Playing with Pumpkins, Part Two

My last post was taking a pumpkin and filling it with a stuffing made of pork sausage, apples, onions, bread, and spices.  It was tasty and the pumpkin had a mild flavor that was, fortunately, not bland or bitter like previous pumpkins I have cooked.

Now I want to cook with the other pumpkin I bought at a farmer's market.  The vendors said this would be such a sweet pumpkin and I was hoping they were right.

I decided to try it with a custard inside, studded with fruit and nuts.

I decided not to use the cream

I used Michael Ruhlman's book Ratio to help me plan the custard.  I chose the 2 to 1 ratio of half-and-half to eggs for a creamy but firm custard as the base for my dessert.

Ingredients

1 pumpkin, washed and rinsed
12 ounces half-and-half
3 large eggs
1/4 teaspoon almond extract
1/2 cup sugar
2 1/2 ounces sour cherries, coarsely chopped
1/4 ounce slivered almonds, chopped

My Notes

Before I knew how much half-and-half and eggs to use, I had to prepare and measure the pumpkin.

I cut off the top, putting the knife in at a slant, to make a lid and to leave as much of a bowl-like interior as I could.  Then I scraped out the seeds and strings from the inside and off the bottom of the lid.

When I rinsed the inside of the pumpkin, I filled it with water and measure how much it comfortably held.  It seemed like 15 ounces was about right, so I planned on a total of 18 ounces to work with Ruhlman's ratio:  12 ounces of half-and-half with 3 large (so 6 ounces) eggs.  I knew that could overfill it but I didn't worry about it.

I just guessed on the amount of sugar, extract, cherries, and nuts.  I wanted it mildly sweet and I thought the extract would compliment the cherries more than vanilla extract would.

Ruhlman suggested putting the half-and-half, eggs, sugar, and extract into some sort of blending device to make it smooth.  I used a stick blender.  I put the pumpkin into my Dutch oven.

Then I poured the custard mix into the pumpkin and stirred in the cherries and nuts.  This made the pumpkin very full so I put the lid on the side instead of on top.  Then I poured boiling water around the pumpkin, put the lid on the Dutch oven, and put the whole thing in a preheated 325 degree F oven.

After one hour, I took the lid off the Dutch oven to let the custard finish baking.  I notice the custard had risen and occasionally leaked out over the edge of the pumpkin bowl but I didn't worry about it.

It took another hour before I felt the custard had set enough to remove from the oven.  It wasn't entirely firm and I saw a lot of liquid around it, which I assumed was from the pumpkin itself.

I used two slotted spoons to remove the pumpkin from the baking pan and placed it in a bowl.

I then covered it with plastic wrap and put it in the refrigerator overnight.

The Verdict

The next day I tasted it.  The custard was firm, the pumpkin was tender, and the whole thing sliced beautifully.  It all stayed together when moving a slice to a plate for serving.

As I had expected, the cherries and nuts were mostly on the surface, but there was enough of them that it was easy to get a bite of them even when scooping up custard from deep in the pumpkin bowl.

And the flavor? 

First, the custard was just right.  Creamy, smooth, lightly sweet.  I couldn't taste the almond extract but that was okay by me.  The cherries weren't as sour as they were uncooked but still flavorful and added a nice bright sparkle of flavor to the mild custard.  The almonds did exactly what I wanted:  they were a bit of crunch that was much needed to balance the texture. 

The pumpkin was absolutely the best, sweetest pumpkin I have ever eaten.  No bitterness, sweet without being cloying, tender and smooth.  Even the rind was tender and easy to eat.  It worked so well with the custard that each mouthful was a pleasure. 

Oh my, Success!

I am saving the seeds in hopes of growing more of these pumpkins.  I wish I could remember what the vendors at the farmers market had called the variety!  I've done more reading on tasty pumpkins and I wonder if this is the variety called "Cinderella's Carriage."  It looks a lot like the description and it is soooooooo tasty. 

