Celebrate National Crème Brûlée Day with Chef Jeremy Manley who shares how to make his Chambord Crème Brûlée recipe. See his recipe here: http://blendradioandtv.com/listing/chambord-creme-brulee/
Known as “San Diego’s Sustainable Chef,” Jeremy is executive chef and owner of Jeremy’s on the Hill California Style Bistro, in Julian. More at https://jeremysonthehill.com/
Big Daily Blend
Chef Jeremy Manley - How to Make Chambord Creme Brulee
(upbeat music) So if you've ever wanted to know how to make a killer creme brulee, you go to a restaurant and then all of a sudden here comes this torch and this amazing magical dessert. Well, Jeremy Manley is here on Big Ben Radio today to teach us how to do it. He is known as San Diego Sustainable Chef and is also the executive chef and owner of Jeremy's on the Hill, California style Bistro where guests enjoy fresh farm to table cuisine, all prepared from local ingredients, as local as they can get. And it's a popular place. It's in Southern California up in the mountains in a place called Wainole, which is the gateway to Julian, San Diego's most popular mountain destination. Go to his website, jeremesonthehill.com. It's got killer recipes on there too. He's also on Facebook and Twitter, chef Jeremy, how are you? - I'm doing great. How are you? - Hey, always good to have you on Big Ben Radio and we'd love to, you know, featuring your recipes on Big Ben Radio and TV magazine and the website blendradiontv.com and the newest one is gonna be your sham board creme brulee. So it's not just any creme brulee, it's sham board, but let's actually touch on what is creme brulee. This is like a fancy French thing, right? You know, it has this flair to it. It has this look to it and this like mysterious elegance to it, not just the name, but the presentation, the caramelized sugar on top. And as you take your spoon and you puncture the sugar and you reach down below the sugar and you dip into this custard deliciousness of cream and egg yolk and sham board flavored liqueur. And you add all this on the spoon and take a bite. And it's just, there's this synergy that happens of creamy velvety custard with the crunch of the caramelized sugar that it's just, it's the elegant flair, it's magic. It's so compact with flavor that it just bursts on your tongue. - So now when you say things like that, would this be a good, you know, dessert for Valentine's Day or any kind of romantic date night? Like, if, you know, if a man did this for his lady or the lady did it for her date, I mean, would that be, you know, something that would be like a good shoe in romantically? - It is, yeah, it's, there is a special love charm about sharing a creme brulee with your lover. There's one of those dishes that we overindulge in when we have it, but it's not something we have on a weekly or a monthly basis. When you come out to the restaurant, you'll find it on our menu. The shambourd one is my favorite creme brulee. We have it almost year round. And it's one of those dishes that you, most people don't prepare at home because they don't have the torch. They don't wanna take the time to third and infuse it with a liqueur and then temper your eggs with your hot liquid and place this hot liquid in a ramekin with a water bath and maybe sit it in the oven 'cause it's a low temperature cooking dish that takes about 45 minutes. But if you overcook the custard, the eggs will coagulate. So it's much better if you're at home cook or a beginner cook to go out to a restaurant and let them, you know, whine and dine you and treat yourself to the special dish. - But this is something you could master, right? I mean, isn't this something you could master and learn? I mean, if you learn the technique of a creme brulee, would it lead you to other recipes or to do different things with it? So that like, you know, how people have, you know, Aunt Mary knows how to make the best pecan pie wouldn't, this could be your thing. Like you could own it. - Yeah. Yeah, and what's great about the custard 'cause creme brulee is a custard with caramelized sugar on top. If you added more egg yolks and less cream, you could, when you temper in that hot liquid into your egg yolks, you can use that as a plate sauce. And you basically have like a, it almost like a, like the French word would be creme anglace. So it's like an egg custard that's for plate sauces or for if you have a chocolate cake, instead of, you know, having some milk, you drizzle a little bit of this creme anglace over the top of your cake. And it's kind of fulfilled that like, creamy richness that balances out that chocolate cake. It's the same ingredients that are in ice cream, but just different ratios. It's really fun 'cause if all of our listeners are going to attempt to make this at home, experiment with it after