Tuesday, August 25, 2009

Love/Hate


Working on portraits in the darkroom this week. A love/hate relationship exist between myself and the darkroom. I love the moment when the white photo paper is dropped into the developer and the image slowly emerges. At that time you either become extremely excited to see that the image is just the way you want it with white whites and black blacks. Then there is when there are only black blacks and nothing else. All the while you are thinking about how much photo paper you are wasting and how much you will have to spend to purchase another pack. Oh summer school - I love/hate you.

Tuesday, August 11, 2009

Mango Crème Brûlée



I used this recipe after watching his video on YouTube:

Ingredients:
2 cups organic heavy cream
1 whole vanilla bean
1 whole flesh of organic mango
1/2 cup sugar
6 organic or farm fresh eggs yolks

Directions:
1. In a sauce pot add cream, vanilla beans and split pods.
2. Place over medium heat until lit scalds, just under the boil. Watch so it does not boil over!
3. Meanwhile, peel the mango and remove the pit as per video. Dice up mango and set aside.
4. Place a few pieces of mango into each custard cup or ramekin.
5. Tempur the egg yolks by adding a bit of hot cream then whisking, repeat twice, then add all cream to egg mixture.
6. Fill custard cups that should be in a large pan, add hot water and fill half way up the sides of the custard cups.
7. Place in a preheated 325 degree oven for 35 minutes or until the custard are just set but still jiggling slightly. Cool for 20 minutes, then refrigerate until well chilled...
8. Dust the surface of each brulee cup with 1 tsp sugar. Place under broiler or use a blow torch to brulee the tops which means to slightly burn the sugar so it gets brown.

I don't know if it's his recipe or if it's the cheap aluminum cups from Walmart, but they didn't come out as well as I hoped. When using the torch to brulee the sugar, it melted the foil. So I transferred them over to the broiler in my toaster oven instead. It didn't help the sugar to become hard and delicious like it's suppose to though, only slightly caramelized.