The Cotswold Food Year: Valentine's Day

Showing posts with label Valentine's Day. Show all posts

Crème brûlée

Wednesday, February 13, 2019

Crème brûlée - everyone's all time favourite dessert!

Assiette of desserts with creme brulee, Prosecco and berry jelly, chocolate coated strawberry, eton mess and sticky toffee pudding

Luckily for chefs it's also one of the easiest in terms of making and serving, and it's also pretty cost effective too.

It's also one of those recipes that is imprinted on the brain. AND I've got a super quick way of preparing it - cut the faffing around!

Crème Brûlée Recipe
Makes 4 x 150ml ramekins

500ml Double Cream
6 - 7 egg yolks (depends on how hard you would like them set & also the size of your eggs)
100g Caster Sugar
About 1/4 tsp Vanilla paste (I used an intense one full of vanilla seeds. If you use a cheaper one you may need more - taste and see!)
Demerara sugar to serve

Preheat oven to 140 oC.
Mix all these ingredients together in a mixing bowl with a whisk till well combined.
Place ramekins in a deep baking tray.
Mix the brûlée mix up once again to make sure it's evenly mixed before pouring.
Pour into the ramekins from a jug up to 1 cm from the top of the ramekin.
Pour water in the baking tray to come 1/2 way up the ramekins. This ensures even cooking and they don't burn on the edges.
They will take about 45 minutes in the oven.
Take out of the oven carefully and check they're done - they should feel set when gently shaken. You can poke a skewer into the middle - the custard should be solid, not runny. Note - they firm up as they cool down.
Allow to cool and refrigerate till needed.
To serve sprinkle a generous layer of demerara sugar on top and glaze with a blow torch till the sugar caramelises evenly. The topping stays crunchy for about 45 minutes so you want to be doing this just before serving. Also nice to serve with homemade shortbread.

To make the mini brûlée you can scale the recipe to the amount you need to make. The pots I had were 30ml, so you can get 20 of those from this mix.

Assiette of desserts with creme brulee, chocolate torte, eton mess, lemon tart and mini bread and butter pudding

Variations

Add raspberries to the ramekin before you pour on the brûlée mix. You'll need slightly less brûlée. Or add poached peaches as well for a peach melba brûlée.
Orange brulee - add some orange segements and slightly reduce the cream mix and replace it with Grand Manier or Cointreau - 25ml or so.
For cinnamon fans out there try a festive cinnamon and honey brulee. You can infuse the cream with a cinnamon stick.
Lemon grass crème brûlée - infuse the cream with 2 sticks of chopped up lemongrass. Nice after a thai meal or curry.
Lavender - infuse the cream with lavender. You have to check with your guests they like lavender - it's lovely, but not to everyone's taste sadly.

Why is my crème brûlée runny?

Either not cooked long enough or not enough egg yolk to cream ratio. For years I used to make the above recipe with 5 egg yolks to 500ml cream. It makes a nice soft set. But it takes longer to set in the oven and if you are transporting them to a venue as I was, you really want a firmer set so I increased it to 6 or 7 yolks per 500ml of cream depending on the size of the eggs.

Should crème brûlée be hot or cold?

One guest complained once that they're crème brûlée was served cold. At home, a lot of people put them under the grill to glaze the sugar. The only problem with this is it heats up the custard too. With a blow torch it just glazes the top without heating the underneath. Nice, if you're used to it that way.

Can you freeze crème brûlée?

Actually yes - you can! When they're cooked and cooled pop them in the freezer. Then they just need defrosting for a few hours, or overnight in the fridge prior to glazing and serving. You can't tell they've been frozen.

How long does crème brûlée last in the fridge?

4 - 5 days at the most.

Valentine's Dinner in Halesowen, Birmingham

Friday, March 10, 2017

...'cos ......

Life is busy! It certainly was for the couple in Birmingham that I cooked for on Valentine's Day this year - they had only moved in to their house three weeks before. Both doctors, one of them was on nights, the other on days.

Then there comes the pressure of what do for Valentine's Day. Go out to a restaurant and you're just one table of 2 out of a whole roomful, whereas, when you're dining in your home it's all about you.... and your other half. Even better when you don't have to spend all of that time in the kitchen though!

Heart shaped bread rolls
Starter - Salad of herb roast salmon, king prawns and mango
Main course - Involtini of chicken, brie and apples, heart shaped fondant potato, french beans and roast asparagus
Dessert - Chocolate fondant with vanilla ice cream (it's a romantic dinner winner!)

The ultimate mac 'n cheese challenge #2- Lobster thermidor macaroni cheese aka Lobster mac

Thursday, January 21, 2010

I don't know if this is the ultimate mac 'n cheese, but it sure is the best one I've ever made!

I came accross the idea for Lobster mac 'n cheese here on Foodista somewhere near the begining of December. Adding lobster to macaroni cheese - what could be better? A couple of weeks after that along came Fiona Beckett's mac 'n cheese challenge. It seemed like the perfect opportunity. But googling for lobster 'n mac pics I couldn't understand why they were all in bowls or ramekins -why had noone used the lobster shell? It just seems more obvious.

Macaroni

The other good thing about shopping in farm shops is the people you meet. I bumped into Suzie from the Overbury Estate back in October at Home Farm, and she told me about their new flour. Back in '05/ '06 the estate were milling some of their wheat in an old hand mill in the manor kitchen. What amazing flour that made - a texture and taste that is impossible to get with massed produced flour. Only problem was it had a short shelf life. If they froze it it would last, but not many people wanted to buy it like that.