I wish more farmers grew this pumpkin.  It could start a trend for pumpkin-eating!  Like the nursery rhyme:  Peter, Peter, Pumpkin-Eater! 

A Quaking Pudding

I was wandering through a little bookstore in Los Angeles one day.  The cookbook section was small but had some interesting books, including the one I decided to buy.

ISBN 0 907325 653

Such a simple title!  I was intrigued to open it and was not disappointed.  From page 7:

John Evelyn (1620 - 1706), virtuoso, diarist and author, was the second son of a prosperous gentry family of Wotton in Surrey, whose wealth was founded on the manufacture of gunpowder in Queen Elizabeth's reign.

The description goes on to tell us that, among other things, he was a founder of the Royal Society, and "the first gardener-cook for whom meat was incomplete without a salad."  He was particularly interested in gardening, architecture, and city planning.

The editor of this volume, Christopher Driver, tells us that he first saw the manuscripts of John Evelyn some time in the 1950s:

... I saw exhibited there a large volume bound in decorated calf gilt, with Evelyn's arms on the cover and his woodcut bookplate inside.  It was titled, Receipts Medicinal, and proved on inspected to contain not only prescriptions for sick cattle and humans, but receipts for the still-room, formulas for preserves and perfumery (many of these in Portuguese), and culinary recipes.  (page 8)

He later went back and typed up the receipts of cookery.  "Evelyn's neat - but faint - hand always gives me a frisson, as though a friend had planted a great walnut tree three centuries ago."

The story of John Evelyn's life, as far as the editor could determine, is a good read.  Mr. Evelyn lived during a time of change in England, and his manuscripts reflect that.  I recommend it.

There are 343 receipts listed, some of which have a title only and no text.  There are many repeats.  Mr. Driver has reproduced them faithfully, including the spelling of the time and making notes about words that were crossed out or added in after the original words were written.  He also tried to determine the relationships that are mentioned in the receipts, tying the name or title to a person known at the time, and how Mr. Evelyn or his family might have known them.

Especially useful is the Glossary, starting page 179, that defines so many of the words used in the receipts.  I think I would use this when reading other old recipes, too.  Did you know a "kilderkin" was 16 gallons of beer?

The first recipe that caught my attention was #76, on page 69:

A quaking pudding

Take eight egges a pinte of creame, 4 spoonefulls of flower, a nutmeg a little rosewater, a quantity of sugar you thinke fitt, wett the cloath you intend to boile it in, then floure it and let it boile two houres.

I have made boiled puddings before and usually enjoy them, so I wanted to try this one.  The idea of it "quaking" made me think it might be more delicate than the puddings I've tried that used a lot of flour or had a base of bread crumbs.

My Redaction

8 eggs
1 pint heavy cream
4 tablespoons flour
1/2 tablespoon freshly ground nutmeg
1 tablespoon rosewater
1/2 cup sugar

See the nutmeg bits?  I grated them then pounded the rest in a mortar.

First I filled a large pan up halfway with water and also filled the kettle, and began heating the water in both.

I broke the eggs into a bowl and beat them with a fork.  Then I poured in the cream and stirred it well.

The flour was spooned into the mixture.  First I stirred it to break up the clumps of flour, then beat it more vigorously to distribute the grains well.

The nutmeg and rosewater were stirred in next.

Finally, I added the sugar and stirred until all the sugar was dissolved.

The mixture looked a lot like pancake batter, but was very thin.

Yes, just like pancake batter.

I rinsed the pudding cloth well (this gets rid of any residual soap from the last washing), then draped it over a bowl that was deep enough to hold all the mixture.

I sprinkled flour over the cloth.  It shouldn't be thick but it should be spread around well.

The picture doesn't show it well, but the cloth is at least lightly sprinkled.

At this point the water in the large pan was simmering and the kettle was steaming.

So I poured the mixture into the cloth, pulled the edges up and gathered them into a bundle to contain the mixture.  I tied the edges together with a sturdy cotton string, not too snugly because you need to leave room for the pudding to swell.



