Candied Pistachio Creme Brulee

Crème brûlée is breathtaking, and one of those desserts that you’re a bit afraid to mess with. Why screw up a perfectly good thing, right? Because sometimes pistachio comes along and says “I want to mess around”, and pistachio is hard to turn down. (I fell hard for pistachio on a trip to Italy back in the day when The Husband was still The Boyfriend. Pistachio gelato seriously threatened our relationship. Gelato carts were everywhere to be found, beckoning me with the strange green concoction… somehow sweet and salty at the same time. While some tourists would go for noisette [hazelnut] and others would gravitate towards chocolate, it was pistachio that had me at hello. Upon return from the trip, I went so far as to source the green gelato at a local Italian market- but it just wasn’t the same. My pistachio affair was over- best left behind on the Amalfi coast.)

This recipe is gluten-free, in case you care…

CRÈME BRÛLÉE:

1/2 cup unsalted shelled pistachios, skins removed (soaked in water overnight if possible, but not essential)

8 egg yolks

1/3 cup sugar (plus extra for sprinkling over tops of ramekins)

1 vanilla bean, scraped and seeded (or 1 teaspoon real vanilla extract)

2 cups heavy cream

CANDIED PISTACHIOS:

1 cup chopped pistachios (skins removed before chopping)

1 tablespoon light corn syrup

2 tablespoons sugar
1. In a food processor, mix pistachios until a paste forms. (If you soaked the nuts ahead of time, be sure to drain water first.)
2. In a large bowl, whisk yolks with sugar until smooth and pale (2 minutes). Add beans from a scraped vanilla bean, pistachio paste and heavy cream, and whisk until well incorporated. Allow to sit for at least 30 minutes (refrigerate if the mixture will sit for longer than 30 minutes).
3. Preheat oven to 300° and line a large casserole dish with a paper towel.
4. Strain mixture with a fine-mesh sieve into a bowl (one with a spout if you happen to have), leaving pistachio bits and raw eggy pieces behind.
5. Pour into four ramekins (or six shallow ones), and place into a casserole dish on top of paper towel (placed to prevent the ramekins from sliding around). Carefully fill the pan with water so it reaches halfway up the sides of the ramekins (this is called a water bath, FYI).
6. Bake for 40 – 50 minutes, until jiggly in the centers. Remove from oven and place ramekins on cooling rack. Cool completely before caramelizing sugar on top. (The weensie ramekins in the picture above took only 25 minutes to bake, FYI.)
7. CRUSTS: sprinkle 1 1/2 teaspoons of sugar over tops of each custard and using a crème brûlée torch or the broiler in an oven, caramelize the sugar until browned but not burned. Serve immediately (with candied pistachios overtop and on the side) and enjoy.
8. CANDIED PISTACHIOS: preheat oven to 325° and line a large baking pan with foil. In a medium bowl, combine pistachios and corn syrup together, then sprinkle sugar overtop and quickly spread into a single layer onto foil. Bake for about 8 minutes then cool completely, breaking into bits if they happened to clump together. (Warning- don’t get aggressive with the corn syrup like I did in this disaster.)
Tips:
- The vanilla bean is the real deal. It’s so much more fun to eat a custard with the little specks of the seeds in it, isn’t it? If you can get your hands on one of the pricey buggers, it’s worth it- just slice it in half lengthwise with a paring knife, and place it cut-side up on your cutting board. Use the edge of the knife blade to scrape out the seeds, holding the knife perpendicular to the bean. The seeds will be clumpy and moist, but don’t fret- they’ll separate as you whisk your yolk-sugar-cream mixture.
  (If you plan on using vanilla extract instead of a bean, just make sure you use real vanilla and not imitation flavoring. For a simple recipe like this, the vanilla needs to be legit or it will taste… imitationey.)
- What’s with the water bath? It helps the custards bake evenly in their ramekins, instead of just from the tops and bottoms through to the inside. Be careful not to splash water into the ramekins when pouring into the casserole dish.
- The crust: it’s just so darned important. Dab any excess moisture off the tops of the custard with a paper towel if necessary. Gently tip the ramekin around to distribute the sugar over the entire surface, and pour out any excess sugar (into the next ramekin). If you are using your oven broiler, make sure the ramekins (placed on a baking sheet to make handling easier) are within 5 inches of the broiler flame, and watch them from start to finish. You might want to move the pan around to prevent hot spots from burning the sugar in one particular area… and after you have finished browning the sugar, place the ramekins back in the fridge for at least 10 minutes to re-chill the custard.
- Storage: these wait nicely in the fridge without their crusts… so prepare in advance by a day or two and then do the crusts right before serving. Make sure to wrap them up well with plastic wrap- they say that the fat can absorb other smells in the fridge. Ew. I freeze the individual ramekins (again, sans sugar crust) and just thaw in the fridge, no problemo.
- Easy street? Skip the candying step of the pistachios, and just chop some up and sprinkle overtop of the caramelized crusts. No one will know that you could have candied the pistachios. (Click here to read the PistachiOOPS disaster.)
- Pistachio plans: yes, these should definitely be frozen and used in other dessert applications… like: served over a good vanilla ice cream, stirred into the Ginger Chewy Cookie batter before baking, sprinkled over a gingerbread cake with cream cheese icing, chopped and stirred into a Classic Shortbread Cookie… or just as a solo snack.
- Enjoy!
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August 18th, 2012 | More Sweets Please | No Comments | Tags: Goopy, Nuts