering I ended up with about six thirty-two ounce deli cups of pure white lard, perfect for a sumptuous and flaky pie crust. Of which, I of course; made way to much. I had pie dough for miles. The first pie I made in celebration of Pi Day, a fig-apple-caramel delight that I believe I also traded a portion of for beverages at my favorite bar. The second pie i wanted to be savory. The day that I decided to do it, happened to be a day that my employer and co-worker had put on a lunch including corn beef sandwiches, knish, and other delicious NY deli items. A by-product of the shmaltz needed to make knish: cooked chicken meat and skin. I had a direction. I started my pie filling with some home made pancetta I had scored from Chef Andrew Garret of High Heat Catering.

Lard Crust

2 1/4 cups all-purpose flour chilled
1 teaspoon salt
3/4 cup diced, frozen lard
1/3 cup ice water

• Measure the salt and flour into a bowl. Cut in the flour until it has a granular appearance.
• Add in water and mix until just barely combined. Wrap the dough and chill at least 1 hour before rolling.

Chicken Skin Crusted Pot Pie

• 1/4 cup diced pancetta
• 1/4 cup sliced shallots
• 3 tblsp sliced garlic
• 1/4 cup sliced mushroom of your choice
• 1/4 cup diced carrot
• 1/4 cup diced celery
• 3 tblsp flour
• 2 cups chicken stock
• 1 cup heavy cream
• 1 1/2 cups frozen peas
• 2 cups pulled cooked chicken thigh meat
• salt and pepper to taste
• egg wash as needed
• 1 1/2 cups cooked diced chicken skin

Roll out the pie dough like a boss, line the pie tin and set in the fridge to chill.

Render the pancetta over medium heat, be careful not to brown too much, as it will continue to cook.

Add the shallots and garlic and reduce the heat, sweat ‘em.

Add the carrots, celery, mushrooms, and saute until partially cooked. Add the flour and cook for three minutes

Add the stock and cream and bring to a simmer. Cook at least ten minutes to thicken and cook off flour taste. Add the frozen peas.

Add the cooked chicken and fold together the filling. Allow it to cool to room temp.

Dump the filling into the prepared crust and roll out the top piece of dough like a boss. Fill the pie level to heaping, but don’t over-fill. If you have extra, eat it.

When you’ve got the pie topped and have crimped the edges,  egg wash that bitch. Sprinkle on the chicken skin, making sure every bit is covered. Pat it in a little to make sure it’s secure.

Bake that sucker until the crust is GBD. Cool to room temp before attempting to slice.

If you Google White Chocolate Flourless Cake, you don’t get shit. At least nothing use-able. I mean, almond flour is still a flour of sorts, and any recipe you find seems to use it. I wanted a flourless cake like my dark chocolate recipe;with a rich, fudge-like texture. If you look at my old ratio, it’s quite simple. Chocolate, butter, sugar, eggs, and water. I figured I’d start there. So white chocolate is basically sweetened cocoa butter and milk. Cocoa butter is fat, so I omitted the butter from the the OG recipe. White chocolate is sweet, too sweet for some, so I yanked the sugar. Water? Didn’t feel right. Cream felt right. So I used cream. I put the batter together like the OG, baked like the OG, bottomed it with crunchy layer and glazed it like the OG. What I ended up with; the guests who ate it and I determined, was a baked custard. The texture was like a thick pudding, a decadent “just-set” confection with a coma-inducing richness that left diners with glazed eyes and lolling heads. The plate had raspberry coulis, preserved lemon granita,  and crushed hazelnut brittle.

White Chocolate Flourless Cake

54 oz white chocolate

15 oz eggs

3/4 cup heavy cream

line a 1/4 sheet pan with parchment. Preheat the oven to 250 F.

melt the chocolate over a double boiler.

whisk together the eggs and cream.

when the chocolate is fully melted, whisk in the eggs. Scrape the bowl and whisk again, making sure all is incorporated and homogeneous.

transfer the batter to the prepared pan, and bake until GBD and set, about 45 minutes to an hour. Turn the oven off and let the cake finish inside, Chill thoroughly before glazing and portioning.

