A La Cuisine!

Roasted Pineapple with Passion Fruit Caramel and Caramel Dust (SHF 6)

As much as I like caramel, I prefer to have it in small doses.  A little goes a long way when it's paired with nuts or chocolate, while a tart or cake filled only with caramel would probably be too sweet for my liking.  Because the theme of this month’s Sugar High Fridays event, hosted by Debbie of Words to Eat By is caramel, I thought I would try to use this deep and decadent confection in a few different ways.

A quick check of my cookbooks turned up a few ideas.  I had really liked the passion fruit caramel sauce from my previous post, and I’ve always enjoyed the deep, complex flavours of roasted pineapple when its sugars become caramelized.  Add a touch of caramel dust, and here was a dish that was caramel, without being overly rich or sweet.

Dessert Caviar

Somehow during my last year of university, I became addicted to cookbooks. I ordered a couple and then I ordered some more. By the end of year, my cookbooks outnumbered my textbooks 15 to 5. Whenever I needed to distract myself from the realities of school, I looked for dishes I wanted to make, and spent countless hours researching things like how to get those colourful stripes in joconde, and how to grill the perfect steak. Unfortunately at the time I lived in a residence where I shared a limited kitchen with a dozen other students. So instead of experimenting and driving all my floormates crazy, I made a list of dishes that I planned to someday prepare.

Over the past two years I've made quite a few of the dishes on my list including butter-poached lobster, Grand Marnier soufflés, and Plaisir Sucré. There are still many dishes that I've yet to cook, including a plethora of truffle and foie gras preparations that I'll only make if I win the lottery or if someone (maybe you) sends me money.

About a month ago, I found myself with the perfect opportunity to prepare a dish that's long been on my list. I had been asked to make a dessert for a Chinese New Year potluck, and I immediately thought of Claudia Fleming's Coconut Tapioca with Coconut Sorbet, Passion Fruit-Pineapple Sorbet, Passion Fruit Caramel, Cilantro Syrup, and a Coconut Tuile. Otherwise known as "Dessert Caviar", this was one of Fleming's signature desserts when she was the pastry chef at New York's Gramercy Tavern.