you've made it a few times, or like I said, add more egg yolks, add less cream. Take out the liqueur and add something different. Like you could, you could take mint leaves and steep them in the heavy cream. And now you have a mint flavored creme brulee or a mint flavored creme anglace. You could take your favorite tea bag. It could be a lemon verbena and you steep that just like you would tea, but instead of water, it's gonna be the cream base. And then you can make a creme brulee or a custard out of that. So understanding that your cream, your sugar and your eggs are the base. And you could add a liqueur to it. You could add a different kind of sugar to it to change the color. If you wanted a really clean color, you can use vanilla extracts instead of scraping a vanilla bean where the vanilla bean will actually leave the little pod, the seeds inside the pod throughout the dish. You know, that's the look that I like. It adds a nice little unique touch and every bite of creme brulee, you have this like hint of vanilla that's just bursting on your tongue and just sitting there. And that's, you know, when you're thinking of these earwines, the vanilla that's naturally present within the bouquet of the wine itself, it just kind of heightens it and takes it in a different dimension or allows for more roll around in your mouth and more flavor build up and contrasting. - So we've got fire and we've got rollarounds in the mouth. Okay, so everybody, like this is the thing. You've got like that texture. I think that's what it is that what makes it so essential is that you've got this creamy goodness and then all of a sudden you've got that little crispy part of the sugar on the top. And so it's, you know, creme brulee, like I'm not a custard fan and I remember having creme brulee in your restaurant, the shambourd creme brulee and going, okay, I like this. So it is about how that custard technique comes out because if it's not good, and my part comes from being in boarding school and custard in boarding school and I don't want to talk about that 'cause that's not good. It's not good, it just wasn't good, man. It's like, it was the same place where they made pizza and the base was ketchup, no joke, okay. It's like, so you could already understand where this came from, but when I was there at the restaurant and had this, I was like, dude, I got to dig this and it's about having the temperature right, but I want to talk about having a torch because like now that's some fun stuff, but let's go into actually this custard. So you're making this custard, looking at the recipe. Everyone, you can go to Jeremy's on the hill.com. It's there, we're also have it featured up on blendradiontv.com in the January, February issue of Big Blend Radium TV magazine that you talk about. Heavy cream, or half and half, so three cups of that. You have eggs, egg yolks, we have three whole eggs and then two egg yolks. So that's the thing where you're talking about having that difference and you've got vanilla and so you're basically making a custard from the cream, oh, and the sham board. We can't leave that out. And sugar, you put the sugar, you have sugar in there too, as well as what you're gonna put on top later, the granulated sugar, and so you're making this, but you said again, even making this custard in your recipe, it's like you're slowly mixing this together of a very low flame to make the custard, it's low. - Yeah, you're leaving the eggs out. What we're gonna do is just to go over the ingredients, again, we have the cream, the sugar, the vanilla bean or vanilla extract and the sham board. So you're gonna place that in your pot over a medium high heat, stirring occasionally with the whisk. As soon as the cream starts to steam, you wanna start focusing on it, 'cause if you let it go too much longer, what will happen is the milk solids and the cream itself will overflow and explode all over your stove. And it's a big mess. Any time you get sugar on something hot, it's gonna burn and you actually gotta scrub it off. So paying attention, you can turn your flame down a little bit if you have a couple of other things to do while you're preparing your creme brulee's. But again, when it starts perfuming the air, it's how you know it's close. And then when you start seeing it steam, it's really close. And from there, that's where you wanna whisk it a couple more times and then turn it off. And another stainless steel bowl, that's where you're gonna crack your egg yolks and whole eggs. Now this recipe calls for whole eggs and egg yolks because the alcohol is, if you just use the egg yolks, it won't suspend, it'll get liquidy, it won't firm up and get custard-like. So the egg whites are protein. So the protein actually helps trap the alcohol and give it some structure. Most creme