Around My French Table (81 page)

W
E WERE FOUR PEOPLE FOR DINNER
at the Paris bistro La Robe et le Palais, and we had eaten heartily and drunk just as lustily, so when it came time for dessert, we decided to restrain ourselves and order just one crème brûlée for the table. Congratulating ourselves for being
sage,
or wise, we each took a small spoonful—just to be polite, of course—and then we took another set of spoonfuls . . . and then we ordered a couple more. When a crème brûlée is made well, it is a sublime dessert.

For a crème brûlée, made well means that there's a nice balance between eggs and cream, that the vanilla is pure, the custard voluptuous, and the burnt-sugar topping crackly. In chef Yannis Théodore's crème brûlée, the brûléed sugar covered the crème and the crème covered a spoonful of jam that had melted and formed a little sauce under the dessert. As soon as I tasted it, I knew I'd be making crème brûlée with jam
chez moi.

If you have a propane torch, now's the time to use it. If you don't, you can get a sugar crust on the custards by running the thoroughly chilled crèmes under the broiler. The crust won't be as even, but it will crackle and taste like caramel, the two great pleasures of brûléed sugar.

About the dishes for crème brûlée: they should be shallow. The best ones, round or oval, are about 1 inch high and 4 inches in diameter. You'll be pouring ½ cup of liquid into each dish, so make sure your dishes can hold that with a little room to spare.

BE PREPARED:
The custards need to chill for at least 3 hours.

Center a rack in the oven and preheat the oven to 200 degrees F. Line a baking sheet with a silicone baking mat or parchment paper and put six baking dishes (see above) on it. Have a sieve at hand.

Spoon 1 teaspoon of the jam or jelly into each baking dish and use the back of the spoon to spread it out—don't worry about getting it even or smooth, you just want to minimize the mound in the center.

Mix the cream and milk together and bring just to a boil in a microwave oven, or do this on the stovetop.

Put a 1- or 2-quart measuring cup with a spout (or a medium bowl) on a folded kitchen towel, to keep it from sliding around, add the yolks and sugar, and whisk well to blend. Whisking constantly, add about one quarter of the hot milk mixture little by little—it's important to add the hot liquid gradually so you don't cook the eggs. Once you get the yolks tempered (i.e., acclimatized to the heat), you can whisk in the remainder of the liquid in a slow but more steady stream. Whisk in the vanilla.
(The custard can be made up to 2 days ahead and kept covered in the refrigerator.)

Rap the measuring cup against the counter to de-bubble the mixture. If you've got a lot of bubbles, you might want to skim off the foam. (The foam won't disappear in the oven, and it will cause the top of your custard to have tiny holes. It's not serious, but it's not so pretty.) Strain the custard into the baking dishes and very carefully slide the baking sheet into the oven.

Bake the crèmes for 50 to 60 minutes, or until the centers are just set—if you tap the sides of the dishes, the custards should hold firm or jiggle just a tad. Lift the dishes onto a cooling rack (a pancake turner is good for this job) and allow them to cool to room temperature.

When the crèmes are cool, cover them with plastic wrap and chill them until they're thoroughly cold—at least 3 hours, preferably longer. To caramelize the sugar in the next step, the custards must be thoroughly chilled.
(The custards can be kept covered in the refrigerator for up to 2 days.)

TO USE A BLOWTORCH TO CARAMELIZE THE SUGAR:
Work with one crème at a time. Sprinkle the top of the custard evenly with brownulated or brown sugar—you'll need about 1 tablespoon for each dish—and then caramelize the sugar, torching it until it bubbles and browns. Wait until the bubbles subside before serving the crèmes.

TO USE THE BROILER TO CARAMELIZE THE SUGAR:
Preheat the broiler and fill a shallow broiler pan with ice cubes. Sprinkle each custard evenly with about 1 tablespoon brownulated or brown sugar, put the baking dishes on the bed of ice, and run them under the broiler. Stand guard at the oven so you don't overdo this—depending on your broiler, it can take seconds or minutes to caramelize the sugar. When the sugar bubbles and browns, pull out the pan, transfer the crèmes to a kitchen towel to dry the bottoms, and let them settle down before serving.

MAKES 6 SERVINGS

SERVING
You can serve the crèmes as soon as the caramelized sugar is cool enough to eat, or you can chill the sugar-topped custards and serve them cold. Do that, and the top may not be as crackly, but there are many who prefer it that way. At La Robe et le Palais, every crème brûlée comes with a beautiful almond and orange tuile; you'll find the recipe on
[>]
.

STORING
The custard for crème brûlée must be made ahead so it has plenty of time to chill—you can make it up to 2 days in advance and keep it covered in the refrigerator—and the baked crèmes, which also must be cold, can be kept covered in the refrigerator for up to 2 days, but once you've caramelized the sugar on top, your storage time is limited.

BONNE IDÉE
Berry Crème Non-Brûlée.
Because the custard for crème brûlée is so delicious, it's nice to serve it without the sugar topping from time to time. When I do this, I pretend that each little crème is like a fruit tart. I put a few berries—raspberries, blueberries, and blackberries work best (strawberries are too watery)—in the bottom of each dish instead of jam or jelly before I add the custard. Then, when the crèmes are baked, chilled, and ready to serve, I top each one with fresh berries and dust the fruit with confectioners' sugar or drizzle it with warmed (liquefied) jam or jelly. If you'd like, when you make the custard, you can decrease the amount of vanilla and flavor the custard very lightly with kirsch or a berry eau de vie.