Some of the mixture was seeping out so I worked quickly to get the cloth put into the large pan of hot water.  As soon as it touched the water, the parts seeping out cooked and stopped the leak.

I poured in enough hot water from the kettle to nearly fill the pan, putting the water level an inch or so below the top edge of the pan.

Finally, I gathered the excess cloth into a bundle and rested it on one of the handles of the pan.  This keeps it from falling over the edge and possibly catching on fire.

Bubble, bubble, toil and trouble!

I adjusted the flame under the pan until the water was just simmering without boiling over or bouncing the cloth around.  I noticed the water was circulating around the whole thing, and I liked that.

I set the timer for 2 hours.

After two hours of gently boiling it, I pulled the pudding cloth from the hot water, let it drain back into the pan for a minute or so, and then placed the whole thing in a bowl.  I removed the string and opened the cloth -- it is hot so be careful when touching it.

The top, as it came out of the cloth.

I could see the pudding was, indeed, quaking!  It looked delicate so I carefully put my serving bowl over the pudding's bowl and inverted it.  This allowed the pudding to transfer without breaking or having to pull the cloth off.

The underside.  I removed that bit of eggshell before serving.  The brown specks are nutmeg.

I sprinkled a little ground mace over the top to decorate it before serving.

It needed something decorative around the edges but that didn't happen.

The Verdict

The pudding was served still warm as a side dish to some pork confit on a bed of apples and onions, and a tossed green salad.  (Remember, John Evelyn thought meat was incomplete without a salad!)

It was easy to remove pieces with a spoon.  It was soft but firm enough to hold its shape.

Cut away view, from the side.

The texture was mostly smooth, meaning it felt smooth on the tongue but looked a little lumpy. 

The flavor was very delicate:  the rosewater and nutmeg combination suggested that some fruit had been added.  My guest taster thought there might be vanilla in it.  The sweetness was a little too much for me for it to be a side dish -- I think next time I would add only 1/3 cup sugar.  But it wasn't bad, and seemed to emphasize the sensation that fruit had been added.

My guest taster wondered if there was cheese in it, which I attribute to the heavy cream and the texture.

The ground mace was warmed by the pudding and provided a lovely scent to entice our taste buds.

It was, as I suspected, a delicate custard.  The little flour in it probably acted as a binder to allow me to turn it out into a dish without it breaking.  But that also allowed it to quake, or wiggle when the bowl was moved. 

A success, for certain!  We both enjoyed it as a side dish and I look forward to having the leftovers for breakfast or lunch.

Eating an Egg Sausage - part two of a recipe from the Transylvanian cookbook

Yesterday I posted about how to make an egg sausage.  The recipe was from

The Prince of Transylvania’s court cookbook 

From the 16th century 

THE SCIENCE OF COOKING

You can find a copy of it here:
 http://www.fibergeek.com/leathernotebook/files/2018/05/Transylvanian-Cookbook-v3.pdf

The recipes I have tried are here:  Prince of Transylvania's court cookbook

This is recipe number 44, found on page 11.


Cow intestines stuffed with sweet milk. 

Wash the intestines so that they will not smell; you will need sweet milk, eggs, saffron, black pepper, but mostly eggs. Mix these together, this is the stuffing. Add some parsley leaves to the milk, tie the two ends of the intestines so that the stuffing won’t leak. Poach it in hot water so that the milk will get dry like a liver. If you’re cooking it, cook it in another pot of clean water, once cooked, pass the water through a strainer, pass some sweet milk through a strainer on top of it, put some parsley leaves on it and cook it like that. Add some saffron half an hour before serving it, add some black pepper and salt.

You can view my redaction here.

Today I will tell you the results (in other words, I ate them!) of the sausage-making adventure.

When I considered the instructions, I decided that first you cook the sausages in water, and then make a sauce (of sorts) in which to further simmer the sausages and possibly serve them in it.