brulee recipes don't call for egg whites. So if you were gonna use a different kind of liqueur, like Fra Angelico or Grand Marnier, you would still leave the whites in there. And if you were gonna make like a green tea creme brulee, you would take the whites out and just add an extra yolk to it. - Okay, okay, that's interesting. I didn't know that about egg whites and that. Okay, so that's cool. So if you're boozing it up, you need the egg whites. That's basically what you're doing. And because this is getting cooked in, but it's because it's slow, does the alcohol stain there, because I know we've talked about cooking with wine before and things like that, but the alcohol really does kind of burn off. And if you're baking with, you know, with wiggy, I could say, some wine or wiggy or cocktails, if you're actually putting it in your food, a lot of times that alcohol evaporates out. With this, does it just really basically leave you the flavor and take the alcohol away or no? - You get the flavor and you get the alcohol. If you were alcohol sensitive or you weren't looking for that in your dessert, what you can do is, before you add that gran, or before you add the shambour to your cream, you can actually reduce it in a pan on the stove, so cook out the alcohol. And by doing that, you know, put a little flame on there, let that, then when you, when your alcohol burns, whether it's tequila, shambour or wine, that's the alcohol that's cooking off. So once that flame is put out, cook it down just a little bit more, in case there's other trace elements of liquor or liquor or alcohol in there. And then go ahead and add that to your pot with heavy cream. - Okay. - Not necessary, however, I love alcohol, so I want to leave a little bit of that flavor in there, not just the flavor of the black. - We just need that little wiggie. - Yeah, you need that little wiggie in there, but now this is neat. So now you need a pitcher with a spout, you said that this is a big part of it. And so like you're going to put, so you're going to put your, your custard basically into these ramekins, but the ramekins are floating on water. Have I got this? - Well, yeah. So the ramekins weigh more than the water does, but you're creating a water bath. And by doing that, when you place your creme brulee in the oven, you're preventing the eggs from coagulating, which makes scrambled eggs. So your ramekins are going to go inside of a pan. You can put a little water in them at first. You don't want to fill it above halfway. About one third to halfway is ideal. Then you place with your pitcher that has the pour spout on it so you don't lose anything. You evenly divide that liquid between the ramekins. Now this is where it gets tricky. You want to leave about an eighth of an inch or a quarter of an inch from the top of the ramekin because you're going to have to pick up that tray and place it in the oven at 300 degrees halfway through cooking, about 18 to 20 minutes. You're going to want to rotate it. So you would turn it 180 degrees. That way if you have hot spots or cool spots in your oven, it's evenly getting cooked. So half your creme brulee won't be more done than the other half. - Oh, good point because that, I've noticed that, especially, I've actually noticed it more with electric ovens that you're going to get like stuff like that. I don't know, maybe I'm wrong. But just stove top ovens, they don't always have even heat. And you just have to, it's trial and error. And a lot of times, we'll just think it's also, messing up as a home cook. But a lot of times it's about learning your oven and how the distribution of the heat is. - Yeah, it's just like, if you have your favorite saute pan, a lot of pans, and if you get a copper pan, it conducts heat evenly. But you might have your favorite cast iron or Teflon pan that cooks great because you know it so well that the left half of the pan's going to heat up faster than the right half. So you could strategically put your carrots and your onions on one side. And then after a couple minutes, add the more delicate vegetables on the other side. - It's all ovens are different, all pans are different. And again, the more you use them, the better off you are with understanding how they work. Just comes with fun. - Yeah. I like this kind of challenge with the creme brulee because I just think you get to understand the signs of everything. And it is a big step like you're saying, but it's like one of those things about doing moose. It's like it feels like that, you know? Can you make a good chocolate moose without it falling? (laughs) Take it out of the oven it goes, bye bye, I'm sinking. I am the Titanic, you know, the chocolate Titanic. But with the creme brulee, okay, so you got it in there and now you got your little floaters in there and now you're twirling them around. I suggest everybody drinks a wine and listen to some really chilled out music to get you through this. But so how do you know when the creme brulee is done and you can start playing with the torch? 