Torched Creme Caramel

  

I've recently become obsessed with two classic French bistro dishes: Confit de canard and creme brulee. Having recently caved in to a bout of intense kitchen gadget envy, I lashed out and bought a torch. With my new torch in hand, I decided to tackle the creme brulee first. As simple as it may seem to whip up the custard for creme brulee, I honestly hadn't made more than a couple of attempts at it over the years, neither of which resulted in a qualified success.
Goodness knows what once compelled me to use low fat milk instead of cream and on another occasion, over whipped eggs led to a frothy (but relatively tasty) mess.
No such disaster awaited me this time, dammit!
Remembering the big hardened clumps of brown sugar i still had in my cupboards, I decided to melt down one big chunk into caramel. I was a bit worried that the end result might become too "burnt" and I would end up with dark molasses but I managed to keep a watchful eye on it and avoided the pending doom.
I halved Julia's classic recipe from "The Way To Cook" so as to avoid being forced to eat one giant creme caramel or a dozen little ones all by my lonesome. In the end, I made 4 small creme caramel and 2 creme brulee. Not bad for a week's worth of dessert. Et voila!

Sunday Lunch and Tasting

As is our habit of getting together for lunch and tasting some newly discovered wines, four of us spent Sunday cooking and languishing over some fresh new discoveries.

Being that it was lunch time, I thought that I would make something brunch-like. I whipped up a simple spinach fritatta. I think I need to drop a few shavings of asiago or perhaps some mozzarella next time. Anyway, I was pretty happy with the way it turned out. S kept ribbing me about bringing a full bodied red and cooking a frittata. "The two have absolutely no connection.", I firmly exclaimed.

R did his usual and brought meat. We all joked about it being dog or something weird like that. Of course we were being facetious, since that would be totally incongruous to a dog owner such as him. He wanted us to taste it and figure out what it was and so that's what we did. I guessed correctly and declared it "bison". He pan fried a crusted bison filet mignon and whipped up a brandied cherry sauce to drizzle over it. Bison is a lot leaner than beef and so was a bit tougher than we had hoped. Perhaps next time we should cook it rare.

S baked a basa fish fillet in a papaya salsa. It turned out pretty pretty nicely and it would be perfect fare for a warm sunny day. I'd never had papaya on fish before and am not sure that it works, although it didn't taste "bad". It's a nice light dish and perfectly in keeping with lightening up our otherwise usually heavy lunch.

K served up some roasted lambchops and was oh so proud of his grilled zucchini, even though i had to show him how to slice it without endangering his fingers.

We drank 2 whites and 3 different reds, not all of which I remember the names of:

WILDASS Chardonnay.

BERONIA Rioja (pictured above)

A Semillion Chard from Ontario

Something French and rare (expensive)

and an Aussie Cab-Shiraz.

All delicious, next time I will be sure to jot down some notes and the names of all of the wines.