Oh So Colson

Ah, I love desserts. I particularly like things like creme brulees, creme caramels, clafoutis, and custards in general.

Creme brulees and creme caramels:
It’s really quite interesting, perhaps surprising is that there’s a number of varieties worldwide. But perhaps I shouldn’t be so surprised since they require relatively few ingredients, are very easy to make, and there’s many variations given that the recipes are being adapted to local ingredients. I’m often amazed at the reactions of friends because they seem to believe that both creme caramels and creme brulees are hard to make. They’re really easy in reality but I suppose the problem is that people don’t know how to get a smooth texture….it’s really just achieved by using a bain marie to cook it in! I’m in the midst of a current project where I take a different type each time I attend a friend’s potluck or dinner party (where one takes something). I always opt for the dessert section. Why? Well, it means that I can do some experimenting. I don’t make desserts for myself that often since I get very bored if I make something and I have to eat it for three or four days running.

I do bake for myself and I’ll eat the resulting consequences for a number of sequential breakfasts. The last cake I made was a recipe which I saw in the blog “Chocolate and Zucchini”…..which is apparently a typical cake from France made with yogurt. It’s delicious and has just a hint of vanilla. I used the recipe provided by Clotilde Dusoulier in her book of the same title. (The book contains many of the recipes on her blog.) I like making cakes that just are simply flavoured. Indeed, I find that so many recipes today are full of tons of chocolate, fruit, nuts, or liquiors so much so that the flavours overwhelm each other. Its often the case there’s so much in the recipe that there’s no flavour at all. It seems that people think that gourmet cooking must be something where you just through lots of flavours together…without thinking as to the precise manner in which the flavours compliment each other.

Anyhow back to my current unofficial research project. I’m currently trying out various creme caramel and creme brulee recipes. It seems from reading my cookbooks and scanning my favourite food blogs that there are various different types. I’m currently working my way through the different recipes. I’m now getting a better idea which ones are successful vis-a-vis shape, colour, flavour, texture and above all enjoyed! My friends have unknowingly become my testers. I enjoy watching their faces as they test them out!

The French version of the dessert tends to be flavoured with cinnamon. The recipes from Spain tend to contain orange juice. I’d like to make one of these but the oranges that I’ve found at the moment just aren’t very flavourful. I suspect because its winter time here in Canada and the oranges are ripened artificially.

I made a Brazilian version of creme caramel for a friend’s dinner party where she had cooked two dishes from Senegal. The version of creme caramel from Brazil contains condensed milk and regular milk while the French and Spanish versions use milk or cream. The Spanish recipes often reduce the quantity of the milk but make up the difference in the volume of liquid required by using orange juice. The next version that I’d like to make is a Cuban style creme caramel which uses evaporated milk. I tried this when I was in Miami last year, with a good friend of mine, and it was delicious. It had the same consistency as the other varieties but the flavour was slightly different and it had a firmer texture. I think that I’d like to make the Brazilian one again but this time try substitute some of the milk with coconut milk.

A few weeks ago I experimented, for another friend’s dinner party, with a recipe that I’d found on the internet which used Earl Grey tea which contains oil of bergamont. I decided to try this recipe since I had a creme brulee, in Winnipeg, called “London Fog” which was essentially a creme brulee flavoured with Earl Grey tea. It was delicious. The bergamont oil contrasted well with the richness of the caramelized sugar on the top. I made it myself and it was a definite hit with everyone at the dinner party. What bugged me though was that I had to use a grill, rather than my blowtorch, to crystallize the sugar sprinkled on top and the end result wasn’t what I hoped. I’ve accumulated a collection of recipes whereby creme brulee contains various liquors and teas. So..now I have to just find occasions to try these ones out!

Ah - I can’t believe that my blog got spammed! Ah…ridiculous. Whenever I think of the word spam..I always think of that nasty canned meat stuff being thrown randomly, literally, against or into an email inbox..and now a blog. I really don’t like that stuff. However, whenever I hear the word or read it I’m reminded of the Monty Python song “Spam”…and the nasty Canadian version of the product called ‘Klik”. Once when I was doing fieldwork in northern Ontario we took a can of this stuff as part of the ‘desperation food stuff’. This was the collection of food that we had if we ran low on stocks while we doing fieldwork …either because we’d eaten everything since our appetites had increased or we’d lost some through a canoeing accident. It was normal for us to only eat meat for during the first 24 hours since meat doesn’t survive for very long outside of a fridge (turns nasty and stinks). Anyhow once we’d eaten the meat we’d eat the food we brought in terms of what food stuff went bad first (we were in the bush for up to three weeks)…so fresh veg, eggs, cheese..were eaten in the first week or so. Then we went on dry goods which were re-hydrated with water (plenty of that around since we were always camping beside water on a beach or the shores of a river bank). So meat by the end of week two was an item that we thought wistfully about with those colleagues were also carnivorous types rather than vegetarians. We’d talk endlessly about what we’d intend to eat first when we arrived back ‘amongst civilization’…i.e. a town or village which had places which sold food. Several of us would go for a steak and a place where there was an ‘all you can eat salad bar”. We’d joke about being able to dive into the salad bar at one of these restaurants….and how delicious that first bite of a medium rare steak would be. Anyhow one time we couldn’t cope with the idea of not having meat for supper…since the last time we’d eaten meat was two weeks before. We remembered that we had ONE can of ‘pseudo spam’ as we called Klik and figured that it must be okay. So, as we canoed back to the beach where we were living on that trip we all..thought about the idea of eating that meat..and joked that we’d have to ‘file and sharpen our incisor teeth’ come closer to leaving the file just to appreciate meat more. Well, we’d barely landed on the beach, pulled in the canoes, and thrown our backpacks in our tents when we’d rushed to the part of the beach where the ‘kitchen’ was and dug through one of the large canvas food bags for the tin of Klik. We found it…and all of us looked gleefully at the tin while one of us opened it up. All of us were salivating at the thought of eating some protein rich substance….and Klik just couldn’t be that bad. It looked okay in the picture on the label that wrapped the can! But as the metal peeled away, using that free open attached to the base of the can, the horror of that substance inside the can showed itself to what it was..ugh. It smelt dubious and looked revolting. We recoiled in horror back from the person with the can and all stated that we couldn’t eat it. We figured that we couldn’t waste it since we’d spent a buck or so on it…and had carried it into the bush. Hence it had to be eaten by someone. So, the dog who was with us was deemed the worthy recipient of the can’s contents. We figured that he might like it since he’d had nothing but dry dog food for the entire trip and he might like it. So, we placed the Klik can’s contents on the ground for the dog. ….but he sniffed it tentatively…backed away and looked at us in disgust. Clearly, the dog wasn’t under any circumstances going eat the Klik. If we weren’t eating it neither was he.