Dec 11 2008
Super Supper
A wee Thursday night party. Ah, the life of the young professional!
- Mouclade
- Flan
We were delighted to have K&B over for mussels the other night. We’d put out a request on Facebook for friends to go halfers with us on a couple of kilos of mussels…unfortunately all the responses we got were from people outside of Scotland, but our Edinburgh friends didn’t realise this, and assumed we’d had takers. A bit of idle pub chat the other night revealed that this was not the case and the date was set!
We got our mussels from the lovely George Campbell and Sons Fishmongers on Ferry Road. We had to debeard them ourselves, which was a cold job, but otherwise they were in very good nick with only a couple failing to open on standing in cold water.
The broth the mussels are cooked over contained madras powder. I’d been a little worried these would be ‘curried mussels’ but it was more that you were left with a pleasing tingling on the lips. What looked like a vast pile of mussels was rapidly demolished, leaving impressive piles of shells. We mopped up the winey creamy juices with a stack of D’s baguettes and had a grand old messy time of it.
We followed up with Flan, an express’ed up Mexican version of Crème Caramel.We were a bit worried as we made the caramel for this. We weren’t sure how fiercely to heat the sugar or whether to stir it. We consulted the two other recipe books we have with recipes for Crème Caramel and discovered…..that James Martin nicked his recipe from Delia Smith. They are practically verbatim copies. That said, both books are copyright BBC so maybe it doesn’t count as plagiarism!
The additional reading gave us the confidence to make the caramel and we successfully attained the colour of maple syrup (Delia: two shades darker than golden syrup. James: two or three shades darker than golden syrup. I’m sorry, but I don’t have the Pantone syrup kit!)
The ‘crème’ was added-evaporated milk, condensed milk, eggs and vanilla essence- and it all baked in a dish of water in the oven for 45 mins. After a night in the fridge, it was ready to serve. It took a little persuading to come out of its dish, but when it did it really looked the part.
The texture was firmer than any of us really expected- set quite firm, like cheese almost. Whether this was because of its express construction or whether we’d over-cooked it slightly I’m not sure. Suffice to say it did not detract! We all thought this was pretty fabulous AND went back for seconds. The firm texture also meant Dougal was easily able to take a slice to work the next day, which might not have been possible with a wobblier set.
Yum!
Ah….. I had fancied this when reading the book; I think she said it convinced a passing mexican (as good as his mother’s…. obviously felt she would never read Nigella Express, which seems a good bet)
Glad to hear it was a success, seeing as we now know of a source of non-Nestle condensed milk!
Must give it a go.
caramel is a white knuckle ride -too little and its pale & insipid, a microsecond later it’s soot, in between, heaven