The sauce ingredients

1/2 cup hot water from simmering the sausage
5 threads saffron
1 cup milk
1/8 teaspoon salt
1/8 teaspoon pepper
1 tablespoon chopped parsley




I put the bigger of the two sausages into a pan with just enough water to cover it and simmered it until I thought it was heated all the way through.  When the water started to simmer, I took out 1/2 cup, strained it, and put the saffron in it to steep.

Simmering sausages!

Once the saffron had steeped for about 20 minutes, I stirred in the milk, salt, pepper, and parsley.

Then I poured the water off the sausage, rinsed and cleaned the pan, wiped the foam off the sausage, and put the sausage back in the pan.  I poured the milk mixture over it and brought it to a slow simmer, turning the sausage over once.

Not a lot of sauce in which to simmer.

I waited about 15 minutes and decided that the sausage was cooked enough.  I wasn't clear on how to use the milk sauce and it seemed thin and not very flavorful, so I chose not to use it when I served the sausage.

I put the whole sausage on a plate and cut it into serving-sized pieces.  I garnished it with a little more parsley but it didn't seem to matter.



The Verdict

I served it as it was.  The focus was on flavor and texture.

First, the sausage casing was rubbery and difficult to cut.  I have since learned from my online friends that I should have let the sausages sit uncovered in the refrigerator for 24 hours to fix that problem.

The filling was soft, with bits of the seasonings either at the top (parsley floats) or at the bottom (pepper sinks) and nothing in between.

  

The texture was strongly reminiscent of flan -- a very delicate, fine-textured custard.  It was the texture I had hoped to achieve when I first envisioned this recipe.

The flavor was very bland.  I could not taste the seasonings except when I chewed on a piece of casing.  This was okay sometimes but other times I got a blast of pepper, which I did not enjoy.

Overall, the group impression was, "Meh."  Not interesting.  I found myself thinking of flan even more as I ate it, and wishing there was a caramel sauce over the top.  (Not that it would go with the parsley or pepper.)

I would call it a success in that the recipe turned out as I expected.  But we did strategize on how to improve the eating experience for the rest of the sausages and for if I made it again.

For Eating the Rest

I took several pieces and fried them, like regular sausages, in olive oil.  That crisped up the casings but did nothing to make the flavor exciting.

Then I cut up the rest of the pieces and cooked them with chopped ham and cubed cheddar cheese.




This was tasty but why not just put the ham and cheese with scrambled eggs?  Why go to the trouble of making these sausages?

For Making It Again

My first thought was to make the filling more like scrambled eggs, so possibly make it 2 parts eggs (or more) to 1 part milk.  That might keep the seasonings better distributed in the filling, too.

The next idea was to simmer the spices in the milk first to flavor it, then let the milk cool before mixing it with the eggs.

I also thought it would be interesting to make it more flan-like by making it sweet and use spices like cinnamon, and then serving it with a thin caramel sauce.  A dessert sausage!  Quite the sotelty, I think.

It Was Asked

My guest tasters asked, "Why do you think this was made in the first place?  What made this recipe important enough to be included?"

My guess is that it is intriguing.  It is a pretty sausage to look at, with the yellow and the speckles of seasonings.  That is enough to get a guest's attention.  And then when you discover it is a sausage filled with eggs (or custard) instead of the usual meats, that can cause discussion.  I think if I could fathom the right egg-to-milk ratio and get the seasonings to distribute well, it could be a very tasty treat on my guests' plates.

I won't make any promises, but if I do this recipe again, I will report on it.  I do still have plenty of sausage casings left over!

UPDATE:  My friend, SS, believes this recipe might have been invented as a food for Lent.  It would make a meal more like you were eating meat, giving variety to an otherwise repetitive diet.  I think that is an excellent observation.

Making an Egg Sausage (part 1) -- Another Transylvanian cookbook recipe

It is time to pick a recipe from the Transylvanian Prince's Cookbook!

