Friday, July 3, 2009

This Week's Theme: My Favorite 100 Dishes, Part IX

Today's Recipe: Flan de Leche

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Food Funny

Here's another good one from Maria Noel-Resnick:

After the egg hunt on Easter Sunday, the young farm boy decided to play a prank. He went to the chicken coop and replaced every single egg with a brightly colored one. A few minutes later the rooster walked in, saw all the colored eggs, then stormed outside and beat up the peacock.

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Quizine Question
Cynthia MacGregor, Editor

What is Humboldt dressing and who was it probably named after?

Subscribers to the PLUS Edition will receive the answer to today's Quizine Question by email. For complete details see the PLUS Edition page.

A Word from the Chef

A few more food-related websites your fellow readers thought you might enjoy:

A friend recommended Dorie Greenspan's blog site to me (you may know of her in Parade magazine, but I like the blog site better), and I have fallen in love again! I was particularly wowed by her fabulous recipe for Roasted Rhubarb. Oh My Gosh - so delicious, along side BBQ chicken and crispy slaw. I ate what was left for breakfast with a little meusli cereal and Greek yogurt and it was heaven all over again, but in a different way. With sweet or savory, it's a winner, and all because she had despaired of the texture of rhubarb being inevitably too firm or too mushy. Not so with this very simple technique. - Marcia Coakley
http://www.doriegreenspan.com 

I love the approach of preparing for the week (cutting down grocery store trips is good) and using a bit of leftover 'this' to create a sensational 'that'. Now that the author, Jane Maynard has moved from San Diego to the northern California Peninsula, I do hope to keep track of her trips out to eat, since we can likely find them here. - Lisa Moore, Fairfield, CA
http://thisweekfordinner.com 

This is a good food recipe website I found when I was living in Alabama. I found a recipe called Spook Soup in Recipes with a history. I made it for Halloween evening and it was delicious. These recipes seem to come from the New England States up North. - Dee Vernille
http://www.yankeemagazine.com 

"Chef recipes, cooking schools, chef jobs, cookbooks, wine on StarChefs. If you like food. A lot." I discovered this site while researching crab cake recipes. It's loaded with great information. - Georgia Gutekunst, Haddonfield, NJ
http://www.starchefs.com

Tell us about your favorite foodie websites by sending them to me with "Food Links" in the subject, and then go ahead and have yourself a great Fourth of July weekend.

In Today's PLUS Edition

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Today's Second Recipe: Crème Brulée

Today's bonus recipes from the WWR Archives: Cassoulet

Readers' Recipes: French Canadian Meat Pie; Pasta with Chicken, Tomatoes, and Feta; Shoney's Potato Soup; and Gluten-Free Cornbread

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Today's Recipe

The French call this "crème caramel," and it's really a sort of crème brulée with the burned sugar on the bottom instead of the top. I prefer to call it by its Spanish name since I first discovered it when my family lived in South America, and I truly believe it can be found, in one form or another (and it has many forms), on the dessert menu of every single restaurant in the Spanish-speaking world.

Flan de Leche

For the caramel sauce:
1 cup (250 ml) sugar
1/3 cup (80 ml) water
2 Tbs (30 ml) corn syrup
1/4 tsp (1 ml) lemon juice

For the custard:
1 1/2 cups (375 ml) whole milk
1 1/2 cups (375 ml) light cream
3 eggs plus 2 egg yolks
2/3 cup (160 ml) sugar
1 1/2 tsp (7 ml) vanilla extract
A pinch of salt

To make the caramel sauce: Combine all ingredients in a small, non-reactive saucepan and bring to a boil without stirring over moderate heat. Cook, swirling the pan gently, until the syrup is honey colored and large bubbles form on the surface. Remove from the heat and carefully pour the syrup into 6 to 8 ungreased, 6-ounce (180 ml) oven-proof ramekins or custard cups. Set aside.

To make the custard: Heat the milk and cream in a separate saucepan over moderate heat just until steam begins to appear. Meanwhile, whisk together the eggs, yolks, and sugar just enough to combine them - you do not want any bubbles in the mixture. Remove from the heat and gently whisk the milk mixture, vanilla, and salt into the egg mixture. Strain into a pot or measuring cup with a pouring spout and divide evenly between the ramekins. Place the ramekins in a deep baking pan with about 1 inch (2.5 cm) of hot water in it and place in the center of a preheated 350F (180C) oven. Bake 35 to 40 minutes, until the tip of a knife inserted about halfway between the edge and the center of the ramekin comes out clean. Remove from the oven and cool on wire racks. Refrigerate until ready to serve. To serve, run the blade of a small knife around the edge and invert an individual serving plate over each ramekin. Carefully turn the two over and shake gently to release the custard. Serves 6 to 8.

Reader Review

Kitchen Tip

Thanks to reader Jo Wake for today's helpful hint:

Not really a food tip, but you mentioned LDL and HDL the other day and, like so many, I used to have trouble remembering which was which. I then went to a diabetes clinic where they taught me - Lousy DL and Happy DL. Thought I would pass it on to your readers.

If you have a handy solution to a common kitchen problem, please send it to Tips@wwrecipes.com

Culinary Chronicles
Marian Allen, Editor

Our #2 daughter and her husband have several chickens, and share their fresh eggs with us, as we shared our fresh eggs when we had chickens. In fact, we often have so many fresh eggs, I don't mind using only parts of them...

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Ask the Chef

Debi in North Carolina asks: I am trying to incorporate more fish into our meals but I hate to pick around bones! Are there any fish that don't very many bones to mess with?

The Chef answers: Yes. Any fish that has been filleted should, in theory, be boneless, but occasionally one or two bones might slip through. Your best bet is to buy fillets of larger fish such as salmon, halibut, swordfish, tuna, turbot, or catfish. Smaller fish such as mackerel, sole, trout, and perch have a greater chance of containing bones simply because the bones are smaller and more difficult to locate and remove. I suggest you seek out the advice of a good fishmonger who can assist you in choosing the best boneless fillets available in your area.

Send your questions on any topic, no matter how serious or silly, to AsktheChef@wwrecipes.com - I can't answer them all, but I'll publish one every day whether I know the answer or not.

The Last Morsel
Barbara Forsythe, Editor

I've spent most of my life doing kitchen battle, feeding others and myself, torn between the desire to escape and the impulse to entrench myself further. When social revolutions hustled women out of the kitchen and into the boardroom, I seemed to be caught 'in flagrante', with a pot holder in my hand. I knew that the position of women like myself was of strategic importance in the war between the sexes. But if you could stand the heat, did you have to get out of the kitchen? For even as I chafed at kitchen confinement, cooking had begun its long conquest of me. Food had infiltrated my heart, seduced my brain, and ravished my senses. Peeling the layers of an onion, spooning out the marrow of a beef bone, laying bare the skeleton of a salmon were acts very like the act of sex, ecstatically fusing body and mind.

Betty Fussell, from "My Kitchen Wars"

Please address your comments regarding "The Last Morsel" to editor Barbara Forsythe at Barbara@wwrecipes.com

For an archive of all Morsels published in Worldwide Recipes, plus Weekend Morsels for insatiable foodies, please visit TheLastMorsel.com