Sam's First Crème Brûlée

Okay, so after a bit of a hiatus due to academic commitments, we are back, with a little taste of something we cooked up last week, before the looming deadlines were upon us.
Sam first came upon this dish when we were at the Himley hotel on a weekend away, and after a brief description, he was convinced to try it. The dish that came out was so much to Sam's liking that requests ensued to recreate it at home.
And after a bit of resistance on my account, due to a mistaken belief that it was a complicated and time-consuming dish to make, I felt I ought to give it another chance, and to my pleasant surprise, it actually turned out to be neither. I say "another chance" because, admittedly, I had once tried to make this before, but the results were a curdled mess in a pot, with a patchily charred topping - it was a less than tasty experience I quickly wanted to forget. But after having been inspired by the technical challenges the Great British Bake Off crew seemed to get through, I thought it was worth another try.
So, time to jump in to the crème brûlée! (Or as Sam says, "Burnt cream!") It's such a long-standing recipe, it was actually quite hard to find a basic one, since there's an array of variations out there. After settling on this one, things went pretty smoothly. Since the first part of the recipe is simply beating some egg yolks with sugar and heating some double cream, I've skipped to the part where we put the ramekins into the bain marie.

Having said that, prior to this point, Sam had done his fair contribution by holding the electric whisk until the mixture went pale and fluffy, and I do wish I'd taken a photo of him doing so!
After cooking, came the best part - the torching!

And the results were super tasty :)

With a good crunchy caramel topping

Sam: 9/10 I love contrast between the smooth custard and the brittle caramel topping. Deliciourific! Taste-tastic! Would definitely make this again

Sam's First Pain au Chocolat

Ok, so I know what you're thinking - surely Sam hasn't gotten this far in life without trying a pain au chocolat? The man loves croissants, and surely they're almost the same thing? Well Sam may have tried them some months ago now, but I can truly say that before me, he hadn't ever had a single one. He was so taken with croissants, he never saw any need to deviate from the predictable flaky goodness of a croissant. In fact, the bold step to even try one only came along when a few months back, our local Waitrose had run out of the premade frozen croissants we used to buy for Sam's breakfast. "Are pains au chocolat okay instead?" I asked nonchalantly, having already placed a packet in our online basket. "What are those?" came the reply. Shocked, yet excited, I ordered the bag of frozen pains and after they arrived, we popped them in the oven and they rose beautifully and turned a lovely golden brown. Sam was surprised to find that he enjoyed these other French pastries.
Sam's comments: lovely! 8/10. But why are they called "pains" of chocolate. It's not painful at all. Is this similar to that other dessert I keep hearing about "death by chocolate"?

Sam's comments: Eva sure was interested in me eating these pains of chocolate. She thinks I've never seen them before, but I have. I just didn't want to touch them. They may have had a chocolatey-looking filling, but I couldn't really be sure without trying one. And frankly, when you've got something as tasty as a croissant, what is the need to deviate? Having said that I did end up liking these and do enjoy them sometimes

Sam's First Cannoli

Recently when the continental market came to Leicester on its biennial visit, I was too busy to pop down, but since Sam had a couple of days off and was in town running a few errands, he offered to pick up a few things for me while he was there. So of course, I asked for my usual favourites - ostrich burgers and cannoli. "Right, so where do I find these canneloni?" After correcting him, he seemed to find his way to the aptly named "Italian temptations" stall, and clearly gave in to the 6 for the price of 5 offer, since there were many there in the box to greet me when I got home. But unusually, this time around Sam seemed interested in trying them out. I wasn't sure whether to be happy since last year, he didn't even want to touch them, or to be disappointed that there were fewer left for me. I decided to go with the former, since he clearly seemed to be enjoying them!

Sam's comments: They were nice. They were just like an Italian Milky Way Crispy Rolls. 7/10

Sam's First Pumpkin Pie

Sorry for the dry spell in posts recently, the start of the new term has been busy for both of us, so we've had to put our cooking hobby a little bit on the back burner for a while.
But when the holiday season came along, even we couldn't resist but rustle up something in the name of Halloween and Bonfire night. So in the end I snapped up a pumpkin at the market for a £2 bargain.
Sam helped to start off the carving and put in a bit of elbow grease in scooping out the flesh of the pumpkin as well.

Since we had a pumpkin, I thought we may as well make some pumpkin pie. So I just followed the basic recipe from Anthony Worral Thompson, except first I made some of my own sweet shortcrust pastry from scratch (mainly because I'm not a fan of shop bought sweet shortcrust pastry with all the hydrogenated fat and it allows me to add brown sugar and crushed pecans, for a boost of extra flavour and texture). So after blind baking, it looked like this:

After steaming and blending the pumpkin flesh, it was mixed with the eggs and cream:

After 35 minutes cooking, it looked pretty well risen, as if it was about to bubble over, but after leaving to cool like the recipe said, it collapsed back down. I decorated with with a few chocolate shapes to make it look more festive:

The pie turned out well and sturdy, with a good flavour in a way that a good traditional pumpkin pie should. It seemed to go down well with a fellow PhD friend who was excitedly trying out pumpkin pie for the first time. However, it didn't seem to be such a hit with Sam himself, who promptly left the remainder of the slice after trying only one spoonful:

Sam: "Urgh! It tastes like slime! I won't be eating that again in a hurry!" 2/10

Still, we cheered him up by putting a carving into the pumpkin of his favourite spy that's been popular in the cinemas lately :)

James Bond pumpkin

James Bond pumpkin-tastic!