Flan-tastic

After my previous post this week I got pretty anxious to try out Julia Child's recipe for crème renversée au caramel, a dish that caused her to fail her final exam. It was, in truth, pretty easy. It's a three-step process; burn sugar, create custard base, bake custard. Quite simple in technique. My only problem was when I cooled my liquid caramel too much, resulting in a grainy taffy before I could pour it into the molds. Still, that was a pretty easy fix. I added some more water and remelted the sugar.

I also changed the presentation up a little bit by opting for single-portion sized ramekins as opposed to the suggested 4-cup charlotte mold and the result was spectacular.

With a creamy crème-brulée texture and the sweet caramel sauce of flan it was a simple dessrt with big presence.

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Letters from Paris

The New York Times Magazine ran a postumously published piece (Eat, Memory: Sacré Cordon Bleu!) from the grande dame of Ameri-Franco cooking, Julia Child, excerpted from a book on her life in France set to be published this spring.

What is notable about the piece, other than the fact that Child's distinctive voice comes swooning back so easily from the great beyond, is that The French Chef greatly elaborates on her failure at the Cordon Bleu in Paris.

Basically, she bombed her final exam. More on the jump...

There's no other way to say it, but she makes an excellent point - she bombed not because she had failed to learn the advanced techniques of the infamous école culinaire, rather because she underestimated the basics. Neglecting to commit to memory what was essentially boiled eggs, gussied-up veal with mushrooms in a paper bag and caramel flan, she instead focused on the exotic:

"Caught up in my own romanticism, I had focused on learning far more challenging fare - filets de sole - la Walewska, poularde Toulousaine, sauce Vénetienne. Woe!"

We amateur cooks aspiring to greatness often find ourselves in similar predicaments.

The first instinct is to try something elaborate, refined and impressive, but it is the common dishes and basics that make a good cook. I remember once making, as a teenager and budding cook, poulet á la provençale for my parents as a special dinner. The chicken earned rave reviews, but I never made the dish again because instead of learning the techniques I had used, I had merely reproduced recipe. Today, such a dish would be a welcome addition to my repertoire, but today I have mastered many of the basics.

All that being said, here's Julia's recipe for crème renversée au caramel, which I am planning to try very soon:

1½ cup plus 2/3 cup sugar
2 cups milk
1 ½ teaspoons vanilla extract
2 large eggs
4 large egg yolks.

1. Preheat the oven to 350 degrees. In a small saucepan, combine 1½ cup sugar with ¼ cup water. Bring to a boil over low heat, stirring to dissolve the sugar. Increase the heat to high and cook, without stirring, until the syrup turns a light caramel color. Remove the saucepan from the heat and dip the bottom into cold water to stop the cooking. Pour the caramel into a 4-cup charlotte mold, and tilt so that it covers the bottoms and sides. Let cool.

2. In a small saucepan, bring the milk and vanilla to a boil. In a heatproof bowl, beat the eggs, egg yolks and cup sugar until blended. Whisking constantly, pour the hot milk into the egg mixture; let rest for a few minutes, then strain. Pour the custard into the caramel-coated mold.

3. Put the mold in a small but deep baking or roasting pan, and add hot water to come about two-thirds up the sides of the mold. Place the pan on the stove over medium heat, and bring the water to a simmer. Transfer the pan to the oven. (The water should stay at a low simmer at all times; do not let it boil or the custard will overcook.) Bake until a knife inserted into the center of the custard comes out clean, 40 to 50 minutes. Keep the custard in the baking pan until the water cools. Remove from the pan to finish cooling. To serve, run the tip of a knife around the top of the custard to loosen it. Invert a serving platter over the mold and quickly turn it over again. Carefully remove the mold. Serves 6. Adapted from Le Cordon Bleu.

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Bureau of Sports

I know the Winter Olympics are already fast approaching, but I am begging the world of press media - please - no more Bode Miller cover shots. If I am force-fed yet another photo essay featuring Miller's nipples and/or snow, or view this man's grimacing and unsmiling face on the cover of one more glossy I will probably toss my cookies.

As if a cover and a photo essay and a 86-inch article wasn't enough, the Bode-fest known as the inaugural issue of The New York Times Sports Magazine: PLAY also featured slick Nike Ads (They ask "Don't you want to join Bode?" - my answer is an unequivocal "No" ) featuring graphic likenesses of Miller. Although the Times didn't stoop to the level of Newsweek or Time magazine's "It's Miller Time!" cliches, it was still too much for me.

I don't need to know if Miller is a "bad boy," and actually, I doubt that one can really grace the cover of Time magazine and be all that bad-ass.

Despite the Bode-overload, I actually enjoyed PLAY. It's like the New Yorker and the Times' Sunday Magazine devoted entirely to sports and sports culture, which does lend an air of repetition, but the stories are well written.


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