Nationwide best seller

French women don't get fat. The secret of eating for pleasure by Mireille Guiliano.

My copy was given by my sister S a few years ago, sitting pretty all this while on the bookshelf unread. Curiously, as I flipped the pages I noted that croissant and mousse au chocolat are on the recipe index. I am thinking that I should probably start reading it and learn the mastery because I'm not French = I get fat. Oh yes I do.

Alas! Crème brûlée I love! And I make it relatively frequent now that I have a mini blowtorch. In my humble opinion, it shouldn't be that bad for you. From time to time I have it in the morning in place of a pot of yoghurt actually...



Crème brûlée
(A few different CB recipes I have tried. Many a time I have made them that I came up with my own version)
Makes 4 servings

4 egg yolks
200 ml milk
200 ml cream
1 vanilla pod
60 gr sugar
extra sugar for top

As a rule I use 1 egg yolk and 15 gr of sugar for 100 ml of liquid (50:50 milk/cream). So depending on how many servings I want to make, I use the same ratio.

Use the freshest eggs you can find, and organic I believe is best. Once, I splurged on organic milk and cream. Super duper!

Scrape the inside of lovely vanilla pod into a saucepan, throw the pod in as well for good measure. Add to it, milk and cream.

Heat slowly and before it gets to boil, remove from heat. Leave to infuse for half an hour or so.

Heat oven to 120-130 degrees. Place in it a baking pan half filled with water for the bain marie.

In a big bowl, mix the egg yolks and sugar with a whisk until sugar dissolves. The mixture should feel quite creamy and light.

Add milk mixture to the egg yolk whilst whisking lest they curdle. (Chances are they won't because the milk should have cooled)

Sieve this mixture a few times before pouring into the ramekins (125ml ramekins are perfect). I recommend removing froth that appear on top.

I also recommend adding things such as raspberries or rhubarb compote for variation.

Place them in bain marie and bake for 40 minutes approximately or until they set but the tops should still be quite wobbly.

Leave to cool and store in refrigerator overnight or at least a few hours before serving.

If you have blowtorch, great! Easy peasy... sugar the top, cover everything so they caramelise evenly and fire away. I normally would return them to the fridge for 15-20 minutes before serving, though most sources say serve immediately.

If you don't own a blowtorch I'm afraid I am in no position to give you advice on how to use your oven griller to caramelise the top. (I'm sorry but I had rather disastrous result last time I tried) Please do your own google research.

Note : I figured out how I can insert accents. Yay!

Uh oh!

A few days ago I might have just committed one of the 7 deadly sins that is greed.

I went completely cuckoo and bought myself excessive amount of vanilla pods, one of my very favourite things... My only excuse is that it was an amazingly good buy... so good that I felt almost giddy with excitement.




Note: I have already given out some of my pods as penance... (I am still left with 58). My plan is also to share my vanilla laced creations with precious ones (enough virtue to let me off the hook I should hope).

Thank you Mr Postman!

One fine morning, something exciting got delivered to my desk at work. It was the long awaited copy of Elle a Table magazine, first of a one year subscription thoughtfully given to me for my birthday by A & B.

The photos are oh so lovely! I am truly blown away by how beautiful the food are presented. I am not big on red meat, but never has hamburger 'maison' looked better.

Gateau tatin aux pommes looks especially bon, and it was indeed tres bon.



The recipe seems to be simple enough, though some internet research proved to be prudent (and saved me from calamitous ending). Apparently it is something of tradition to use yoghurt container as a measurement device in France. In Australia I find one individually portioned pot is too much even for a yoghurt fancier such as myself (a rather gigantesque 175-200ml per container). In France an average pot comes in a more sensible size of 125ml, when measuring your ingredients please keep this in mind. My googling prowess also found that in France a packet of levure chimique is 11 grams.

Pardon the slapdash translation... or if you are so inclined, a French version of this recipe is available on Elle a Table's website.

Gateau Tatin Aux Pommes

3 apples
40 gr butter
3/4 pot of melted butter
2 soup spoonful of sugar
2 pots of sugar
1 pot of yoghurt
3 pots of flour
1 sachet (11 gr) of baking powder
3 eggs

Preheat oven to 180 degrees. Butter a 22cm round cake pan.

Finely slice the apples and cook in a pan with the 40 gr of butter, caramelise for 2-3 minutes with the 2 spoonfuls of sugar.

Arrange the caramelised apples in the cake pan.

In a bowl, whisk yoghurt with the 2 pots of sugar and a pinch of salt.

Add to it the flour and baking powder.

Incorporate the eggs and the melted butter. Mix well until combined.

Pour over the apples, bake for about 40 minutes approximately.


Note : Alternatively one can replace 1 pot of flour with 1 pot of almond or hazelnut meal. An advice that I duly followed.

Cat in charge

Ciao! I'm Figaro. Pleased to meet you.

Miss has been unwell all week.

I therefore forbade her to do any baking and blogging to get much needed rest.

Said that I wouldn't help her do the dishes... didn't think she could face a sinkful of dirty dishes.

Sure enough she sank back into bed and laid next to me.

Till next time,

xoxo

Fig.