This is the digital translation of a book in Hungarian that I have tried recipes from before.  Here is the book reference:

The Prince of Transylvania’s court cookbook 

From the 16th century 

THE SCIENCE OF COOKING

You can find a copy of it here:
 http://www.fibergeek.com/leathernotebook/files/2018/05/Transylvanian-Cookbook-v3.pdf

The recipes I have tried are here:  Prince of Transylvania's court cookbook

Today I picked recipe number 44, found on page 11.


Cow intestines stuffed with sweet milk. 

Wash the intestines so that they will not smell; you will need sweet milk, eggs, saffron, black pepper, but mostly eggs. Mix these together, this is the stuffing. Add some parsley leaves to the milk, tie the two ends of the intestines so that the stuffing won’t leak. Poach it in hot water so that the milk will get dry like a liver. If you’re cooking it, cook it in another pot of clean water, once cooked, pass the water through a strainer, pass some sweet milk through a strainer on top of it, put some parsley leaves on it and cook it like that. Add some saffron half an hour before serving it, add some black pepper and salt.

My Redaction

The idea is that this is a sausage that is filled with an egg/milk mixture.  When I first read it I thought the filling should be like a stiff custard.  To make a custard, you use roughly 2 parts milk to 1 part egg, however the instructions say "mostly eggs", which made me think (as the translators noted) this should be more like scrambled eggs.  I struggled with this and so compromised by using roughly equal parts milk to egg.

This is my first time ever working with sausage casings (pig intestines, not cow) so I was a little nervous.  I asked my online friends who make salumi and used their experienced advice on how to poach it without overcooking it.

12 eggs (2 1/2 cups), well-beaten
3 cups milk
2 tablespoons fresh parsley, finely minced
1 1/2 teaspoons ground black pepper
saffron, ground in the mortar (see close up picture for quantity)

1 four foot and 1 two foot sausage casings (32 mm diameter), soaked and rinsed

This much saffron.

The sausage casings had to soak for nearly an hour, so while that was going on I put water in my big Dutch oven and put it over high heat with the cover on.  When it got to a boil, I turned the heat to low.

The four foot casing

The beaten eggs, milk, parsley, pepper, and saffron all went into a pitcher.  I saw that this liquid stuffing would be best poured into the casing and the pitcher made it easy to control the flow.  I noticed that the parsley and pepper floated to the top, so I kept a spoon handy and stirred it well just before each pouring.



Once the casings were ready, I slid them over the end of a funnel and tied a knot in the end.  I decided I would work over a bowl, just in case I lost my grip on the casings or there was a leak or other disaster.  It was really pretty easy to pour the egg mixture into the casing and allow the casing to slide off into the bowl.

The entire four foot casing fit over the tip!

The parsley and pepper floated to the top anyway.

When the first casing was full (the four foot one) and tied off, I realized I had about 1 1/2 cups of filling left, so I soaked the second casing.

I think it is pretty!

At this point I was ready to poach the sausage.  I brought the water back up to a boil, turned off the heat, put the sausage in, then put the lid on and set the timer for 20 minutes. At the halfway point, I turned the sausage over.

When the time was up, the sausage was firmer and lighter yellow in color.  I moved it into a bowl of ice water, as my salumi friends said it was best to poach it gently (as I did) and then shock it in the cold water.  I added more ice as needed to keep the water very cold and turned it over once.
It is obvious in these pictures that the parsley and some of the pepper floated to the top and the rest of the pepper sank to the bottom along the length of the sausage.

The "up" side

The "down" side

It took about 20 minutes until the sausage was cool to the touch.  Then I drained it and put it on a towel on a plate.  I put it into the refrigerator, uncovered, to dry and continue to cool overnight.



The second sausage was prepared just like the first, except it only took about 10 minutes in the ice water to get it cool to the touch.  I noticed that a lot of the pepper had sunk to the bottom of the pitcher, despite my attempts to keep it afloat with stirring.  It was hard to get it to go into the sausage casing.

Pre-poaching sausage number two.

This is the end of making the egg sausages.  Tune in tomorrow for part two, eating the sausages!

