I used Alton Brown’s recipe for Creme Brulee, and its pretty easy to make. Its also a tasty dessert that you’d have to go to a pretty fancy restaurant for. Plus, you get to use a torch!

I cut the recipe in half:

Ingredients:

1 pint heavy cream
1 tsp vanilla
1/4 c sugar + another 1/4 c sugar
3 egg yolks
hot water

Directions:

1. Preheat oven to 325F.
2. Stir the cream and vanilla together in a saucepan. Bring to a boil, then remove from heat, and let it rest 15 minutes (I’ll confess: I forgot to let it cool, and it seemed to turn out fine)
3. In another bowl, whisk together the egg yolks and 1/4 cup of sugar
4. Slowly pour the hot cream into the eggs/sugar, whisking the whole time
5. Pour into individual ramekins, then place ramekins in a roasting or cake pan and set the pan on the oven rack, and fill with water until it comes half way up the ramekins. (Much easier than trying to balance that hot water and stick it in the hot oven)
6. Bake for 40-45 minutes, until the edges seem set, but the center is still trembling
7. Let cool, and refrigerate for 3 hours
8. Before serving, remove from refrigerator, and let it come up to room temp for about 15 minutes. Spread the rest of the sugar over the tops.
9. Light the torch and melt the sugar. Be careful only to caramelize it — burning it makes it bitter. Let it cool and harden for 5 minutes, then enjoy!

Creme brulee tastes like a rich vanilla pudding, and then the sugar on top is just candy for your taste buds. Very rich in flavor overall.

Ateco brand gel colors

I should also add that these are gel-based colors, and are much stronger than the standard food colors that you buy in the grocery store. The pink and purple colors are from just 2 drops of coloring each.

You can find these at Amazon:

• Ateco 12-color kit
• Ateco 6-color kit

]]> http://www.cspencer.net/cooking/2010/02/cooking-nerd/feed/ 1 http://www.cspencer.net/cooking/2010/02/ive-taken-up-smoking/ http://www.cspencer.net/cooking/2010/02/ive-taken-up-smoking/#comments Mon, 22 Feb 2010 05:19:13 +0000 Chad http://www.cspencer.net/cooking/?p=549 No, not cigarettes — yuck! I recently got a smoker for my birthday, and put it to good use today on a chicken:

Yes, he kind of looks like R2D2

This is my new charcoal smoker/grill. As you can see its a Brinkmann “Smoke N Grill.” There’s a tray in the bottom that you put the charcoal and a few wood pieces in. Then there’s a water pan, and a grill grate, and then at the top is a second grill grate.

If you put some chicken in it, and you’re feeling lucky, it might come out like this:

I just did the Alton Brown trick of prepping the bird. Rubbed with some olive oil, and sprinkled with a few seasonings. It took 1 1/2 to 2 hours to cook. Look at my close-up:

The meat was smoky, moist, and probably the best chicken I’ve ever cooked. I’m looking forward to smoking ribs, roasts, and maybe I could even try some salmon. Stay tuned!

We shared them with some friends, and they commented that they were even better than store-bought marshmallows.

I thought I’d post the recipe as well…

Marshmallows by Eileen Talanian

Marshmallow Syrup
(you’re only going to need 1 1/4 Cups of this for a batch)

2 C. Water
5 1/3 C. granulated cane sugar
1 tsp. Cream of Tartar
Pinch of salt

1. Mix everything, and bring to a boil with the lid on. Once it boils for a couple of minutes, take the lid off, insert a thermometer and dont touch anything until it hits 240F (soft ball)
2. Let it cool 15 minutes before using it

Vanilla Marshmallows
Bloom:

1/2 C plus 2 Tbsp cold water
1 1/2 Tbsp vanilla extract
3 Tbsp unflavored gelatin (I measured each Knox packet to be 1 Tbsp)

1. Stir all together, and set near the stove so you can mix it in later

Main:

3/4 C water
1 1/4 C Marshmallow syrup (above)
1 1/2 C granulated sugar
Pinch of salt

1. Mix everything into a pan. Boil with the lid on for just a few minutes. Insert thermometer and bring to 250F.
2. Stir in the gelatin bloom
3. Pour mixture into a stand mixer and beat on high 10-12 minutes, or until it thickens, cools some, and turns white.
4. Spread into a lightly oiled 13×9 baking dish — Pyrex works great
5. After they’ve set up for 4-24 hours, work them out of the pan onto a surface covered in powdered sugar and cornstarch (3:1 ratio), and slice into squares or cut with cookie cutters. Roll in the powder mixture to cover all sides.

Really, don’t stir the boiling mixture because it will crystallize and ruin the texture. Soak all your dishes and utensils in water to dissolve the sugar/marshmallow. It actually cleans up pretty easy.

Next time, I think I’ll try this recipe from Alton Brown for marshmallows: LINK It looks similar but uses some corn syrup to ensure the sugar doesn’t crystallize. Also, you don’t have to make a huge batch of the marshmallow syrup!