Anyone who has eaten with me, or cooked with me for that matter, has more than likely heard me spout off about my love of eggs, specifically warm egg yolk. Faithful readers know that warm egg yolk is hands down my favorite flavor in the whole culinary world. It adds richness, a silky smooth fattiness to almost any dish. I eat sunny side up eggs almost every morning, I have for years. If I have a late night and wake up at two in the afternoon, I still want to eat eggs before anything else that day. In addition to it’s unparalleled flavor, the egg holds a special place in my heart for it’s many useful properties. Thickening, leavening, emulsifying to name a few. Eggs are also one of those ethereal ingredients that you don’t always realize are there, but would know something was missing if they weren’t. The incredible, edible egg also has the the ability to put one in the hospital, if you happen to be my good friend Eric who is allergic.

Anyway, when we set out to create our SupFast menu for tentop, we took great care not to inundate our menu with eggs, which are an integral part of any breakfast as far as I’m concerned. Our solution was an egg trio, using quail eggs; which contain all the deliciousness at a third of the size. We had what we called Huevos Benedictos, a Spanish version of the classic brunch item. I started with a rich brioche recipe from one of my new favorite cookbooks, The Modern Cafe by Francisco Migoya. This dough has so much butter in it, it took almost 30 minutes beating on it with the dough hook before it started to develop any gluten. We topped these toasted rounds with serrano and a sunny side quail egg, then sauce charon made with Viridian Farms espelette powder. The second egg on the plate was a “scotch.” I use quotes because we skipped the whole packing the soft boiled egg in sausage bit, and just breaded and deep fried it. We did this for two reasons. One, the whole idea came for trying this egg from a bi-product of another dish we did for Satan’s Feast. The angry allium dish had fried pepperoni on it, small rounds which we cut from bigger slices. We fried up the trimmings for a snack and found we had made these perfect little pedestals, ideal for cradling a little egg. Secondly, to “lighten” what was shaping up to be a rich dish, and one with a meaty pedestal to boot, we skipped the sausage. Also, after having soft boiled and peeled 24 quail eggs to get 16, I wasn’t about to risk losing more by smooshing meat around ‘em. A little gremolata (under the egg) helped soak up the warm yolk as well as add a nice vegetal note. Lastly, behold the noble omelet. I originally suggested to my co-chef Michael that we do an egg white version, and before I had finished the sentence he had this look on his face that said “fuck that.” And he was right. Egg white omelets are bullshit. So we went in the opposite direction, and used all yolks for these little babies. Inside was Mt. Townsend New Moon Jack cheese and Viridian Farms asparagus. I created a sauce by browning butter, then adding a little salt and champagne vinegar. In my pastry mind’s eye I felt I could give the sauce a little body with a few sheets of gelatin, which worked, kind of. I had to remove almost all of the fat (clarified butter) from the sauce before I noticed any real thickening. It was a smooth, intense sauce. Garnish was for a little crunch, form of…fricco! For the brunch we did a similar dish, minus the “scotch.”

Sauce Charon

2 egg yolks

Juice from 1 lemon

1 1/2 cups clarified butter

1/4 cup tomato paste, warm

Pimente d’Espilette to taste

salt to taste

warm water to adjust consistency

1. Warm clarified butter to body temperature.

2. Whisk egg yolk, lemon juice, and a little warm water until mixture is light and frothy.

3. Using an immersion blender, blend mixture continuously while drizzling in the warm butter. I do this in a six pan or a small bain marie insert. I like to put these above a stove or oven to warm them before I start the sauce.

4. Adjust consistency with warm water through the butter adding process. The sauce should have a loose mayonnaise look.

5. When all the butter is added, add the warm tomato paste, espilette powder, and season with salt to taste. Serve ASAP, keep warm.

This rather innocuous looking dish was a showcase in decadence and a personal milestone for me as a Chef. The first course in tentop’s latest dinner “Supfast,” we this called Duck in a Blanket. We rolled foie gras torchon into a thin pancake and served it with a maple gastrique and crushed hazelnut brittle. This dish marked a milepost for me on a long and winding road: making foie torchon from start to finish without a Chef lording over me. And I must say, faithful readers; when all was said and done: Nailed it. I followed the recipe in The French Laundry cookbook, and I had my lovely and talented girlfriend Ingrid help me with the rolling and poaching, and then the re-rolling and hanging. The next step of the process however, I learned from Chef Eric Suniga during his brief stint as Ten-01 Sous. After the torchon was hung for a few days, I brought it up to room temperature passed it through a tamis, then piped the soft and supple liver into an acetate lined mold. This last step is truly the move in foie gras handling. Firstly, any veins that you missed in the initial cleaning of the lobe is removed, and any oxidation or discoloring from blood is mixed in; you get a nice, rosy pink color. Finally, you can mold it really into any shape, I did a variety of log shapes once I had what I needed for service of the skinnys.

