ripped from the headlines

can you believe that i haven't been watching law & order obsessively? yeah, neither can i. so this isn't a murder case involving food, but it does involve me surreptitiously copying a recipe out of the best recipe at barnes & noble. this is my favorite recipe for chocolate pudding, and i know multiple people who do own the cookbook (i bought it for my sister a few years ago), i just always forget to write it down somewhere. so this is just me writing it down so i can have it for later. writing it down in more than my shorthand, too:

best chocolate pudding ever
2T cocoa*
2T cornstarch
2/3c sugar
1/8t salt

1c light cream, room temp
3 egg yolks, room temp
2c whole milk, room temp
6 oz bittersweet chocolate, melted and cooled**
1T butter

1. sift together the cocoa, cornstarch, sugar, and salt.

2. whisk in the cream, yolks, and milk. whisk in the chocolate. the chocolate will clump, but that's just the reaction of the melted chocolate to the cooler liquids. the lumps will cook out when you heat the mixture.

3. bring to a boil in a medium saucepan over medium high heat (this is what the best recipe says, but just to be safe i like to do it all at medium), then reduce heat to medium and boil 1 1/2-2 minutes longer, until the pudding has thickened. be sure to give the pudding frequent stirs with a wooden spoon or rubber spatula, and you can see how thick the pudding is by sticking the spoon/spatula in and drawing a finger through the pudding that coats the spoon. it should be thick, not runny in any way, and probably if you're wondering if it's the right consistency, you need a little longer. don't overcook it, though, or the pudding will curdle because your egg yolks got too cooked. this is why you cook it over medium heat while stirring: to gently cook the custard until it sets.

4. remove the pan from the stove and stir in the butter until it's completely incorporated. pour the pudding into whatever you're using as a serving dish and cover with plastic wrap - if you press the plastic wrap into the surface of the pudding it will prevent a skin from forming, if you hate the pudding skin.

[serves 4-6]

*if you use valrhona cocoa (available in bulk at whole foods, near the cheeses) you will not be disappointed - valrhona cocoa turns this pudding almost black.

**i like to use callebaut bittersweet, which i think is 64% cacao? anyway, it gives good chocolate flavor, isn't fruity like scharffenberger (do not get me started), and isn't too expensive. also available at whole foods unless you live in tribeca.

it was worth my $3.79

one and a half cups of sugar for $3.79. fancy, super-molasses dark brown sugar (billington's dark brown molasses sugar).

i'm behind on my issues of gourmet because of studio, and i flipped through the...november? december? issue and glimpsed a two-handled bowl-cup filled with some sort of unctuous, delicious-looking joyful thing. after all, who can resist eating out of such cute dishware? i happened to think about the pudding as i was at the supermarket one day, and invested in a package of billington's dark brown sugar, the designer sugar at star market that also happens to be very good.

i was thinking about the pudding in the context of my new oblong tart pan; i mulled it over for a few days before i decided it was a good idea to put a brown sugar pudding in a tart. i wanted to have a nice, buttery, flaky tart shell with the pudding, some sort of fruit layer, then ganache. make the tart shell with bacon fat, and you would have one of the richest desserts imaginable. as for the fruit, i thought about oranges, or berries, but ultimately decided to go with a seasonal (and cheap) choice: apples. i was sure that they would go well with the pudding, but i didn't know about the chocolate. since fondue always involves fruit and chocolate, and apples are often a part of the fruit selection, though, i thought i'd go for it.

i bought pink lady apples at star market because they were pretty, and i discovered that they're a great apple - they stand up to a lot of cooking and don't get mushy, and the texture is nice and firm. they're a fairly tart apple, too, which was a great contrast to the deepness of the pudding and chocolate.

unfortunately, the tart shell didn't really work out that well. i may have added a little too much water; and i thought there might be too little butter in the recipe. it turns out i was right - it tasted a bit floury, and a bit tough. it did cut well, but i've made better tart shells.

the tart filling was another matter entirely - i really liked this tart, as it was more adventurous that i've been in the past. i did it as a cold dessert, though i think the ideal way to make the tart is to bake the shell, then dump in very cold pudding, top it with hot apples, and drizzle chocolate on it. i had conceived of the tart as being cold, originally, because i wanted the ganache to entirely cover the surface - thus making the interior a surprise. this involves having a tart pan with high enough sides to admit that much filling, which is not the case with any of my tart pans - whoops! lack of foresight on my part...heh.