White, fluffy, and sweet — Marshmallows! I saw this book at the library, and had to try my hand at making marshmallows. First, you boil it:

Next, you whip it. The air you whip into it turns it from clear to white:

And finally, you get marshmallows!

The marshmallows are… [still setting up for a few hours.. coming later]

As for the book… I wouldn’t recommend it. The way they wrote the recipes is annoying. First you have to make the base, and boil it up to 240F degrees. But, you use 5 1/2 cups of sugar plus 2 cups of water for this, and then you only use 1 1/2 cups of it in each recipe. So once it hits 240F, you let it cool for 15 minutes. Then you make the second stage using 1 1/2 cups of the first stage, and bring it up to 250F. Its even 90% the same ingredients from stage 1 to stage 2. Why not just do it all together? Now I’ve made a batch, and have like 4 cups of the base just sitting there! Agh!

I’ll have to make chocolate cake and marshmallow frosting soon. I think its easier, and just as tasty.

Thanksgiving is like THE food holiday, and since we didn’t drive back home, we had our own Thanksgiving dinner here. It was my first time cooking a turkey, as well as the whole dinner. Everything was really good, except my Caramel Apple pie was invisibly ruined. First, the turkey:

That thing turned out beautifully, didn’t it? It wasn’t hard either. I followed some directions from Alton Brown, and here’s what I did:

1. Let the turkey thaw in the fridge for 3-4 days
2. Open and wash the turkey. Take the stuff out of the inside. Pat dry with paper towels
3. Rub with canola oil, sprinkle with seasonings (thyme, basil, etc). We also put some onion, celery, and apple chunks inside for aromatic flavoring
4. Bake at 400 for 45 minutes. Then turn down to 350 and bake until done — 165F by thermometer, or 60-75 minutes more
5. Let it rest for 20-30 minutes before carving

This was the whole dinner:

We had the following:

• Turkey
• Mashed potatoes and gravy
• Yams
• Stuffing (Stovetop brand!)
• Green beans amandine (toasted almonds)
• Corn on the cob
• Fruit salad
• Home-made cranberry sauce with fresh cranberries

The yams were the biggest surprise. So, I found this turkey-cooking calculator that said it would take about 3 hours to cook our bird. I checked it periodically, and it was done after one and a half hours–and none of the sides were ready! So we had to bust those out real quick. I chopped the yams, put them into a dish with a couple tablespoons of melted butter and coated them well. Then sprinkled some sugar and cinnamon over the top, and added a little water to the bottom to help steam. Then, into the microwave on the “baked potato” setting. They were done in about 10 minutes, and the sauce even thickened into this sweet syrup.

The cranberries were on sale for $.33/lb at the fruit market. You just boil 3/4 cup orange juice, 3/4 cup sugar, and the cranberries for about 10 minutes. Thats it.

Finally, the pie (photo above is before the top crust went on). I followed the recipe from Food Network for caramel apple pie. Fresh apples, crust from scratch, home-made caramel sauce — the works! It baked up beautifully too. But, when we cut into it, it was watery. I took out the first piece, and the water just filled back in where the piece had come out. There was so much water in it! It didn’t cook through, so we had to throw the whole thing out.

That was pretty much our Thanksgiving 2009.

You really should buy one of these. Here’s why:

• Its cheap. Its like $7 at Ikea.
• Its adjustable so you can grind anything from chunks to a fine powder.
• Its strong too. I use mine to grind coarse Kosher salt.
• And, it grinds quickly. A couple of twists, and you’re good to go. Compare that to my fancy-looking pepper grinder, where you can grind for 20-30 seconds to get what you want.

Here’s the Ikea product page: LINK — They even have the matching jars and you could just move the grinder head to whatever jar you want to grind.

]]> http://www.cspencer.net/cooking/2009/10/pumpkins/feed/ 0 http://www.cspencer.net/cooking/2009/10/making-home-improvements/ http://www.cspencer.net/cooking/2009/10/making-home-improvements/#comments Wed, 28 Oct 2009 02:44:43 +0000 Chad http://www.cspencer.net/cooking/?p=512 We’ve been pretty happy with our house since moving in a few months ago. The previous owners took great care of it and seemed to do a lot of work to make it nice. One thing that was lacking was working light in the kitchen. The kitchen just has one ceiling light and that’s it. So, I started looking around at what to do about it, and decided to add some under-cabinet lighting.

Among the many websites I looked at, this HGtv’s HowTo article is what convinced me that it would be easy and make a great improvement. I also learned about the different kinds of lighting: fluorescent is efficient but not great color — something important when working with food; LEDs are very efficient but you pay a lot for that new technology; halogens have great light but get hot; xenon has the same color as halogen but only gets 1/4 as hot. So, we went to Lowe’s and found a nice looking xenon puck light system.

First, the “before” picture:

And now, the “after”:

There’s a light underneath each pair of cupboard doors, one in the corner for a total of  5 lights (unseen: one by the fridge).

How about a dramatic low-light pic? (new lights plus stove light)

And, a close-up of the KitchenAid in its new spotlight:

And, what the lights look like up close:

Total cost for everything was about $50, and they produce great light and are very useful.