The dish was super successful, we wrapped the frozen little foie sticks into a hot thin pancake; which warmed the fatty liver to a perfect temp for eating in a few seconds. The idea was to dip into the gastrique first, then into the hazelnut brittle, and then into your mouth. A great start to what proved to be an amazing meal. We did a similar menu for a brunch over the weekend, the foie in this case a key component of a dish simply called “pancakes.”

Hazelnut Brittle

1 cup white sugar
1/4 cup water
1/4 cup light corn syrup
2 tablespoons butter
2 1/2 cups roasted unsalted hazelnuts, sliced
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/4 teaspoon baking soda
Few drops vanilla

Directions

Put a large pot or kettle over a medium heat. Add sugar, water, and corn syrup and bring to a boil.

When mixture comes to a boil, add butter.

Cook to 260 degrees F on a candy thermometer without stirring and add the sliced hazelnuts

Bring mixture to 300 degrees F and stir in salt, baking soda and vanilla.

Pour mixture onto a greased baking sheet and spread out and allow to cool.

If you haven’t heard of Crack Pie, crawl out from under the rock you’ve been hiding under and Google the shit. I mean, this fucking thing is trademarked! Also, FYI: they brought back the McRib.  Anyway here’s my version of the sucker, served with a sweet potato puree and toasted oatmeal ice cream.  A simple garnish of ground honey roasted hazelnuts adds a crunch.  The pastry is really similar to chess pie; or the more archaic Barbara Fritchie Pie, which to me tastes like pecan pie without the pecans.  Faithful readers and newbies alike will appreciate the simplicity of this dessert, a nod to seasonality and old world pastry, it’s just fucking good.  I recently traveled to New York to visit my family, and on our way back Shorty and I visited NYC and Momofuku Milk bar. We of course had the original crack pie, and it was damned good, and illuminating.  You see, I had been over-baking mine, looking for it to be totally set.  Miss Tosi pulls hers as it’s just starting to firm up, and serves it cold.  I prefer a room temp treat, but if I baked it her way it would be an oozy mess.  Anyway, I still take mine a bit further in the oven and still serve it room temp.  Another tweak I…tweak is this:  I substitute half of the brown sugar with muscavado sugar, and the butter with brown butter, both in the crust and in the filling.  The molasses-y flavor of this almost ebony sweetener adds a nice bitter tone to an otherwise sticky sweet concoction.  I also use a half sheet pan in lieu of the standard pie pan, because i like rectangles better then wedges.  At the restaurant be call this this little bitch a Brown Sugar Bar, because I don’t want David Chang suing my ass.  But look, if they were worried about me using the recipe, they wouldn’t have published the fucker in Bon Appetit The Ice cream we serve here was created by my pastry cook Liz Clements, who has since moved on to a full time pastry gig in a fancy restaurant. I’m sad to see her go, but proud to have her moving on up in the world.  I also bit this recipe off her before she bounced so it’s all good.  The sweet potato puree is piss easy, a simple process I learned from my Chef Michael: peel and slice the yams, cover ‘em with water, a little salt and a vanilla bean, and boil the shit out of them.  When the water is almost completely evaporated, the potatoes should be completely cooked and ready to puree in your Vita-Prep.  pass the mess through a tamis and cool to room temp before serving.

Brown Sugar Bar

makes 2 half sheet pans

Crust

12 oz brown butter at room temp.

4 oz sugar

4 oz brown sugar

4 oz muscavado sugar

4 eggs

12 oz rolled oats

2 C A.P. Flour

1/2 tsp baking powder

1/2 tsp baking soda

1 tsp salt

1.  Preheat the oven to 325.  Cream the butter and the sugars; add the eggs and scrape, you know the deal.

2.  Add in the dry ingredients, and mix on low until dough just forms.

3.  Spread the batter onto a full sheet pan in an even layer.

4. Bake until GBD

5. Cool completely and then crumble by hand. Then add:

8 oz brown butter

1 1/2 oz brown sugar

1 1/2 oz muscavado sugar

6.  Mix by hand to form a crust like dough, similar to graham cracker crust.

7.  Weigh the dough and divide it between two parchment lined pans.  Press and roll the dough into an even layer.  Set aside so you can make the

Filling

4 1/2 cups sugar

1 1/2 cups brown sugar

1 1/2 cups muscavado sugar

6 tblsp milk powder

12 oz brown butter, melted and cooled.