Fast forward a few years and Prince Charles opened the new Stanway mill just a few miles away at the end of October last year. The wheat from overbury estate only has to travel about 10 miles to the mill. The flour above comes from that first bag - a sample I was given to try out by Mrs. Bossom of the Overbury Estate just before Christmas when I was cooking for one of their shoot lunches. They were interested to see what I thought, though I was warned that that was the first milling, and the stones are going to take a long time to grind down and be workable. They are working on June at the moment for it to be available. In fact what I had was rather rough, raw product. There was some talk too of the miller working on the gluten content - flour is a technical business these days. Indeed there was quite a bit of bran left which I sieved out (right) and saved to and to my next granola. And the remainder of the flour I am going to use for bread.

The texture of the flour was just a joy. Light and fluffy, but slightly coarser (almost granular) than shop brought flour. There's no doubt which is better. You also get the malty wholemeal flavour too.

200g flour, sifted
2 eggs

And that's it - no water. I went for the authentic version. No salt either - there is enough flavour in the sauce and lobster. You mix it like bread dough. The flour, as it turned out, was rather thirsty, so I added more egg - about another 3/4. and kneaded for a minute or two till smooth and wrapped it in clingfilm and left it to one side.

The difference after 20 minutes was amazing - a complete change from a hard dough to something elastic and pliable. So I ran it through the pasta machine a few times (c. 10 times altogether), folding it over and reducing the gauge. Have to say it was some of the best pasta I had made which I put down to the new flour.

At this point, I should say I got the next tip from here. You cut the pasta sheets into 1.5 x 3cm strips (or there abouts). Then brush the end with water and roll the up with onto a chopstick. Yes - it really is that easy!

After blanching in just off boiling salted water for 3 mins I drained it, transferred it to a clean tea towel to soak up excess water and added the macaroni to the the lobster shell (see below).

Lobster
Well I was hoping to get a live lobster like this critter. But the snow meant I really didn't want to go up to Cirencester and New Wave specially. All the guests I was cooking for that week were going for meat main courses rather than fish, so I couldn't make a good fish order to be delivered (which I could add the lobster to) so in the end I found a cooked one on the fish counter at the Cheltenham Waitrose (you can always rely on them).

Thermidor sauce

I was just going to make normal cheese sauce when I thought of thermidor - how can you improve on a classic?
One of the parties the week before had been cancelled due to the holiday house being inaccessible (down a long very remote country lane full of snow). So I had this piece of St. Kenelm cheese from Gorsehill Abbey Farm to use. When I was researching local produce when I first started up coming up to 4 years ago I was suprised to find this farm was only a couple of miles away at the other end of the village so I walked over to pick up a few samples and then walked back via Barnfield - well you have to really. It really is amazing what you have on your own doortep without realising.

The St. Kenelm, a hard cheese similar to cheddar, was in this case quite a young version - not too overposwering.

Why you rarely see recipes here is I never measure anything unless its of the dessert/ pastry persuasion - so Ihope these amounts work.

25ml butter
1/8 large onion fine chopped
Glass of white wine (175 ml)
200ml chicken stock
100ml double cream
Small handful grated st. Kenelm
1/2 tsp english mustard

Sweat the onion (could use shallot instead) in the butter till soft. Add wine, stock and cream and bring to the boil. Reduce heat slightly so it doesn't burn and reduce by half. Stir in the mustard and cheese and remove from heat. Season to taste.

Then spoon some sauce on top the pasta. Slice the lobster tail on an angle and place it on top of the pasta. The claw meat goes in the head. Brush a little more sauce over the top of the lobster and glaze with a blow torch (you could use a grill of course). This makes 2 halves - it is quite rich so you probably only need one half each.

Maybe this would be a good dish for Valentine's Day?

Lobster Macaroni and Cheese

Individual fillet of beef en croute (beef wellington) and seabass for Valentine's Day

Tuesday, February 17, 2009

Beef en croute

Last year I was asked to make beef wellington for a special birthday meal which they wanted to cook and serve themselves. 4 out of the 6 guests were vegetarian, so it seemed most sensible to make just 2 individual beef wellingtons (aka beef en croute). Such was the glowing response the Monday after that I had had it in mind to prepare again - it does make the perfect english dish for a celebration. And what better day to celebrate than St. Valentine's Day?

Fillet steaks are cut from the centre of the fillet so they are small in diameter, but thick in depth. I seal these on the bar grill - so you get the grilled taste on the outside, but the inside is left raw - that cooks when you put the finished beef en croute in the oven.

For the duxelle mushroom I use Oakfield organic portobello mushrooms. Because of the water content in mushrooms, these are cooked for around 30 - 45 minutes on a low heat to reduce as much of that water content as possible and then chilled. If this were not done that water would turn to steam while the beef en croute cooked in the oven - and that would break the pastry apart, it would burst and be ruined.

Beef is put on a disc of puff pastry, mushrooms on top. It is egg washed around the bottom to so it attaches to the lid.

Another disc is cut slightly larger than the bottom. This is place on top, crimped and trimmed. On Valentine's Day it was finished with - what else? - a pastry heart shape in the middle.

Fillet of seabass and mussell paella

If the beef en croute is one dish fit for a celebration, the other certainly has to be paella. You know how closely you are held in regard of my grandmother if you have been invited for paella. Few have - and those few are lucky I can tell you. Hidden deep in her recipe drawer is a dusty and splattered authentic recipe taken down from her spanish friends over 50 years ago who had served it for her, and she was instantly taken.

It's a recipe I'm still working on - the most important change being I use arborio rice - close to spanish rice - now rather than the long grain rice.

This particular time I had reduced chicken stock made from the bones left from the grilled chicken a couple of days before. The mussells I cooked with white wine, onion, garlic and a little cream. This liquor was also added to the cooking paella, adding a depth of flavour.

To accompany this I made some more of the salsa verde - it makes a light accompanying sauce.

Strawberry and mango cheesecake