138 recipes. Page 3 of 6
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Three onions cooked slowly in butter for more than 20 minutes, until deep amber, are nearly the whole tart. There is only enough egg and cream custard to hold them together, and Gruyere on top bakes into a salty brown crust.
A spoonful holds its shape, then collapses into almost nothing on the tongue, leaving a strong dark chocolate taste. Without beaten egg whites, the air comes only from yolks whisked with sugar and from whipped cream, so it is a touch richer and denser than a meringue-based mousse. The higher the cacao percentage, the more bitter and intense it gets.
Canned whole tomatoes go in with their juice and are crushed with a spatula and fried first to drive off water. The cream gets only 3 minutes on the heat, and the soup keeps its bright tomato red.
Chicken thighs marinated in gochujang, chili flakes, and soy sauce are stir-fried with cabbage and onion like dakgalbi, Korea's spicy chicken stir-fry, then simmered in cream into a pink, gently spicy sauce. The cabbage and onion hit the pan before the chicken to draw out their sweetness. Thigh meat is used because it suits the cream sauce. Sauce fills the thick rigatoni tubes and gives each bite both heat and richness. Mozzarella melted in at the end stretches like the cheese on cheese dakgalbi. The final seasoning waits until the sauce is done because gochujang brands differ in saltiness.
Sun-dried tomatoes bring concentrated sweetness and spinach a soft bitterness, giving a heavy cream and Parmesan sauce some color and contrast. The chicken breasts, evened out to 1.5 cm, are seared for a brown crust first and then finished in the sauce. The browned bits left from that sear, scraped up with chicken stock, become the base of the sauce. More Parmesan makes it thicker, and a few drops of lemon juice at the end lighten the cream.
Stale bread soaked in an egg, milk and cream custard turns into something close to a soft pudding, while the pieces poking out on top bake into a crisp golden crust. Cinnamon gives the whole dish a warm, spiced smell. It started as a thrifty way to use up old loaves in England and the American South, and it is still best served warm, with vanilla ice cream or a caramel sauce melting over the top.
Bitter espresso meets soft, rich mascarpone, and the contrast grows rounder the longer the dish rests in the fridge. This classic version adds a spoonful of Marsala to the cooled coffee and whisks the yolks with sugar over simmering water before they meet the mascarpone and softly whipped cream. A heavy dusting of cocoa just before serving gives the last bitter note on top.
Because this soup is served cold, it gets seasoned a little more heavily than usual while still warm. Chilling dulls the taste of salt. Only the leek whites go in, cooked gently in butter without browning, and the soup stays a pale cream color.
The Roman original binds butter, Parmigiano and pasta water with no cream at all; this version adds a small amount of heavy cream. The sauce still depends on finely grated cheese, and adding it to a pan that is too hot makes it clump or split into grease. Plenty of freshly ground black pepper cuts through the richness of the butter and cheese.
Thin slices of potato soak up garlic-scented cream during a long, gentle bake at 170 degrees until they are almost melting, while the Gruyere on top turns golden. The layers need a short rest to set before cutting, as they slide apart when sliced straight from the oven.
Brown sugar and butter cook into a filling that sets at the edges but stays gooey, almost runny, in the middle of each small Canadian tart. This version adds cream and a few raisins, which give the toffee-like sweetness something to chew on. Eaten warm, the filling flows and the caramel smell is strongest, but once cooled it firms into a sticky, chewy layer.
Tap with a spoon and the thin caramel crust breaks like glass over cold, trembling vanilla custard. With little more than yolks, cream, sugar and a vanilla bean in it, the bean goes into the warming cream pod and all, not just the scraped seeds. The sugar is spread thin and torched right before serving.
Onion and celery are sauteed, simmered in stock and blended, then smooth peanut butter and cream are stirred in. Chunky peanut butter would spoil that smooth texture, and the only crunch comes from chopped roasted peanuts scattered on top.