1 1/2 tsp salt

10 oz heavy cream

24 egg yolks

3 tblsp vanilla

1.  Whisk together the first four ingredients well, break up any large clumps of sugar with your hands.

2.  Add the melted cooled brown butter and whisk smooth.  Add the remaining ingredients and whisk smooth.

3.  Weigh the batter and divide it between the two pans.  Bake until GBD and just set, the top will have a nice crust.

4.  Cool completely before portioning and putting into your face.

Click here to view the embedded video.

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

4 cups a.p. flour

10 1/2 oz cold butter

1 1/3 cup sugar

2 pinch salt

4 egg yolks (1/3 cup)

1/3 cup heavy cream

Instructions:

• Pie dough method. Cut fat into flour and salt, mix until dough appears granular.  Add remaining ingredients.

• Mix on low speed until dough forms. Don’t over mix.  Chill dough at least one hour before using.

Here’s a little video demonstrating how I roll pate sucree I took with myPhone.  I don’t have a cutter big enough so I use a small bain marie

Click here to view the embedded video.

Here’s another video showing how to fill the tart shells with dough.  Rolling the dough as thin as possible will create a crisp cookie shell. You kind of guide the dough in with one hand and then drive it into the corners with the other.

Click here to view the embedded video.

You want to bake these shells from frozen or at least thoroughly chilled.  The high fat content will cause the dough to shrink away from your mold and you’ll lose uniform shape.  I also dock the shells with a fork so the bases remain flat.  To reach G.B.D. takes about 12 minutes in a  325 degree convection oven.

I hear the phrase “the best thing I’ve ever eaten” thrown around,  and ultimately, I call bullshit.  I mean the notion of “the best” is a fake idea. With subject like food which is completely psychological, The best? Well how many tacos have you eaten, faithful readers? How many burgers have you consumed?  Have you eaten enough chocolate chip cookies to definitively say that that is the best?  The tradition of chocolate chip cookies is well documented, and who the fuck are you to say “this is the best.”  Who the fuck am I for that matter?

As I re-read that last paragraph I realize that I to, am full of shit.  Because you know what? Sometimes things are simply “the best.”  Like my chocolate chip cookies.  I know, I know. But they are.  It’s like the old adage says: “if one person calls you a horse, tell them he’s crazy.  If twenty people call you a horse, go buy a fucking saddle.” And so I have started to believe the hype about these little god dammits.  We give them away for free at the restaurant, as part of out mignardises program, if you have dinner.  I go through about three or four hundred a week.  People come back in to purchase the cookies for a dollar a piece, not bad for a nineteen cent cookie.

The recipe is based upon a now classic by the famous Jacques Torres. I first tasted these years ago,  brought to work for sampling by a very close friend of mine.  The most important step in this recipe is the aging the dough.  Jacques suggests between 24 and 36 hours, and up to 72.  I imagine that this process would improve upon almost any cookie recipe, the flavor and texture improved by hydrating the flour.  I have been told recently that even cake batters can stand to sit and hydrate for a while, a few hours in the fridge improving the quality remarkably.  But that guy also boiled gelatin with a snarky look and kept his sugar and eggs mixed together in the fridge.   These are things that i cannot bring myself to do, even if the pastry chef from Valrhona says I should.

I improve upon Jacques recipe in two simple ways.  I substitute muscovado sugar for half of the amount of brown, and I use both semi-sweet and milk chocolate pistoles. Almost as important as the aging the dough is the selection of chocolate.  Pistoles, disks, or feves are a must, as they create s sort of layering of chocolate unique to the texture of this recipe.  Think you might want to skip the sprinkling of sea salt on top?   Don’t.  These are the best for a reason, and salt is part of that reason.  I believe Jacques likes fluer de sel and I prefer Maldon’s but any quality, coarse sea salt would work.  Also, batters of this nature always come together nicer when all your ingredients are at room temperature, even the eggs.  A note on baking: I typically am baking these from frozen in a 300 degree convection oven.  I like to pull them when they just puff up, and just barely start to brown on the edges.  These are little guys too, maybe a tablespoon of dough.  At that size they take about 12 minutes, with one rotation halfway through baking.  If you make them bigger, they’re going to take longer.  Our Chef at the restaurant enjoys the dough frozen, and I always smile when he grabs a handful.  This recipe makes A LOT!! it’s a rim-rider in my 600 pro-series Kitchen Aid. You might want to cut it in half.

