Creme Brulee

Today, I attempted to fill in one of those glaring gaps in my cooking knowledge.

Turns out, creme brulee does not require the culinary hijinks restaurants would have you believe they engage in in order to justify charging $7 for a ramekin of food. However, it does require a torch. Recipes will tell you you can brown it in a broiler, but then you'll get what I have above: uneven browning, pale edges, and unsightly burn marks on your ramekin. Oh well. You live, you learn. I'll report back if I have better luck with the other two.

Like all simple recipes, custard relies heavily on quality (read: expensive) ingredients and some care in preparation. It's not hard, but it does require attention to detail. For three small ramekins I used:

• One cup pasteurized heavy cream (not ultra-pasteurized, if possible)
• 2 extra large egg yolks
• 1/4 cup granulated sugar
• 1/2 tsp vanilla extract

For a party, I would double this recipe and use the sees out of a whole vanilla bean. But moving right along:

Preheat oven to 275 degrees. Scald the cream over medium heat until steam rises from it. If you're using vanilla beans, scrape the seeds in before you start scalding, and when the cream starts steaming cover the pan and let it steep for 10-15 minutes. Otherwise, continue.

Meanwhile, whisk the egg and sugar together in a medium bowl until the mixture is pale yellow and fairly thick. Pour in the scalded cream a tablespoon at a time, whisking constantly. Pour less rather than more at a time in this step to avoid curdling the eggs. If you even suspect you have created lumps, run the mixture through a fine strainer. If you're making this for company, you might want to strain it regardless of how it looks.

Pour the custard into ramekins and let sit for a minute. Meanwhile, start boiling enough water to fill a glass baking dish.

When the custard has settled in the ramekins, there will be a thick layer of foam on top. Skim this off carefully with a spoon, then let it sit for another minute. More foam will collect around the edges. Skim this off as well. Above you can see one well skimmed custard (top), one half skimmed (left), and one with the foam still on it.

Place the ramekins in a glass baking dish on a rack set in the middle of the oven. Pour in enough boiling water to fill the pan halfway up the sides of the ramekins. You want enough water to protect the ramekins from uneven heat, but you don't want the water so high that it will splash into the ramekins.

Bake for 20-25 minutes. There's no way to know exactly when the custard will be done, since it depends on the size of your eggs, how big your ramekins are, etc. It's done when the edges are set but the middle is jiggly like Jell-O. Any longer and you'll end up with scrambled eggs. I've never seen finished creme brulee without sugar on it, so someone please tell me if they look right. They're not perfectly smooth on top the way Chinese egg custard tarts are, so I'm not sure if I did something wrong.

When the custard is done, cover well in plastic and chill in the fridge for up to a day. When ready to eat, preheat the broiler (or get out your torch). Cover the top of the custard with a thin layer of granulated suger. I used about a teaspoon for my two inch ramekin. You should have a nice white layer without visible yellow custard peeking through. Otherwise you'll end up with a thin uneven sugar layer. Also, don't use beet sugar! I've heard brown sugar and powdered sugar work as well, but haven't tried. Hold a few inches from the flame to melt and crust the sugar. Remove from the heat when the sugar is golden brown; it will continue cooking slightly so don't let it turn dark brown before you remove it from the heat. Let the sugar cool five to ten minutes before you serve it. It needs a little time to set up and cool. Don't let it sit any more than an hour, or the sugar will start absorbing the custard and get soggy.

I ate a tuna salad sandwich and some sliced mango while I waited for the custard to bake. The bread and custard are somewhat related, in that the recipe for bread calls for two egg whites and the custard calls for two egg yolks. Cooking with separate eggs doesn't always work out so well. Being me, I took a bite of mango with my tuna. What was weird about it was how the two flavors did nothing for each other. I thought it would either be immediately disgusting or surprisingly good. It was neither. It was just two separate flavors in my mouth that did absolutely nothing for each other, good or bad. It was a very strange sensation.