Rosewater and Pistachio Crème Brûlée

The desserts in An Extremely Good Dinner Party (the recounting of which has taken longer than the actual party).

A Crème Brûlée is really just a baked custard but with the addition of a crackly caramel crust on top to diffentiate it from boarding school delights (and no raisins - or a sausage if it's a chocolate cake and you're Jon). The caramel crust turned out to be a dissapointment when I made one ages ago: Crème Brûlée. This time I was well prepared with a brand new kitchen blowtorch that had only previously been used in ritual sacrifices [see here and here].

I kind of resent stumping up bucks for something which looks like a wizened twig so I though I'd try and use up a little more of the rosewater I had and thinking, as I usually do, about tasty turkish delights, pistachio. Fortunately I found a recipe for pistachio ice-cream that suggested grinding the pistachio nuts in a mortar and pestle and using rosewater to help it paste.

-blanch and peel about a third of a cup of unsalted pistachio nuts. Add one tablespoon of rosewater and grind in a mortar and pestle to a paste.

-separate 5 egg yolks and blend with a third of a cup of sugar, stir until blended.

-pour 500ml of double cream into a saucepan, add the pistachio paste and simmer over a medium heat for five minutes. You can add a little more rosewater to taste, factoring in the additional sweetness of the sugar. Strain.

-add the cream to the eggs and sugar slowly, gently stirring it in.

-pour the mixture into four remekins, filling to just below the rim.

-the ramekins in a roasting tray with enough warm water to reach half way up the ramekins. This allows for gentle cooking and you can cover the ramekins loosely with foil, but I didn't bother/forgot to no ill effect. Put in a 170c oven for about forty minutes. It's best to keep an eye on it, the edges should be firm with a bit of wobble left in the middle.

-refrigerate for at least a few hours. One of the adavantages of this dish is that you can make it the day before and bring it out of the fridge at the last minute.

-spinkle a tablespoon of sugar (I used raw sugar) over each ramekin and level it evenly. Ignite the blowtorch and work it over intil golden brown. You can do this under the griller but I had less than happy results or heat some brandy and flambé it (thanks to a commenter for that one), which I haven't tried.

Desserts and presentation are my traditional weak area so presenting a dessert presents problems for me. If helping moving has its silver lining, its the new house has a mulberry bush so I nicked Nate's sandcastle bucket and grabbed a few. Sliced in half and placed on top. Then in a diamond around the ramekin, three mulberries, a piece of turkish delight, vodka cumquats, and a strawberry. The cumquats are from our little cumquat tree nad had been sitting in a jar with vodka and sugar for a few months - sliced. Andrea, the host, had bought the turkish delight so I nicked that. I was going to slice it but it's not an easy thing to do so I settled for a few slashes with the red oozing out onto the white icing sugar like it's been hit in a pub with a couple of razor blades. Strawberries were in my fridge and not being happy with a fan thought I'd go for a kind of faceted slice that reminds me of something engineery drawing. The slices were placed next to the strawberry. I was going to sprinkle icing sugar but it lacked the manly aspect that I'd been able to work into every other element, so I left it out.

T'asty, nice and very creamy centre, which it should have - using double cream probably giving it that extra bit of fatty velveteen. Not sure what I said below that was so funny, possibly "I've been working out" or "Should really cut back on my drinking" or something. Nice pic by Toni though who I think got an oi! what are you doing messing about with the camera from me. What a bum I am.