Pear Patina -- A Roman Empire Dessert Custard

I have acquired several Roman Empire recipe books over the years but the one I am attracted to the most was purchased in England and written by Sally Grainger.

ISBN 1-903018-44-7

I first wrote about it here, where I tried her recipe for modern day liquamen, a fish sauce used in many, many Roman dishes.  I stand behind my previous statement that the recipes she redacts are reasonable for the modern kitchen and the modern palate.  This recipe, a "fruit-based egg custard flavored with cumin" made me doubt that just a little, although her comments assured me that this "has been one of my more popular dishes at dinner parties and at reenactment demonstrations".

You may wonder why I doubted.  The answer is

the addition of fish sauce to a dessert always causes consternation until it is tasted.  Anyone who saw the television series What the Romans did for us with Adam Hart-Davies may possibly remember it was called a 'fishy custard.'  They gave it this name because they couldn't get past the fish sauce and see how delicious the other ingredients (honey, raisin wine) could be.

So I put my trust in Ms. Grainger and went ahead with the patina.

Pear patina, Apicius 4, 2, 35

1 1/2 lb Conference pears
200 ml red wine
50 ml passum  (see my notes, below)
2 tbsp clear honey
1 tbsp olive oil
1 - 2 tbsp fish sauce
4 eggs
1 tsp cumin
generous freshly ground black pepper

Fish sauce on the right

Peel and core the pears and chop them roughly.  Cook them till soft in the wine and passum.  Pass the whole mixture through a sieve or process it until smooth.  Add the honey, olive oil, fish sauce and 4 eggs and beat smooth again.  Dry-roast the cumin and grind to a fine powder.  Add it to the custard, then season with black pepper.  Pour into a greased casserole dish and bake for 20 minutes, or until it sets, in a moderate oven (375 degrees F, 190 degrees C, mark 5).  Serve warm with a final sprinkling of freshly ground black pepper.

My Notes

I did not have passum, which she describes as

a dessert or raisin wine made with grapes that were either allowed to shrivel on the vine or dried on rush mats.  More sweet must, from other grapes that had not been dried, was used to aid the pressing of the fruit. ... It is not a process we can duplicate but there are modern varieties of sweet wine that correspond to this. ... Any very sweet dessert wine such as a heavy muscat or a heavier Sauternes will also do.  Passum could either be dark or pale as long as it has that raisin flavour.

I had looked around for something like that but wasn't certain that I was getting the right type.  My flash of insight was to use a sweet Chardonnay (but not too sweet; I knew my dinner guests!) and to add dried raisins to simmer with the pears.

My latest visit to the local farmers market provided me with some very bumpy but lovely Bartlett pears. I used two (not both pictured) to get to 1 1/2 pounds.



The fish sauce was my latest rendition of reduced grape juice and dark fish sauce in a 1-to-2 ratio.  Yes, it tasted fishy on its own but I trusted the recipe and even used two full tablespoons.

The soft pears, raisins, and wine mix were pureed in my blender.  They were still hot from the cooking so I worried a bit about putting in the eggs and having them cooked right there.  However I didn't waste any time getting the eggs, honey, olive oil, and fish sauce put into the blender and processing the mixture until smooth.

I'm very glad I roasted the cumin seeds and ground them.  They smelled good.

A word of caution:  my blender jar holds five cups and it was very full.  I put the lid on and held it tight while processing the whole mix.  If I hadn't, there would have been patina mix all over the kitchen!   For the cumin and pepper, I mostly stirred it with a spoon and then lightly tapped the button to complete the mixing.  I probably should have put it into my food processor instead.

Too full!  Hang on tight!

I used a large casserole dish so the resulting patina was thin.

A pretty pink puddle

The custard was set after the recommended 20 minutes.  I let it cool a little while we ate dinner.

The surface looks almost bread-like

The Verdict

I served small pieces to my three guest tasters because it was so different.  Everyone liked it, including the person who does not normally eat desserts.

