Thursday, October 2, 2008

The Art of the Brûlée (file under so sweet it hurts)

As I write this my right hand is in intense amounts of pain. I know Chef, man up. But it does. I have a burn blister that is throbbing and is probably about the size of half a dime. Okay maybe a quarter the size but nonetheless it kills.

I was asking Executive Chef last night if he could recall the number of Brûlées that he has done in his career. He thought about it for a moment and said; “If I thought about it it would probably make me sick.”

At any rate in order to brûlée properly you need an intense heat source and some sugar. You sprinkle a generous amount of sugar on top of it and then bring a heat source to it which starts the sugar caramelizing to give the perfect topping to the intensely delicious custard which rests just underneath its shell. We serve our brûlées in individual ramekins so the process is as follows.

1) Sprinkle sugar on top
2) introduce heat source
3) on about a 30 degree angle slowly rotate ramekin with thumb, fore and middle fingers
4) remove heat as needed to be able to make sugar do what you want
5) continue process until a nice layer of caramel is formed on top

Sounds easy enough right? Well there are so many variables in doing this that lots can go wrong. If the heat is not controlled enough you will notice that you cause the custard to burn and create little burn circles. Should you not work with the sugar properly you will have the case that I had last night (not the first time either just the first time I am writing about it). If your angle is off, or you forget momentarily what you are doing you have the glorious opportunity to burn yourself twice, once with the blow torch, which is not as painful as you would think because your brain registers the pain rather quickly and commands your hand to move the flame away. The other opportunity is if the sugar starts to run away from you and a small but insanely hot globule of bubbling molten sugar drops onto your hand.

At first the pain is almost non existent. But once the molten sugar adheres like plastic to your hand your initial reaction is to jump as high as you can and squeal either like pig heading to slaughter or a little girl at the sight of a mouse. Once the searing sugar embeds itself in your hand you immediately remove it which causes the pain to become even more intense.

I think so far this year I have probably done about 1000 brûlée, if not more, and I am yet to master the finer points of making the crust perfect and ensuring that the sugar does not burn you. But it is one of the things that I do that each and every time I do it I can see my mistake immediately and adjust going forward.

Erma Bombeck once said; “Just think of all those women on the Titanic who said, "No, thank you," to dessert that night. And for what!”

Are you dreaming big and inspired?

A la prochaine

SDM

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