Apple Pie, Patis, and Pâté

Chocolate pot de crème is my dessert of choice for intimate gatherings because it is easily scalable and can be made a day in advance. A silky custard baked in single-serving portions, pots de crème can be topped with fresh fruits, whipped cream, or chocolate shavings to make a dainty-looking but unfussy dessert.

You may already have the ingredients necessary to make this version of pots de crème, perhaps with the exception of chocolate liquor. Chocolate liquor is also known as baking chocolate, consisting of roughly 50% cocoa powder, 50% cocoa butter, and 0% sugar. The bitterness will short-circuit your palate for a bit so don’t confuse it with regular sweetened chocolate when snacking. A small amount is enough to lend the custard a deep but pleasant bittersweet flavor.

View Pots de Crème au Chocolat recipe »

Do you twist Oreos apart and eat the filling by itself? Doing the same filling finagling maneuver with Fig Newtons is a lot messier but I can’t help it. The is-it-cake-or-is-it-cookie sawdust exterior merely gets in the way of fig enjoyment by jamming itself in between teeth and up roofs of mouth. It’s nothing more than a bland delivery device for the sweet interior if you ask me.

I only want the fig filling. This classic Spanish method for preserving and spicing figs satisfies that need and soundly beats anything an automatic fig extruder can produce.

Unlike Oreo filling, which is basically shortening creamed with sugar, figs and almonds are the main ingredients in pan de higo so it also has a lot going for it in the nutritional value department. Both are packed with nutrients — figs are rich in fiber and almonds supposedly keep you smart. Compare with the effects of eating massive amounts of sweetened semisolid fat: sugar high, crash, guilt, and depression, most likely in that order.

View Pan de Higo - Spanish Fig Cake recipe »

This Japanese treatment for eggplants turns the spongy fruit — I thought it was a vegetable — into creamy morsels that lend itself well to the simplest of seasonings. Serving as its own cooking vessel, the purple berries are grilled until charred while steaming from the inside. The whole eggplants will expand and sputter as it releases steam through its pricked skin. It’s done just as it collapses into a wrinkled mass looking black as charcoal on the outside but smooth as custard on the inside.

Slice the peeled eggplants so that it resembles sashimi or eel from 10 feet away to alleviate boredom and ensue hilarity. Depending on who’s around, reactions can range from delight to disgust, culminating in either disappointment or sighs of relief once revealed that it’s just frickin’ eggplant. I know I’d think twice about having raw fish from someone’s apartment kitchen.

View Grilled Eggplants, Japanese-Style (Yakinasu) recipe »

The current object of my cheese obsession, the grill-worthy Finnish Juustoleipa, is quite enjoyable broiled until slightly charred but still firm and squeaky. Being a fresh cheese, it stays relatively mild even with the heating and can definitely use a bit of help to make it more interesting.

If there’s anything I learned from the entries in Haalo’s cheese roundup, some fruits pair well with cheese. Raspberries can add a bit of tartness and texture to go with the creaminess of the Juustoleipa. Randomly picked from the produce aisle, cape gooseberries contribute sweetness and a bit of unconventionality to the mix.

The thinking behind this simple recipe is fairly straightforward. Keep the berries fresh (always a good idea), torch the cheese (because you can), and use honey so it can be considered a dessert, and hopefully eligible for entry in this month’s Sugar High Fridays.

View Berries and Grilled Cheese Skewers with Honey recipe »

I’ve never made any form of whipped egg white dessert before but these Swiss meringue cookies surprisingly came out as good as I could hope for. The scent of raspberries permeated the cookie and the slivered almonds added a nice textural contrast to the crisp meringue. The low and slow baking temperature also concentrated the flavor of the embedded raspberries, resulting in a tangy red spot of syrupy jam.

There are three major categories in meringue development. Generally speaking with the point of view of a meringue neophyte, the main difference between the three methods lies in the amount of heat applied to the ingredients:

• French Meringue
  No heat applied to the ingredients.
• Swiss Meringue
  Gentle heat applied to the combined egg whites and sugar, usually over a bain-marie or double boiler.
• Italian Meringue
  Sugar and water are heated to the firm ball stage (246ºF/119ºC to 250ºF/121ºC), creating a hot syrup. The hot syrup is then slowly added to the egg whites right at the beginning of whipping.

In any case, a whole lot of intimacy with my Oxo whisk is required regardless of the method. I’ve never wanted a Kitchenaid more in my life.

View Swiss Meringue with Raspberries and Almonds recipe »