'Cause that's really where I want to get through. I want to play with the torch, that's dangerous, but you know. - So there's one analogy I always use for describing how to know when creme brulee's are complete. It's not the most politically correct terminology but I'm just gonna say it anyways. When your creme brulee's are still in the oven. When your creme brulee's are still in the oven. When you think they're about done, you can tap the pan and you'll notice a really nice jiggle. It's like the jiggle on... - Yeah. - Yes, it's just that, that really nice jiggle when you... Yes, when you see that really nice jiggle, that's how you know your creme brulee's are done. I don't have a scientific measurement. I don't have a temperature for you. If you're done and you pull them out of the oven, you could let them sit for about 10 minutes and then if you could pick up the ramekin and tilt it sideways and the custard is stuck to the sides of the ramekin and it's not slipping and sliding. That's the best way to tell if it's done or not. - Okay. - Okay, so it's a tight booty jiggle. - There we go. Yeah, it's like... - I'm gonna be the one who gets a couple for this. - Oh, well, I was thinking that silicone breast is the analogy I use for a more accurate description. - Okay, well, it's the same thing as me. - Oh, it just holds. - I had one person teach me the best way to choose the perfect mango that needs to fit in the palm of your hand to be the perfect size of the perfect booty that you lack. And I'm like, dude, I'm not into babies, but apparently, but I do go in the grocery store and pick up the mango go, like, is that it? Like, it feels good in the palm, like this feels right. So I don't know, man, I'm just saying. I mean, creme brulee, like I was saying, it seems like it's a sensual thing. So maybe even the cooking part of it is like, you know, the beginning of the, you know, the pre-part of the dinner, just saying. Okay, got to work your way up there. (laughs) - So yeah, from there, there's many different ways you could torch sugar. I love just straight granulated sugar because, I don't know, I'm comfortable with it. I can pick up the ramekin and take a creme brulee torch or any torch, sprinkle a little bit of sugar over the top and just, you know, you torch it, not putting the fire too close to the ramekin. So you could control it and the sugar doesn't expel or go all over the place because the closer you are to that torch head, the more oxygen and force is gonna be pushing that sugar around. So it should take you about a minute, 45 seconds, 45 seconds to a minute to finish torching a creme brulee ramekin with that sugar on there. - Okay. - You could also do equal parts brown sugar and white sugar. Then you spray a little bit of water on there and that's gonna give you a different texture. A lot of chef wear by Turbanado sugar. It adds a more clean flavor. I'm really just into the straight granulated sugar and then taking your torch and just torching off the top of the creme brulee. - Okay. So what do you get the torch? - You wanna light. You could order them online. You can go to any of your favorite home cook stores and they should have them. You're basically just looking for a torch that has a small butane canister fuel attachment with a torch head that's, I don't know, maybe five inches, four inches long and about three inches long, or three inches wide, excuse me. Yeah, but you do need a torch. You can't just use a lighter and try to light the sugar. - I'm not commenting on that. - Notice that there's not comments on that. I was really good, but, okay, so you get (laughs) it's all about, you know, okay. So check out the size of your torch. Because you don't want a big flamer, right? So, anyway, so when you do this, so now you're gonna invest in a torch, right, for this. Do you use the torch for anything else? - You know, it's a $20 investment. - Right, but I mean, what do you use it for after that? Do we use it on cocktails or what? Or is that a legal? - We know you could use it on cocktails. One of my other favorite things to do if I have bananas that are going, the sweet spots are kicking up on bananas. I'll actually, I'll cut the banana longways or I'll slice it into little silver dollar pieces. And I'll pour some sugar on that and I'll torch that. And that's a really good fix. It's like, you get that crunchy sugar with the sweetness of the banana. Yeah, there you go. - Yeah, you can use it for-- - You can use it for-- - You can use it for-- - That way. We said they've put rum and, yeah, that's what African