Recipe review: Ming Tsai's Creme Anglaise

Over the weekend, we made Ming Tsai's Creme Anglaise recipe.

Ingredients were :

1 quart heavy whipping cream
1 quart full cream milk
16 egg yolks (I froze all the egg whites for friands, meringues and almond bread)
2 Tahitian vanilla beans (we used one, plus some of our homemade vanilla extract)
2 cups sugar

Recipe and instructions are here.

I've had this recipe on file for ages now, but always held off because it was such an expensive prospect. Then this year we discovered really cheap free-range eggs at the markets (30 for $7, normally $5-$6 for a dozen), and bargain vanilla beans. Suddenly it didn't seem quite as extravagent anymore.

The recipe worked well, my only issue being that it took much longer to turn into custard than Ming says (I had it on a particularly low heat, as I was worried about curdling it). Pete came in, took one look, moved it to a larger burner, then declared it ready about two minutes later.

We used this creme anglaise (it made more than the recipe said, maybe about 8+ cups) to make three sorts of icecream:

- We cooked down fresh and dried strawberries with sugar to make a simple jam, pureed it, and then mixed about 2/3 cup of the puree with 3 cups of the creme anglaise.

- We also make chocolate ganache (1 cup heated cream stirred into 150g/5oz dark Belgian chocolate), and stirred a cup of the cooled ganache into the creme.

- Finally, we mixed the leftover creme anglaise with whipped vanilla cream, and made vanilla icecream.

All up, the mix made about 13 cups of icecream (and would have made more had I not decided to try and make "pannacotta"...groan...let's not go there... ). It's a really nice recipe, and highly recommended.

Cheers, Celia

Thanks for the great report Celia. Ming Tsai was one of my first favorite chefs to watch. I love his recipes. Sounds like you made some amazing things. Maybe some pics?

And 1 Q, did you use vanilla bean or your extract?

Unfortunately, the only ingredient that is allowable under my current attempt at weight-loss (to get vacation excesses dealt with and more) is the vanilla. Sounds delish, but no way will I be cooking anything in the near future with whole milk, heavy cream or that many egg yolks.

Maria, instead of 2 beans, I used the scrapings of one bean, and added some vanilla extract. It was vanillary, without being overly so. The seeds are mainly so you get cool black specks in the finished product.

Robert, never mind. This was nice, but it was very rich, and there's so much stuff that's better for you and really just as good.