Brulée - a first recipe from Donna Hay
"simply perfect must-have recipes for autumn"
So says the blurb on the cover of this edition of the Donna Hay magazine (now defunct). It's the second 'book' going backwards along my shelves of cookbooks. Technically not a book, but I only have two or three of these magazines and they are worth keeping so they have made it to the shelves. And I'm obviously a bit uninspired today - having just walked back most of the way from Eltham and feeling a little hot and bothered. This particular edition is quite appropriate too as it's the April/May issue from last year, and we are now trying to get into autumn, though every time you think you have got there the sun comes out and suddenly we are still in summer hoping for rain - all next week is well up into the high twenties.
I never subscribed to this magazine, just bought it very occasionally and with magazines it truly is the cover that sucks you in is it not? Maybe I was looking for a dessert to make and this looked tempting enough to buy the whole magazine. Maybe I wanted cheering up. And I did flip through it before buying, so must have seen enough to tempt.
But here's a minor dilemma - which is the first recipe in a magazine? Is it the cover dish, or the first actual recipe - or picture of a recipe anyway? Initially I was going to do the first recipe inside, but then I decided that I should do the one on the cover, for this is what made me buy the magazine. I'll do the first recipe tomorrow perhaps, because that's interesting too.
The dish on the cover, is called Chocolate-vanilla brulée cheesecake and you can find the recipe and a video of her making it here. It's part of a whole section in this edition on brulée desserts. I have a vague feeling that I may have covered crème brulée before, but it may have been crème caramel, which is sort of the same but different. Anyway here there are variations on the theme. There are extremely decadent and bad for you desserts in the section, including variously flavoured crème brulées, lemon tart, a banana slice and doughnuts. From left to right below are: Bruléed vanilla slice - as if vanilla slice is not decadent enough, Chocolate caramel banana brulée slice, dulce de leche baked doughnuts and a Brulée lemon tart. I'm afraid the banana slice recipe is the only one available online, though I suspect the vanilla slice is just her standard vanilla custard slice recipe with a bruléed top.
But I think you get the picture. Over the top - literally. Sprinkle some sugar on top of your favoured dessert, and put it under the grill or use a blowtorch to caramelise the sugar and create that lovely crunchy sweet topping.
Nigel Slater - king of the simple in his book Real Fast Food has a recipe for bruléed yoghurt, which looks pretty divine. It is presented on the Not Without Salt website, rather than by Slater himself. And it's barely a recipe really. Berries in the bottom, yoghurt on top, sugar on top - caramelise it, and stick some more berries on top of that. Perfect breakfast or dessert. But the author of the article does give a description of how the professionals do the blowtorching.
"From my formal brulée training we would coat the custard with three fine layers of sugar torching in between each passing. The result was a deeply caramelized, sturdy and dense sweet layer that shattered with a mighty plunge of the spoon."
I have a blowtorch (bought in Aldi of course) and I have used it a couple of times. Once successfully and once not. I think the unsuccessful attempt failed because I put on too much sugar. And if you want to see how it's done watch Delia's video on how to make the classic Crème Brulée. Felicity Cloake breaks it all down too of course. You don't have to have a blowtorch of course - you can grill the top instead. And using a blowtorch is slightly unnerving. Fear of fire or explosion in my case.
And where did Crème Brulée come from? Well there's a bit of nationalistic dispute, but it seems that the Spanish came up with the idea first, although they used cinnamon and lemon as flavours rather than vanilla, back in the 14th century when it appeared in a recipe book. In France it appeared in a 1691 recipe book, reappeared again in the next century and then disappeared. In the 19th century Trinity College had something that was more or less identical and called burnt cream. But it truly didn't hit the world in the way that it does now until the decadent decade of the 1980s - probably emanating from a well-known New York restaurant.
"a symbol of that decade's self-indulgence and the darling of the restaurant boom" Richard Sax
Today every Spanish restaurant has Crema Catalana on it's menu and every French one has Crème brulée - and I often choose it. I love it.
As to the first recipe idea - well it was obviously successful in that it got me to buy the magazine, though I have yet to make the cheesecake. But then I'm not a huge fan of chocolate desserts. Desserts in general really. We don't have them that often. Might try the banana one sometime.