style, when we were in Kenya, they used to, that flambade plantains were like the dessert dish of Kenya. When we were there, anyway, it's probably changed by now. But yeah, flambade. And the plantains, for some reason, were better than bananas with that. I don't know why. Or maybe that's just what was growing there more. I don't know, but it's good. You should try it. It's good. - I will. - They're like, yeah. So, okay, so it's worth the investment. And this would, so this could be people's signature dish. I like this. And so, the one thing though, just going back, when you were putting the sugar on, you talked about spraying some water. So you just get like one of those little squirt bottles and just goes like little plank plank in that first. - You know, that's if you use equal parts granulated sugar with equal parts brown sugar. If you're just using granulated sugar or a gram of sugar that she puts in her tea in the morning, you don't need any water. You literally just sprinkle, put a tablespoon on top of the creme brulee, on the creme brulee ramekin. Evenly shake it. So the sugar is coated evenly and distributed evenly amongst the top of the creme brulee itself. And then take your torch and just, you know, just start heating up that sugar. And when it starts to turn golden brown, move that torch to a different area of the creme brulee. 'Cause what'll happen is even though you removed your torch, it's still gonna be caramelizing, which is what gives your sugar that crunch and that texture when you break through it. Caramelization happens between 200, what is it, 180, is it 180? No, I think it's, oh man. I think it's, oh, I hope I don't get this wrong. I think it's 180 degrees to 240 degrees. So once you start seeing your sugar turn colors, you're probably at about 185, 190. And then once you're at about 200, you'll see it turn a light brown. And then that's when you wanna start moving the sugar and moving the torch around the top of the creme brulee ramekin itself. So you still have those 40 degrees or 30 degrees to, before you get too dark and too black. And that creme brulee-- Yeah, you're doing it. In English to burnt cream. But we don't want that overly roasted, caramelized sugar that's almost bitter. Maybe if you're doing something with beer, you're doing like a stout, some kind of a heavier creme brulee, you could get away with that. But this recipe's a lot lighter. This area is somewhat delicate, so you don't want that overpowering flavor to infiltrate your creme brulee. Well, this is perfect for like a date night then. So I have to ask you, like you're gonna have a creme brulee with your date, what music is in the background? Because it's gotta be romantic. And what do you drink with this? You know, I'm gonna, you know, I'm usually by the dessert round. A couple of martinis are already in me. Ooh. Possibly a bottle of wine by that point. So I would probably, whoo, you know, truthfully, I would go cognac. I would just go for a really nice 12-year cognac and just sipping on the cognac with that creme brulee 'cause that caramelized sugar is gonna play off the cognac very well. Chambord is a black raspberry flavored liqueur, so that'll kind of balance and contrast the cognac, so you'll have a lot going on between the custard and the sugar and the cognac. Yeah, I would, I would do a 12-year. And now what about the music? You gotta have the music. You gotta have that little ambiance. Well, if we're talking Valentine's Day, I'm gonna go, I'm gonna go with Marvin Gaye straight up. Okay. Oh yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, right on, right on. Everyone again, if you go to jeremyseonthehill.com, you'll get his recipes, he's got a great video section as well. Also a lot of how-to tips there. And also go check him out. If you go to San Diego or Southern California anywhere, I mean, if you're in Palm Springs, LA, Orange County, even Arizona, you're really close to jeremyse and makes a beautiful day trip, weekend trip, you know, spend a week. 'Cause most people, like people come up the hill, like we always say that about Julian. People come up the hill just to come eat at the restaurant, which is cool, like your own destination, dude. That's cool. Thank you so much. Thank you. There's a lot to do on there too. So thank you so much for sharing all these tips on how to do creme brulee. And because I think people get a little nervous about doing something like this, but it helps, I think, just keeps going, right? Just keep going with it. It does, yes. Yeah, right on. Thanks so much, Jeremy, you take care. Thank you, Lisa. If you take care of everyone again, I'm the recipe to be up on blendradiontv.com. Also in the January February issue a big blend radio and TV magazine. (upbeat music) (upbeat music) (upbeat music) (upbeat music)