Creme Brulee? Yes... today I decided I would try to make it. Because this French (or perhaps Spanish, or Perhaps English) delight is rather difficult to perfect....and because I can't stand anything that tastes like custard (which is what the desert is actually is) I knew I had to go about this in a very specific manner. I figured that the best way to approach this new culinary challenge was to remember the Creme Brulees I have had that I liked and what I imagined they contained-or not-that made them palatable.
I made a list
-not too eggy (custard is disgusting)
-not runny or soupy (gross)
-not grainy (why should creme brulee be grainy)
-very smooth
-real vanilla bean
After I made this list I tried to think of the different ways that all of the ingredients react with each other in order to try and imagine how little egg yolk I could get away with using and still have the dessert set up properly. I searched the Internet and found recipes that went all the way from eight egg yolks to just four for the same total amount of dessert. I went with four and then two cups of heavy cream. I also spent a lot of time reading follow up posts from various people who had actually tried out a bunch of different recipes and then decided which one was the best combination of ingredients. One person even tried out a variety of containers from glass (which is what I used) to empty (and cleaned out, obviously) tuna cans and silicon molds to try and find the best way to cook the creme portion of the dessert. This is the recipe I used as it called for a mere four egg yolks as opposed the seemingly standard six to eight.
My first experience with custard happened when I was two and it was bad enough to stand out in my mind. My dislike for nutmeg, high chairs, women in polyester pants and Christianity grew from this horrible first experience with the dreaded custard but my time spent in France led me to believe that a good creme brulee does in no way have to posses the evils of American custard and therefore should be embraced for the wonderful dessert that it is. Sparing you the story of my first time with custard, I will suffice it to say that the devil him or herself always uses eight eggs. All satanists keep this valuable piece of cooking information in mind for future reference.
That being said, I went the four egg route, the one pint of cream route, the 1/4 cup of sugar route and so on. But it's complicated. The process has quite a few, very specific steps if you want it to be perfect and so I was trying to keep my well oiled kitchen machine running as smoothly and chaos free as possible. When I combined the sugar and eggs, it looked...so...yellow. Yellow means eggy right? Right. So I thought to myself, "orange extract will dull the egg taste and add a slight complexity that might just make this the creme brulee to die for, given the texture ends up right" (which I was fretting over for hours). So I added the orange extract and the vanilla to the egg mixture and then added the scalding cream and set it all to work it's magic in the water bath in my Magic Chef.
So, how did it turn out?
PERFECT! I allowed it to cook in the water bath for exactly and I mean exactly one hour and seventeen minutes. Upon taking it out I transferred it to the extra refrigerator in the basement in hopes that less time at room temperature would cause less condensation and therefore less runniness. I also did not cover the individual ramekins to avoid the dreaded condensation. After about seven hours I took out the Creme (still not brulee) and covered the tops with a sprinkling of "sugar in the raw" and then used a regular propane torch (light duty) to burn the sugar. The tops turned out just BEAUTIFULLY, if I do say so myself. Someones blog said the French prefer a burned top and the American audience prefers a browned top, I did both and can honestly say I prefer it somewhere in the middle but regardless...it was sublime!
I can say that the little bit of orange extract added just that little bit of "something" that had really been what put this dessert over the top. It wasn't an obvious flavor. In fact, I can't say that anyone would have been able to identify it had they been put to the wall but it really made an enormous difference in the taste of the dessert. It helped to counter any egg taste that might have been lurking around as well.
I am proud that I was able to pull of such a fine French Dessert. I have loved it for a long time but was nervous about being able to make it correctly and I find that rather than fail at a dish, I will forgo the attempt in the first place to avoid the frustration of failing. Sometimes it seems as though I was born with the desire to cook inside me. It makes me feel better. I understand how ingredients react with each other and how to add them in in the most harmonious ways. I get it. Cooking and baking are like an act of supreme spirituality for me and being in my kitchen...well, that's like being inside of my temple, with all my ingredient gods waiting to give me their divine inspiration.
