Ask a Chef reveals the secrets of those superb dishes you ate in cafes and restaurants and wanted to try yourself.
Photo: supplied
Esplanade's butterscotch creme pot
SERVES 6
Ingredients
6 yolks
60g butter
170g brown sugar
5g flaky salt
1 vanilla bean
500ml cream
For caramel sauce
200g caster sugar
60g water
80g butter
130g cream
For vanilla bean creme fraiche
70g creme fraiche
150ml cream
Method
Melt butter in a pot. Add sugar and cook until thick and bubbly and smells of caramel. Use a whisk to stir.
Add salt and vanilla.
Pour cream into boiling caramel. Return to the boil and whisk together until the mix is smooth (be careful not to burn yourself).
Allow mixture to cool to room temperature before stirring in yolks.
Sieve through a fine sieve and pour into moulds.
In a deep dish, pour hot water until it comes three-quarters of the way up moulds in dish.
Cover with tin foil and bake at 170degC.
Check after 25 minutes. Cook until set but not scrambled.
Caramel sauce
Heat sugar and water until a deep caramel colour.
Place the pot in a bowl of cold water. Carefully mix in the butter and cream.
Put back on the heat and bring back to the boil.
Chill immediately.
Vanilla bean creme fraiche
Whip together until soft peaks form. Quenelle on top.
- Recipe provided by the Esplanade, St Clair, Dunedin. Recipe requested by Diane Cooper, of Dunedin.
• 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 517, Dunedin, or email odt.features@odt.co.nz, including your name, address and a daytime telephone number, and we will request it.