but the pudding is definitely a winner - i would make it over and over again, because it had a better texture than any other pudding i've ever made. i suppose it's the cornstarch? i'll have to revise my rather negative view of cornstarch - which is based on those all-too-viscous technicolor sauces that you get at bad chinese restaurants.

without further ado:

brown sugar pudding
(adapted from gourmet nov 2006)

2 cups half-and-half
3/4c packed dark brown sugar
2T cornstarch
2 egg yolks
1/4t salt

1. stir together half-and-half, brown sugar, and cornstarch in a 2- to 3-quart heavy saucepan and heat over moderate heat, stirring occasionally, until sugar is dissolved and mixture is heated through (don't let it boil).

2. whisk together yolks and salt in a medium bowl until smooth, then add hot half-and-half mixture in a slow stream, whisking. a good way to do this is to have nonskid bowls or to put your bowl on a silpat so it doesn't move as you pour with one hand and whisk with the other. i do not condone the use of kitchenaid mixers, pretty as they are.

3. return mixture to saucepan and cook over moderate heat, whisking, until mixture reaches a boil, then boil, whisking, 1 minute (it'll thicken). pour through a sieve into a clean bowl. press plastic wrap on the surface to cover the pudding and chill (or serve warm).

[serves 4-6; doubles easily, though the stirring time will be longer]

autumn trifle

one could not possibly call this trifle a "fall trifle;" it requires the british-accent, hunting-dogs-and-trumpets air that "autumn" lends to the phrase. specifically, this is an autumn trifle with roasted apples and pears, and a pumpkin-caramel sauce. carrien sent me the recipe a while back when we had just gotten apples and pears in our organic foodbox, and as we still had them, and i finally wasn't closeted in studio, it got made. it was a relief to cook again, and wonderful to use my santoku. i'm afraid i've been neglecting my wusthof chef's knife in favor of the wonderful balance of my santoku. the wusthof is great for heavy-duty work, but i haven't had to do any lately. and the santoku just cuts through things as if they're butter. it's simply amazing. have i mentioned that i love my santoku? i really believe that i own the most beautiful knives in the world. or, at least, in the world of people i know. i bow down in awe of my knives. and hope that i won't cut myself with them, as i am wont to do from forgetting that i own sharp knives. no testing the edge on my finger for these babies.

we started off the evening coercing miriam and v to abandon their plans to go to grendel's, and come over to cook with us as we had food to cook - an unnaturally large "jewel yam" (more plump than anything else) and cauliflower. i had seen a disgustingly beautiful (if that makes any sense) photograph of a cauliflower gratin in my bouchon cookbook, and jumped at the opportunity to make something from it for the first time.

for dinner we ended up making the cauliflower gratin, the jewel yam with wilted greens, and pasta with fennel sausage in a tomato cream sauce that was essentially a vodka sauce. both the yam and the cauliflower had curry powder in them and i added some to the pasta sauce too, along with some cumin, billington's dark brown sugar, and balsamic vinegar to take away the awful canned blandness of the crushed tomatoes we had in the pantry. that's the last time i use that brand of tomatoes (the green can)... all of it turned out quite well, though, and got put together in a reasonable amount of time. the gratin was suspiciously easy to make, although probably more involved than the typical gratin - the cream segment of the recipe was onions sauteed with finely chopped cauliflower stems, cooked with the herbs (supposed to be bay leaves and thyme, but all star had was tarragon), curry powder and cream. not hard to do, though, just longer. you mix that with blanched cauliflower, top it with cheese and bread crumbs, and pop it in the oven until it looks done. it was quite good (thank you thomas keller), if very rich from all the cream. i think i liked the tarragon more than i would have liked thyme. and of course we ate the whole thing. we had some red wine with dinner (markko cabernet sauvignon, 1999, which is best with food) as well.