Visually it was pink (from the red wine) and lightly bumpy in texture, and it smelled spicy and sweet.

Looks like a pink brownie.

Each bite was a complex taste experience.  The cumin and pepper were there and needed to be there but did not announce themselves as distinct flavors.  Just a lovely spicy note.  I could taste the honey very clearly but my guest tasters didn't without thinking about it.  The pear flavor was dominant for me and I was glad.  The custard part came across as the right base to present the other flavors and stayed in the background.  No, none of us tasted anything fishy.  Just very, very good.

Fruity, spicy, creamy (with the crunch that pears bring), with just the right amount of umami to make the flavor deep.  I loved it!

One guest thought I should have used a smaller casserole dish, to make the patina thicker.  I agree although the thin version was certainly lovely.

Another guest told me he did not like the texture.  He does not like creamy foods much (like ice cream, and yet we are still friends) but prefers the creamy to have chewy or crunchy with it.  So we discussed options and agreed that a topping of chopped, toasted almonds would have been a stellar addition.  I would serve a bowl of the nuts on the side to allow my guests to choose.

There were leftovers, which I tried rewarmed -- very good, almost better than the first time -- and cold, which was also lovely.  Sometimes I put pepper on top and sometimes not.  Still very excellent.

Yes, success.  I would do it again.  An intriguing flavor mix with just enough fruity pear flavor to make it seem like a dessert.

Custard, Again. Baked and with Eggs (intentionally)

Whew!  July was a busy month and I barely got to cook, much less cook for my blog.

My experience with eggless custards and the nifty book, American Cookery by Amelia Simmons,

ISBN-13:  978-1-4494-2313-1

made me want to try one of her egged custards.

Reference Custard #2

How would unbaked be different from baked?  Eggless from egged?  I had to try.  (Besides, the weather has been very hot and I have learned that custards are an excellent dessert:  cool, light, not too sweet, and excellent with berries.  Refreshing!)

My Redaction

1 quart whole milk

2 tablespoons sugar

6 eggs, beaten

1 tablespoon brandy

1 tablespoon moscato wine (sweet)

1/2 tablespoon rose water

generous grating of nutmeg

I like the dramatic look of this picture.

All ingredients were mixed well.  The nutmeg tends to float on top; I don't know how to change that.

The custard mix was ladled into small glass and ceramic bowls.  Each one held about 4 ounces of the mix even if the bowl could have held more.  

The oven was preheated to 300 degrees Fahrenheit.

I placed the bowls in a deep pan, placed the pan on the oven rack, then poured hot water into the pan until the water level was close to even with the custard mix level.

Pre-water.  It is easier to move into the oven that way.

Post-baking

The custards were baked for 30 minutes.  That is when a knife blade dipped into the center of a custard came out clean.  Visually the custard was "jiggly" and a little puffy.

Dipping in the knife

The blade is clean

The pan was carefully removed (no hot water spills!) and set out to cool a little.  Then I used a spatula to lift the bowls from the water.  They went right into the refrigerator without any covering.

The Verdict

After chilling them for a few hours, I served the custard.  It was firm, smooth, and pleasant to look at.  The berries sat on top instead of sinking in (as they did for the unbaked custards).  

A spoonful shows how well the custard set up:  you can see an edge on it.

The texture was smooth, creamy, soft, delicate.  

The flavor was not at all what I expected.  I loved the custard taste and feel but I could not taste the brandy or the wine and only tasted a little of the nutmeg.  It mostly tasted like rosewater.  

I love rosewater but that was not the only flavor I wanted.  I also love the brandy and nutmeg flavor combination so I was disappointed.  I don't mind I didn't taste the wine and perhaps next time I would make it a little sweeter.  However I would use less rosewater and much more brandy and nutmeg!

Vanilla would be good, too.

There were enough bowls of custard that I tried it in different ways.  My favorite was for breakfast with some buttered, spiced crumbs on top along with a little fruit. 

This was a success.  I would just change the flavorings to suit my preferences.  Yum!