Recipe: Creme Brulee

Open the vanilla pod. Take the grains out and put them in the cream. Start heating slowly.

Mix the egg yolks and the caster sugar in a large bowl until the mixture becomes a light yellow colour. Add the boiling vanilla cream as you mix, making sure that the mixture does not become too bubbly. Then delicately pour this new mixture through a conical sieve (always make sure that there are no bubbles forming when you make creamy desserts).

Preheat the oven at 200°F (100°C).

Delicately pour the creme into small individual porcelaine or terracotta molds.

Cook for 1 hour and 15 min, the creme should not be cooked all the way.

Leave to cool and cover with brown sugar when you serve.

There are 3 ways you can caramelize your cremes: Either placing them on the oven grill, using a blowlamp or, as the fine culinary practice has it, with a white hot iron.

This recipe made its comeback thanks to Paul Bocuse's pastry chef Mr Sirio. It is certainly a bit expensive but once you have tasted it you will not be able to avoid thinking about the other 98% of cremes brulees that are confectioned with a rare concern for profitability, making "cremes renversees" or baked custard (with whole eggs, milk instead of cream and vanilla extract) covering them with sugar and caramelizing them with a blowlamp�

PS: As for the open vanilla pods, do not throw them away, place them in a closed jar and cover them with caster sugar. That way you will always have vanilla sugar at hand for all ourcake and pastry recipes.