Restaurant Recipe:
Creme Brulee
Here a recipe for a dessert that was always
on our menu due to popular demand
STRAWBERRY & RHUBARB CREME BRULEE RECIPE - RESTAURANT
DESSERT Shopping list:
-------------------- 8 pieces Strawberries (nice sized)
1 bunch Rhubarbs
250gr Sugar (Castor is best, but any white sugar will do)
250ml Cream (Pouring/Running Cream)
4 Eggs (Yolks)
1/2 Vanilla Bean or 1 teaspoon Vanilla essence
1 Tablespoon (heaped) Corn Flour
The story behind it:
The creme brulee is a dessert that was always extremely popular at my restaurant, it was in fact
the most ordered dessert of all desserts we ever ran...
Rhubarbs are basically available all year round but sometimes, you may have to pre-order
it from your local green grocer.
It's a versatile recipe, where the Strawberry & Rhubarb can be
replaced with any other fruit or filling - your imagination is the limit!
We sometimes replaced the rhubarbs and strawberries with stewed
plums, or another tasty way is a salad of mangoes and passionfruit.
Fruit that's in season usually tastes the best anyway, so without doing much to it, your success is basically
guaranteed.
RECIPE (makes 4 portions)
========================== Rhubarb & Strawberry Compote
----------------------------------------------- 1 bunch Rhubarbs
100 gr Sugar
50 mil Water 8 pieces (nice sized) Strawberries
- Rhubarab; remove all the green and the bottom bits (usually
about a couple of inches worth)
- Cut into thumb width pieces.
- Place into a pot
- Add sugar and water and cover with a lid
- Over high heat steam for about 2 minutes, stirring once or
twice, turn off the heat, and let sit for another 5 minutes. Let cool.
- Slice strawberries, mix with four to five heaped table spoons of
the rhubarb stew.
Vanilla Bean CUSTARD
------------------------------ 250ml Cream
1/2 Vanilla Bean 4 Egg Yolks
70 gr Sugar
1 Tablespoon (heaped) Corn Flour
- -Pour cream into a small pot
-Split vanilla bean long ways, scrape out the seeds, making sure to add both the seeds and the bean to the
cream
- Heat cream & vanilla
- -Whilst cream is warming up, whisk egg yolks, sugar & corn
flour until foamy
- -Mix boiling hot cream into egg, then pour the whole mix back
into the pot
- Return pot to low heat, keep stirring with a wooden spoon until the custard thickens up - DO NOT BOIL any
more, just let it thicken.
- -Once thickened, pour into a container (Takeaway for example)
cover with a pierced freezer bag or plastic wrap, so that no skin is formed whilst it's cooling down)
- Cool down in fridge.
- Assembling the dish:
- Take 4 ramekins (or small coffee cups)
- Fill in 1/3rd with the fruit compote
- Top up with the vanilla custard (discard the now cooked-out
vanilla beans)
- sprinkle liberally with sugar until it's totally covered by it -
don't be shy!
Set your oven on very hot using the grill/broil function or the top
element (heat has to be generated only from the top).
- Place the filled ramekins on a baking tray and let the sugar
caramelise.
- Remove from oven being careful not to touch the melted
sugar.
- Serve
Hint:
If you have a party and want to serve this dish, you can prepare the
entire dish to the stage where you are only left with sprinkling the sugar and caramelising the top. It's no
problem to do fill the dishes 1-2 days in advance.
We used to use a gas blow torch, of the type plumbers use, to
caramelise the sugar top. If you start to do this recipe a lot, it makes caramelising definitely much easier
and quicker...
Left over Rhubarb stew/compote: Eat with French
toast or on top of your porridge or breakfast cereals...
Kitchen terms / glossary (more
detailed glossary)
---------------------------------- Creme - a French term loosely translating into
'Custard' for our purpose
Brulee - a French term loosely translating into 'burnt' - but don't actually burn this one
just browning the sugar will be what you need here...
Rhubarb - the stem of a plant, usually red, growing as long as a forearm, with dark green
leaves
Compote - a stew of sweetened fruit
inch - 1 inch = 2.54 centimeters - but there is no need to be very exact here...
thumb with - as wide as your thumb is - mine is quite fat, but this doesn't alter the
outcome...
Corn flour - also called corn starch - can be substituted with potato starch...
Vanilla bean - the fruit of a vine sourced mostly from Madagascar and more recently Fiji,
can be obtained in delicatessen or some well stocked supermarkets. Vanilla beans should be soft to touch and be
kept in an airtight container or can be wrapped and frozen for later use.
Vanilla essence - for our purposes you can replace the vanilla bean with one teaspoon full
of essence in the cream instead of the fresh Vanilla.
Ramekin - a straight walled cup (no handles) sometimes also referred to as soufflé
dish
French toast - dip slices of bread in a mix of sweetened milk/egg mix and fry golden in
butter or margarine. (2 eggs, 200 mil Milk, 50grams Sugar - if you like this one sweeter, mix a couple of
tablespoons of sugar with 1/2 teaspoon of ground cinnamon and sprinkle over the top... - Sunday breakfast, here we
come...)
|