i made the trifle while we watched a few good men. the first part is a cinnamon pastry cream - typical preparation, with a bit more flour than i would have liked. it thickened up remarkably quickly, unlike the last time i made pastry cream, probably because of increased egg yolks. next was a pumpkin caramel sauce, which starts with butter and sugar, eventually lots of cream when the mixture caramelizes, and then canned pumpkin at the end of all that. i ended up doubling the recipe because one reviewer recommended it as an ice cream topping - the one constant in our fridge is invariably ice cream. you might wonder how my body handles the cholesterol bombardment, and i can't give you an answer. you would think that my arteries are about to be completely clogged, but my cholesterol was normal when it last got measured. strange. the trifle gets finished off with roasted apples and pears. i hadn't realized that they would release so much liquid, so i was a bit disappointed with that - i would prefer firmer fruit still with the roasted flavor (guess that's a bit of the oxymoron). but all together (all of the above plus ladyfinger soaked in the tokay i opened yesterday - royal tokaji, 1996, 5 puttonyos) it was quite good. and very autumnal. and now we have breakfast for tomorrow!

autumn trifle with roasted apples, pears, and pumpkin-caramel sauce
cinnamon pastry cream
6 large egg yolks
2 cups whole milk
3/4 cup sugar
1/2 cup cake flour
2 teaspoons vanilla extract
1 1/2 teaspoons ground cinnamon
2 tablespoons unsalted butter

pumpkin-caramel sauce
1/4 cup (1/2 stick) unsalted butter
1/2 cup sugar
1 cup heavy whipping cream
1/2 cup canned pure pumpkin

roasted fruit
3 large Fuji apples, peeled, cored, cut into 1/2-inch cubes (about 4 cups)
3 Bosc pears, peeled, cored, cut into 1/2-inch cubes (about 3 cups)
2 tablespoons fresh lemon juice
2 tablespoons unsalted butter, cut into 1/2-inch cubes

assembly
3 1/2 dozen (about) soft ladyfingers
1/3 cup dry Sherry
2 cups chilled whipping cream
2 tablespoons sugar
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
8 1/8-inch-thick slices Bosc pear
1 tablespoon fresh lemon juice

1. for cinnamon pastry cream: whisk yolks and 1/2 cup milk in large bowl. add sugar, flour, vanilla, and cinnamon. whisk until sugar dissolves. bring 1 1/2 cups milk to simmer in heavy medium saucepan over medium heat. gradually whisk milk into yolk mixture. return mixture to same saucepan. cook until custard thickens and boils, stirring constantly, about 2 minutes. transfer to medium bowl. add butter and stir until melted. press plastic wrap directly onto surface. chill until cold, about 2 hours.

2. for pumpkin-caramel sauce: melt butter in heavy small saucepan over medium heat. add sugar and cook until mixture is deep amber, stirring constantly, about 8 minutes (mixture will be grainy). reduce heat to medium-low. add cream (mixture will bubble). stir until caramel bits dissolve, about 2 minutes. add pumpkin; stir until heated. refrigerate until cold, about 2 hours.

3. for roasted fruit: preheat oven to 400F. mix apples, pears, and lemon juice in large bowl. place butter on rimmed baking sheet. heat in oven until butter melts and begins to brown, about 5 minutes. add fruit to baking sheet and toss with butter. roast until fruit is soft and golden, turning with metal spatula every 15 minutes, about 1 hour. cool fruit on sheet.

4. for assembly: place ladyfingers, flat side up, on baking sheet. brush with sherry. line bottom of 2- or 3-quart glass trifle dish with single layer of ladyfingers, sherry side up. line bottom edge with 1 row of ladyfingers, sherry side in, pressing gently against dish. spoon half of pastry cream into lined dish; smooth top. cover with half of fruit. drizzle with 1/2 cup caramel sauce. line edge of dish with second row of ladyfingers, sherry side in. cover fruit with single layer of ladyfingers. spoon remaining pastry cream on top. cover with remaining fruit. drizzle fruit with 1/2 cup caramel sauce. line edge of dish with third row of ladyfingers, sherry side in. chill at least 6 hours.

5. whip cream, sugar, and vanilla in bowl until mixture holds peaks. fill pastry bag fitted with large rosette tip with whipped cream and pipe over trifle (or spoon whipped cream on top of trfile). drizzle whipped cream with 2 tablespoons caramel sauce. brush pear slices with lemon juice; arrange decoratively atop whipped cream.

[makes 12 servings]