Ask a chef: Bacchus' creme brulee

Ask a Chef reveals the secrets of those superb dishes you ate in cafes and restaurants and wanted to try making.

 

Bacchus' creme brulee
Makes 6-7 ramekins

Ingredients

6 egg yolks
1 whole egg
½ cup caster sugar
2 tsp vanilla essence
500ml cream
Stewed rhubarb
6-7 Tbsp caster sugar

 

Method

Mix yolks, egg, sugar and vanilla together.

Heat cream until steaming. Pour heated cream over egg mix while stirring. Stand for 10 minutes.

Place two tablespoons of fruit in the bottom of each ramekin. You can put whatever you like in the bottom of the ramekins. We use rhubarb (which has been cooked with sugar so it's like a coulis or stewed rhubarb). Skim surface of the egg and cream mix and carefully pour into ramekins over the fruit.

Bake in a water bath (just put water half way up the side of the ramekins) cover with tin foil and bake 40 to 60 minutes at 150degC (you need to keep checking until they are set).

To finish, sprinkle each ramekin with a tablespoon of caster sugar. Heat the top with a blowtorch until the sugar melts and caramelises. It will form a hard surface as it cools.

Home cooks can caramelise the top under a very hot grill. Fresh raspberries are also very nice - just place in the ramekins and pour the mix over in the same way.

 

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Requested by Lyndall Frost, of Dunedin.

This recipe comes from Rose Lock, chef at Bacchus Wine Bar, in the Octagon.

• If you have enjoyed a dish in an Otago cafe or restaurant and would like the recipe, write to Ask a Chef, Features, Otago Daily Times, PO Box 181, Dunedin, fax 474-7422, or email odt.features@odt.co.nz, including your name, address and a daytime telephone number, and we will request it.

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