Italian sausage, slipped out of its casing and torn into rough pieces, browns in the pan and leaves behind fat that becomes the base of a tomato and cream rosé sauce. Tearing rather than slicing gives the meat more ragged surface to brown. When the sausage throws off a lot of fat, blotting some away keeps the finished sauce from turning greasy once the cream is in. Gochugaru, Korean chili flakes, gets only about 20 seconds in the oil, enough for a mild warmth without a burnt edge, and the grooves of the fusilli catch both sauce and crumbled sausage.
Pale yellow with no browning outside and barely set, almost custardy curds inside, a French omelette gets rolled into a neat oval. The French call that soft center baveuse. With so few ingredients, heat control and how you move the pan decide nearly everything. The eggs are beaten only until yolk and white are even, without whipping in bubbles, and poured in while the butter is still foaming, before it browns. From the moment the eggs hit the pan, the whole thing should be done within 90 seconds; too much heat colors the surface and tightens the texture. Keep additions to herbs such as chives rather than heavy fillings.
Ricotta sweetened and studded with dark chocolate chips and candied fruit fills a liqueur-soaked sponge shell in this Sicilian celebration cake. Traditional cassata is wrapped in marzipan and a sugar glaze, while this version keeps things simpler with a thin coat of stiffly whipped cream. It is made the day before: an overnight rest in the fridge lets the sponge soak up moisture from the filling so the layers hold together, and thin, cold slices show flecks of fruit through the white cream.
More than twenty thin crepes, each with a layer of cream, stack into a cake whose cut face shows fine, tight stripes. It needs only a frying pan, no oven, and it tastes of egg, butter and dairy more than the sugar and flour of a sponge. Press a fork in and the layers slide gently apart.
Raw Italian sausage, out of its casing and crumbled, is browned first, and its fat becomes the cooking oil for the onion and garlic. When the chicken stock goes in, the brown layer on the bottom of the pot is scraped up too, carrying the sausage flavor through the whole soup. Potatoes are cut no thinner than 0.5 cm to hold their shape, and the cream is only warmed over low heat at the end.
Sweet corn sautéed in butter takes the edge off the gochujang, so the cream sauce leans sweet and mellow rather than fiery. Gochujang and cheese already carry salt, so any extra salt waits until the sauce has been tasted. Cavatappi, the corkscrew pasta, traps corn kernels in its coils, and the noodles and corn end up in the same bite.
Thick toast carries sliced roast turkey under a cheese-enriched cream sauce, the whole dish warmed through in the oven and then browned under the broiler, then eaten with a fork straight from the baking dish. Only a small pinch of salt goes into the sauce itself because pecorino brings much of it. The bacon goes on after the oven, where it stays crisp instead of softening under sauce. A dish rated for broiler heat is needed, as ordinary glass can crack.
Chestnut paste folded with whipped cream is piped in thin strands over small butter cupcakes until each one looks like a tiny Mont Blanc. In Japan the Mont Blanc is closely tied to autumn, and the cupcake format makes it easy to serve one per person rather than cutting a whole cake.
Instead of sitting on top as whipped coffee foam, the dalgona syrup goes straight into the mascarpone, so the coffee-sugar flavor runs through all of the cream. Left in the fridge for a full day before serving, the coffee and dalgona flavors settle into each other.
Gochujang cream pasta combines Korean fermented chili paste with an Italian-style cream sauce. Gochujang adds sweetness and heat, Parmesan contributes salt and aged cheese flavor, and bacon provides a crisp contrast. Onion and minced garlic cook in the fat left by the bacon. In this formula the chili paste is mixed directly with cream, rather than fried alone for a long time. Bacon, gochujang and cheese supply the seasoning, so the pasta water is left unsalted. The reserved water gives control over the sauce thickness; it is a supply for adjustment, not a quantity that must all go into the pan.
Boiled lobster meat is folded into a Dijon cream sauce, spooned back into its own split shell, topped with Parmesan and given a brief blast in a hot oven. Since the meat is already cooked, the sauce and oven only need to warm it; every extra minute tightens it. Bite-size pieces hold up better than fine shreds, which dry out first.