There’s no better time than the first of the year to review the ABC's of French cooking. Join me on this leisurely stroll through a culinary alphabet. We’ll go letter by letter, the same way I practice the French alphabet with my granddaughters. To help them remember how to pronounce each letter, we pair it with a word we use every day. With our culinary alphabet, I will use recipes instead, easy ones.
The language of French cooking is built on its Sauce recipes - what Julia Child loftily referred to as "the splendor and glory of French cuisine". In Mastering the Art of FrenchCooking, Julia decoded this sauce hierarchy for American home cooks. I’m going to take this process one step further. The basic sauce recipes that will make up our alphabet are made with ingredients that are probably already in your refrigerator. These ABC’s willbe about the way we are cooking now.
Let’s begin. 'A' is for Crème Anglaise, a silky smooth cooked custard. It’s the French way of paying tribute to the dairy-based sauces of their English neighbors. Crème Anglaise is made with milk, egg yolks, sugar and vanilla. My recipe includes a little cornstarch which renders the process fail-safe - the cornstarch will help thicken the hot custard well before the egg yolks begin to scramble.
Flavored with a vanilla bean or an extract Crème Anglaise is as comforting as a nursery dessert. A few tablespoons will moisten and enrich a slice of cake, a pudding and both baked and fresh fruit. For those not satisfied by mere tablespoons, there's always the fantasy winterscape called Ile Flotante (floating island), where chunks of meringue sitatop the custard surrounded by drizzled caramel. If you would like to relive a favorite childhood memory just freeze Crème Anglaise into silky, refreshing vanilla ice cream.
CRÈME ANGLAISE
1 3/4 cups whole milk
1 vanilla bean or 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
4 large egg yolks
1/3 cup sugar
1 teaspoon cornstarch
Heat the milk and add a vanilla bean slit open with scraped seeds (or add extract at the end of the recipe). Beat the sugar and cornstarch slowly into the egg yolks until the mixture is thick and forms a 'ribbon' on the surface when dropped from the whisk.
Pour the hot milk over the yolk mixture whisking vigorously. Return the mixture to a clean pan over medium low heat. Heat and stir until the custard thickens noticeably and coats the sides and bottom of the pan.
Strain this custard into a bowl or pitcher. Stir in vanilla extract. Chill thoroughly before serving