A
COUPLE OF YEARS AGO,
I
WAS RUMMAGING
through a storage bin at the back of a closet and I came across my coeur à la crème mold, a heart-shaped white porcelain mold with small holes in the base and little feet to lift it up. The mold is designed to hold a mixture of sweetened cream cheese (in France, it would be fromage blanc) and heavy cream that needs to drain, thus the perforated bottom and the elevation. (If you don't have a mold, don't fret—you can make coeur à la crème in a strainer.) That I'd turned up the mold just before Valentine's Day made the find that much more fortuitous, so I washed it off and set to work to make the dessert for which it was created, one I'd neither made nor thought about for a very long time. I couldn't find my old coeur à la crème recipe, so I made up a new one and did something I don't think I'd done before—I whipped the heavy cream and folded it into the cream cheese. The result was terrific: an indulgently luxurious coeur à la crème with a texture so light you could fool yourself into thinking you were eating sweetened air.

Coeur à la crème is usually served with a fruit sauce. Because my version usually includes a few spoonfuls of framboise, a raspberry liqueur, raspberry coulis is just right with it. But you can serve the dessert with another fruit coulis, berries, jam (dilute it with a little water and add a shot of liqueur, if you'd like), honey, chocolate sauce, or even very un-French maple syrup.

BE PREPARED:
The coeur à la crème needs at least 12 hours to drain—overnight is better.

Line six small coeur à la crème molds with a double layer of dampened cheesecloth, letting the excess hang over the sides of the molds. Alternatively, you can use a large coeur à la crème mold (if your mold has a 3-cup capacity, you may have some of the mixture left over, which you can put in a small lined strainer) or a large cheese cloth-lined strainer.

In the bowl of a stand mixer fitted with the paddle attachment or in a large bowl with a hand mixer, beat the cream cheese until it is smooth and velvety, scraping down the bowl as needed. Gradually beat in the confectioners' sugar and salt and continue to beat until the cream cheese is again very smooth. Beat in the vanilla and framboise, other liqueur, or rum, if you're using it.

If you're using a stand mixer, scrape the cream cheese into another bowl; pour the heavy cream into the bowl (no need to wash it), fit the mixer with the whisk attachment, and whip the cream until it's just shy of holding firm peaks. If you're using a hand mixer, pour the heavy cream into another bowl and whip it. Using a flexible spatula, gently stir about one quarter of the whipped cream into the cream cheese mixture to lighten it, then carefully fold in the remaining cream.

Divide the mixture among the individual molds or scrape it into your large mold. Fold the excess cheesecloth over the top of the mixture and put the mold(s) on a baking sheet with a rim or a plate to catch the liquid that will drain. Or, if you're making your coeur à la crème in a strainer, cover it with the excess cheesecloth and set the strainer over a bowl. Chill the coeur à la crème for at least 12 hours, or, better yet, overnight.

When you're ready to serve, unfold the cheesecloth and turn the coeur à la crème out onto individual plates or a serving platter. Serve with the topping of your choice, and berries, if you'd like.

MAKES 6 SERVINGS

SERVING
Drizzle the coeur à la crème with whatever topping you've chosen, surround with berries, if you're offering them, and bring the dessert to the table. If you've made one large coeur à la crème, present it in its beautiful entirety and then slice it as you would a cake.

STORING
The coeur à la crème can be made up to 3 days in advance and kept covered in the refrigerator.

F
LOATING ISLANDS, OR ILES FLOTTANTES,
is one of those desserts that a French woman of a certain age can probably whip up with her eyes closed—certainly she can do it without a recipe. Traditionally made by poaching puffs of meringue, the islands, and then floating them in a sea of crème anglaise, it's a sweet most French people remember from their childhoods and lots of tourists remember from bistros.

For years I made this dessert just the way I was taught to: I prepared a meringue, scooped it by the spoonful, and dropped the puffs into a pot of simmering milk, where they poached for 2 minutes. The method is classic, simple, and foolproof, and the dessert is luscious. But recently I learned another way to make the islands—in the oven. This is not a completely untraditional method, just one that wasn't used as much, since an oven wasn't always a given. If you bake the meringues, you can make individual islands, just as you do when you poach them, but you can also make a dramatic meringue "cake," from which you can slice tall wedges.

The first time I had a wedge-shaped island was at the Paris bistro Le Hide, where the chef served the meringue on a shallow pool of vanilla crème anglaise and finished the dish with a scoop of chocolate ice cream. At first it seemed a little odd, then it seemed amusing—after all, ice cream is simply frozen crème anglaise—and then it seemed just right and just delicious.

I haven't given up poaching meringue (you can find that recipe in Bonne Idée), but when I've got a crowd, I'm more likely to bake it—and just as likely to serve the meringue with a drizzle of hot fudge or caramel sauce (in addition to the crème anglaise, of course). Not so traditional, but so very good.

BE PREPARED:
You'll need to chill the meringue for at least an hour.