July 4, 2006

Note: This post is also posted at the brand-new food blog I started at EatFoo, to which I and many of my friends will be contributing, as promised. For now, I'll still be cross-posting *some* of my entries. At least the ones where I include pretty pictures. Comment over there.

I first had creme brulee at a Ruth's Chris during high school and instantly fell in love. I had the good fortune to date a wealthy girl with generous parents. I ate a ton of great food that I could not otherwise have afforded (at least not until I have that law firm job). And I've never gone back. Since then, I've had a lot better taste in food, and have developed my culinary techniques in a large part to be able to eat the way I was occasionally able to, but without paying for it. But I'm not so poor--I managed to purchase a kitchen torch at an outlet mall ($20). I'd had my eyes on them for a while, having made several decent attempts at making creme brulee and pining for a handheld propane caramelizing device. This was the first time I had a chance to try it out.

Creme brulee is such a simple dessert, but is so delicious, and seems to occupy a sort of mystical place within American culture. Unlike for the French, this is no everyday dessert for us. We view the sugar crust with wary interest, wondering what sort of culture would create something so delicate and restrained. "But... where's the chocolate?" we ask. We're all the more bewildered by the dessert's size. Which American among us is willing to sacrifice his elephantine hunk of chocolate wall layer cake with ganache in favor of this tiny yellow dish? So many Americans have yet to try creme brulee, but awareness of it trickles into our culture from French movies and our more cultured or well-off friends, and so its reputation grows without actually ever inundating us to the point that we cease seeing it as something special. Which makes it all the more easy to impress with it.

Having since eaten at perhaps five or six other Ruth's Chris locations, I can say that the Ruth's Chris in Tampa was a shining star of Ruth's sky. They made delicate spun sugar toppings for their creme brulee, while other locations were content to serve theirs without (not that there's anything wrong with that). I'm positive that my jaw dropped the first time I saw one of those sugar toppings (and I'm positive that it looked at least 3.7 bajillion times better than mine does). For all the years since, I wondered (constantly--that's all I've done for the last eight years) about this spun sugar, not knowing what it was called or how to google for it, but finally I figured it out. I finally happened upon it unexpectedly while reading some wholly unrelated recipe. And so it trickled into my consciousness accidentally and gracefully, just as creme brulee is finally doing into the American consciousness.

For the recipe and the how-to, head over to the post on EatFoo.

Posted at July 4, 2006 5:34 AM