Custard

Here is another great dish from the repertoire of Nicolas Jongleux. We used to scoff at people who said they knew how to make a great dessert that wasn’t too sweet. But as you get older and the espresso and the social cigarillos have started to erode your taste buds, you find yourself liking bourbon, lemon, and dandelion. This is a perfect little dessert in that fashion. It’s zingy and alive. We burn it with a blowtorch. If you don’t have one, just use your broiler. Heat it to the max and put whatever is holding the grapefruit right under it. Don’t forget dry rags or oven mitts and an ovenproof vessel.

These pots de crème are ridiculously easy and ridiculously good. Don’t despair if you don’t have eight 4-ounce ramekins; you can use a variety of teacups, prep bowls, or even canning jars of any size. You can also make these a few days ahead of time if you like. Just be sure to wrap them tightly in plastic and remove any particularly stinky items from the refrigerator (chocolate is prone to absorbing neighboring odors).

Alexis and Eric Koefoed operate Soul Food Farm (see page 173) in a rural area of Solano County, Napa’s neighbor. The eggs from their pasture-raised chickens are so superior to conventional eggs that they inspired a cooking class at the winery. For the class dessert, Brian created this variation on floating island, a retro French dessert that deserves to come back into fashion. The “islands” are poached meringues that, in the original version, float on vanilla custard—a superb way to showcase first-rate eggs. The unusual caramel sauce flavored with Cakebread Cellars rosé is Brian’s addition.

When gently cooked together in a saucepan, milk, egg yolks, and sugar become a simple pouring custard, or crème anglaise. Served on its own, in a chilled cup, crème anglaise can be a delightfully simple dessert, but more often it is a sauce served to complement sliced fresh fruit, baked and poached fruit, and cakes. Only the yolks of eggs are used to make pouring custard. When slowly heated, the yolks thicken, adding richness and body to the milk. The standard ratio of egg yolks to milk for custard is 2 yolks to each cup of milk. Separate the eggs, saving the whites for another preparation. Put the egg yolks in a small bowl and mix them lightly, just until they are broken up. Too much stirring or whisking will make them foamy. Heat the milk in a heavy-bottomed pot with sugar and a split vanilla bean. (Vanilla extract can be used instead of vanilla bean, but the flavor will not be quite the same and the visual effect of the tiny black seeds floating in the custard will be lost.) The milk is heated to dissolve the sugar, steep the vanilla bean, and thicken the yolks. Heat it just to the point where little bubbles are forming around the sides of the pan and the milk is steaming; do not let it boil. When the milk is hot, the egg yolks are added, but first they are thinned and warmed with a bit of the hot milk. Whisk a ladleful of the milk into the yolks and then pour them, stirring all the while, into the hot milk. Now comes the most important step. If overheated, the eggs yolks will scramble and separate from the milk. To avoid this, stir the hot mixture constantly over medium heat. I like to use a wooden spoon with a bowl that has a flat end, almost like a spatula. Stir in a figure-eight pattern covering the entire bottom of the pan. The bottom of the pan is where the heat is strongest and where overcooking is most likely to happen (this is why it is important to use a heavy-bottomed pan). Don’t forget to scrape the corners of the pot, where the sides and bottom come together. Cook the custard just until it thickens and coats the back of the spoon. I find this easier to see with a dark-colored wooden spoon. Run your finger along the length of the back of the spoon. If the mixture stays parted and does not drip back across the line created by your finger, then it is done. The temperature at which this occurs is 170°F. The other visual signal I watch for is when the mixture starts to steam profusely, the way other liquids do right before they are going to boil. Keep checking the custard while you are stirring; it will remain the same for a while and then thicken quickly, almost abruptly, when the proper temperature is reached. Have a strainer and bowl ready before you start cooking. Once the custard has thickened, immediately remove it from the heat, stir it vigorously for a minute or two, and then pour it through the strainer into the bowl. Stir the custard to cool it further and stop it from cooking. Retrieve the vanilla pod from the strainer and squeeze it into the custard. A lot of seeds and flavor will come out. Serve the custard right away or chill, covering tightly once cold. The custard will thicken even as it cools. Stir well before serving. For variety pouring custard or crème anglaise can be flavored with fruit purées, espresso, caramel, chocolate, or liquors such as rum, Cognac, or other eaux-de-vie. Flavored pouring custard becomes ice cream when enriched with cream and frozen in an ice-cream maker. The custard can be made slightly thicker with an extra egg yolk, or enriched by substituting half-and-half for part or all of the milk. Custard can also be baked in the oven rather than on the stovetop. An example is pots de crème, rich custards made with cream (or a mixture of cream and half-and-half or milk), in the same ratio of 2 yolks to 1 cup of liquid. Pour the yolk and cream mixture into a heat-proof ceramic baking dish or into little ramekins and bake in a hot-water ...

Made in a Bundt cake pan, this half flan, half chocolate cake is a decadent marriage of two dessert classics. The batter for the chocolate cake is made first, then poured into the Bundt pan, followed by the flan batter. The batters may appear to mix but they completely separate while baking, with the flan ending up on the bottom. I like to eat the cake warm, but traditionally it is chilled for 24 hours before serving.

Dates were always around the house for snacking when I was a kid. Now I absolutely love to use them in both sweet and savory dishes. Large, dark-skinned Medjool dates are grown in the United States, Jordan, Israel, and now in Baja! I think they add a whole new dimension to an otherwise classic crème brûlée.

If you use vanilla in place of the cinnamon and omit the caramel (step 2), you can call these pots de crème. No matter how you make them, though, be careful not to overcook, or the eggs will curdle instead of becoming silky and creamy.

The classic custard of Spain, widely made throughout Latin America, is like crème brûlée, but upside down and lighter. Like any custard, it must not be overcooked. The center must be quite jiggly when you remove it from the oven—for beginners, this is a leap of faith, but it’s the only way to keep the custard smooth.

If you are one of those people who think flan is too heavy, or you like a little acidity in your desserts, or you simply want a change from ordinary flan, this is for you.

Crème brûlée may seem mysterious, but it is actually quite straightforward and simple. Just remember two things: One, like almost all custards, this one is done before it appears to be; remove it from the oven when it is still jiggly. And two, brûlée means “burnt,” not browned. It’s important that some of the topping blacken; the best tastes of campfire-toasted marshmallows. Chefs, and many devoted home cooks, use a propane torch to melt and brown the sugar in the final step. If you have one lying around, give it a shot—just hold the flame so it touches the sugar, which will react quickly. Move the flame around so it touches all of the sugar; when the melted sugar begins to blacken, it’s done.

Palm sugar, or jaggery, is dark, unrefined sugar made from a variety of sources, including the sap of the palm tree. It can be chunky and must be broken up; dark brown sugar is a nearly perfect substitute. This dish is great with slices of ripe fresh mango.

Chawan-mushi is an egg custard flavored with stock and soy and laced with a number of tasty tidbits. In Tokyo, I had a bowl that contained tiny amounts of myoga (a potent member of the ginger family), shrimp, chicken, ginkgo nut, and yuzu, an Asian citrus fruit. None of these is essential, and you can substitute for any or all of them, as I do here. The fillings, called gu, are supposed to be whatever you have on hand. If you have covered ramekins, they are ideal for this preparation. But covering the pot works just as well.

The slices of this Provençal custard are gorgeous, a yellow-and-green mosaic enhanced by the tomato coulis (a fancy word for “sauce”). Best warm or at room temperature, but not as good if it sees the inside of a refrigerator, so serve—as an appetizer or a main course for a light meal—within three or four hours. With thanks to Marie Martin.