When life gives you lemons, make lemonade.
Last week I was in the fortunate position to be gifted with something a bit less sour! Firstly some eggs from my boss (at work, that is!). She has her own chickens at home, roaming around her yard, so free-range eggs are always in abundance at her house. Secondly I received a whole bunch of passion fruit from a friend who has a real enthusiasm for organic and sustainable living and has really green fingers.
Most mornings I have some eggs for breakfast; it’s quick and simple and it keeps me going throughout the day. But being gifted with these eggs I did not feel it would do them justice to just do a quick scramble. And the passion fruit really needed to be celebrated. On the day I took them home I cut one open and ate it with a spoon straight from the shell; it was delicious and sweet and the smell was intoxicating. It tasted like carefree summer days!
So what to do with these bountiful gifts? When in doubt, I always turn to my trusted recipe books and as usual they did not let me down. In Rick Stein’s French Odyssey he has this beautiful recipe for passion fruit crème brûlée with passion fruit jellies. It sounded lovely. However, I must be honest and say that I cheated a bit – the jellies were going to take too much time to make on a Sunday morning and in his recipe he rests his cream mixture overnight to really soak up the vanilla flavours. So I improvised a little bit… and I was still really pleased with the way it came out.
Here’s to the flavours of summer! (And I am still going to try those jellies sometime!)
Passion fruit crème brûlée
(serves 6)
Ingredients:
1 vanilla pod
600ml double cream
8 egg yolks
100g caster sugar
200ml passion fruit puree
Method:
- Pre-heat your oven to 130°
- Cut the vanilla pod open lengthwise and scrape out the seeds
- Place the cream in a medium pan and add the vanilla seeds and bring slowly to the boil (I put the actual pod in as well to get the maximum flavour out of it)
- Once brought up to the boil, remove from the stove and leave to cool (I poured the liquid out into a separate bowl, so that it cools quicker; you can strain it at this point to make sure that no pieces of the vanilla pod is left)
- Whisk the egg yolks and 50g sugar until it turns thick and pale
- Slowly drizzle the cream into the egg mixture, whisking continuously (be sure that your cream mixture has cooled down enough, else you will have scrambled eggs!)
- Add the passion fruit puree to the mixture and mix well through
- Place 6 ramekins inside a deep roasting tray
- Pour the brûlée mixture in a jug from which you can easy pour it into the ramekins, filling it right to the top (I was a bit over zealous with the mixing in point 7 and this made my mixture a bit foamy, so although I filled them to the top, during the baking process they did flatten a bit – be warned!)
- Transfer the tray to the oven and then pour enough boiling water in the tray to come half way up the sides of the ramekins
- Bake the brûlées for 50 minutes (they should have a slight wobble when you take them out)
- Remove the ramekins from the tray and place them in the fridge to cool
- Once you are ready to serve, sprinkle the remainder of the sugar evenly over the top of each brûlée
- Either put them under a grill for 1 to 2 minutes until the sugar has melted and go a golden brown or you can use a blow torch (I thought this was the perfect excuse to finally get a cheffy gadget!)
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