The Best Chocolate Chip Cookies

2 1/2 lb all purpose flour

3 tsp baking powder

2 1/2 tsp baking soda

3 tsp salt

1 lb 4 oz butter at room temperature

10 oz muscovado

10 oz brown sugar

1 lb granulated sugar

4 eggs

4 tsp vanilla

1 1/4 lb chocolate pistoles (64%)

1 1/4 lb milk chocolate pistoles (38%)

fluer de sel for sprinkling

Instructions:

• Sift the flour, baking soda, baking powder and set aside.

• Cream the butter and sugars in the bowl of a stand mixer until light and fluffy, at least ten minutes.

• Add the eggs on at a time, scraping after the second and final egg. Add vanilla.

• Sift in the dry ingredients and mix until well combined.

• Add in the chocolate and mix until it is evenly dispersed in the batter.

• Transfer the dough to a sheet pan and wrap tightly. Refrigerate for 36 hours.

• Preheat the oven to 350. Scoop the cookies to desired size and place evenly on a parchment lined sheet pan. Sprinkle each cookie with a touch of fleur de sel.

• Bake until golden brown but still soft, 15 to 18 minutes. Cool slightly before serving.

Does this look like barf to you? Does it remind you of that morning after close up you got of the contents of the toilet after that long night of too many PBRs and poor choices?  Me too! But that’s not what it is.  In fact, it’s popped popcorn infusing dairy product with its buttery goodness.  Last year I had pretty good success with sweet corn ice cream in a blackberry float. The idea of a float on a summer dessert menu is always a welcome one to me, both refreshing and decadent if done right.  So after several large bong hits and two bags of sour cream and onion potato chips I thought: “Dude…POPCORN…ICE CREAM!!”

To be honest, the process is quite easy and the results are quite rewarding.  Sure, it takes three days.  Sure it uses three bags of popcorn that you could have just eaten.  But was Rome built in a day?  Fuck no.  Neither was a Raspberry Float.  The frozen custard is smooth and creamy but toasty and buttery.  It tastes just like it sounds.  I decided to pair it with raspberries in the float, it just seemed natural, like raspberry cornbread. I wish the fucking thing sold better, I guess it just sounds too weird for people.  Faithful readers know, though: I wouldn’t steer anyone wrong! I deal in delicious through and through people!! Now eat the shit!

Popcorn Ice Cream (makes a shit ton)

3 bags popcorn (no “light” bullshit.  Use something that sounds bad for you.)

6 cups half & half

2 cups heavy cream

16 oz sugar

1 cup glucose powder (optional)

16 egg youlks

More half & half as needed

1. Pop two of the bags of popcorn and place in a large sauce pot.  Add the half & half and heavy cream.  Bring to a boil and cover, then kill the heat.  Steep for thirty minutes.

2. Transfer to an airtight container and refrigerate overnight.  Next day, pour the whole barfy mess into a chinoise and use the back of a ladle to push as much of the liquid through as possible.

3. Re-measure the cream and make up any difference with half & half.  Pop the final bag of popcorn and place it in your large sauce pot.  Add the popcorn milk and BTAB.  Cover and kill the heat,  Steep for thirty minutes.

4. Strain the dairy (use the ladle to push) again and re-measure.  Make up any difference with half & half.   Return to a pot and create a custard with the sugar and egg yolks.  Review how to do this here, be sure to read the footnote.

5. Pour the custard into an airtight container and refrigerate over night to ripen the flavors.

6. Next day strain the custard again and spin it in an ice cream machine according to the manufacturer’s instructions.

You could serve this in a float, or simply in a bowl with berries and caramel corn.  Have your friends over and surprise the living shit out of them with your culinary prowess.  I promise, there will be no barfing.

A fucking bomb went off! Chocolate flourless cake, salty caramel core,  milk chocolate shell and blood orange ice cream.  The dessert is inspired by a pastry I had in Paris, from the shop of the revered pastry Chef Pierre Herme.  It was a bombe, tempered shell and caramel core, I enjoyed it on a park bench in Luxembourg gardens. Mr. Herme ingeniously used a macaron base, his desserts were all marked by inventive skill and imagination.  I employ a compressed devil’s food cake sealed with icing to seal in the oozing salty caramel, just a candle held towards Chef Pierre’s brilliance. The milk chocolate shell is just that, tempered 38% milk chocolate.  Here’s a recipe for my faithful readers.

Blood Orange Ice Cream

2 cups milk

2 cups blood orange puree

1 1/2 cups sugar

4 oz butter

pinch o’ salt

2 cups heavy cream

3/4 cup egg yolks

P.S.  See this in the Willamette Week?