Entertaining Annie featuring Baileys crème brûlée and white chocolate terrine and salt caramel sauce

My friend Annie was round for dinner, acting as the last taster for my entry to the AA Home Cooking Competition. Apart from the secretive main course the menu was:

Unearthed Tapas Selection
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AA Home Cooking Competition entry
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Baileys crème brûlée and white chocolate terrine and salt caramel sauce

Unearthed Tapas Selection
Unearthed develop, source, package and sell continental foods to the supermarkets. We had their mini chorizo sausages (which I roasted so that the beautiful paprika oil began to be released), hot chilli olives, barrel aged Greek feta and French pavé peppercorn salami. I wrapped a few pieces in some of the salami and roasted that with the sausages.

It was all delicious (and very labour un-intensive) although the olives were hot beyond words!

Main course
I'll not be putting the details up about the main course until the closing date for the AA Home Cooking Competition has passed. However, I will say that the main course was tweaked a little since Jo and Liza's visit.

Baileys crème brûlée and white chocolate terrine and salt caramel sauce - recipe adapted from Gary Rhodes.
Given the number of egg whites I'd used to create the angel food cake for my round of the ICCHFC, I had quite a few (15, to be exact) egg yolks in the freezer. In order to use some of these up I went for a crème brûlée.

I'd bought ramekins and a gas gun especially. For an extra contrast in texture I added chopped pistachios to the sugar topping. However, I didn't do well in caramelising the sugar topping and unfortunately managed to burn some of the nuts. I think I may have tried to add far too much sugar in one go. Lesson learnt is to use less sugar (and even use icing sugar) and do it in layers to get a good coverage. I served the brûlées with the white chocolate terrine and salt caramel sauce.

Ingredients: (to make 4)
6 egg yolks
33g caster sugar
240ml double cream
165ml Bailey's
1oz pistachios, finely chopped
2oz caster sugar

Method:
1. Beat the yolks and sugar together until pale.
2. Bring the cream and Bailey's to the boil in a pan.
3. Whisk the flavoured cream into the yolks then share between four ramekins.
4. Put the ramekins in a deep roasting tray and fill to halfway up the ramekins with boiling water.
5. Bake at 90°C for 40-50 minutes, until just set. There should be a slight wobble in the centre. Cool and refrigerate.
6, Sprinkle the top of the brûlée with sugar and glaze until the sugar become a golden brown caramel.
NOTE: Brûlées need to be glazed straight from the fridge and eaten at room temperature.

P.S. Annie has asked me to cater at her boyf's big birthday next year. Could this be the start of something?