Its "Custard", like "Mustard"

Last night was all about custards, and we began with a demo from Chef of the three different types- stirred, starch bound and baked. Thankfully, the names are very descriptive of the custards themselves, which makes them easy to memorize- no mnemonics necessary!
Stirred custards are typically crème anglais. This is a thin custard used as a sauce or as an ice cream base. You add cream to egg yolks and sugar, then simmer until it reaches the point where it coats the back of a spoon and when you run your finger against the back, a clear line/barrier stays between the top and bottom half of the spoon coating. This is called “Na Pont” in French. I still have never seen this word in print- I just tried googling it but no luck, I had only ever heard Chef use it. So when he asked until what stage you cook the crème anglais, I said “napont”, praying I had pronounced it correctly. I hadn’t, but I dropped my voice at the second syllable enough for Chef not to notice. Bullet dodged. I felt better about it by noticing that Chef says “cuh-stid” and not “cust-ird”. True, that is his accent talking and not lack of knowledge, but still- we all got problems.
Starch bound custards are also cooked stovetop, but are much thicker (because they use starch as well as eggs as a thickening agent). A good example of a starch bound custard is pastry cream. Thick, smooth, delicious and no confusing French words. Baked custards are started like stirred; warmed milk/cream added to eggs- but its not thickened on the stove. Rather, you bake it- either on its own or in combination with other things to create entirely new delicacies and desserts.
Using a baked custard base is how we made Flan, B&B and Crème Brule. The caramel on Monday night was for Flan, in the end, cooked into little individual cups that we lined with our caramel. Fun fact: Crème Caramel is just like Flan and sometimes Chef uses the terms interchangeably. Pour the custard base into the molds, bake, and unmold when cool. Voila! Flan.
B&B is Bread and Butter pudding. Here, the base is poured over pieces of cut bread and studded with raisins. The ones my partner and I made lacked some of the raisins due to the fact that I ate half of them. But that’s neither here nor there. These smelled heavenly and were described as the best French toast my classmates had ever had. This seemed like a long process to make something that tastes like French toast, but I’ll still try to make it. They smelled so good.
Finally, Crème Brule. These are made by baking the custard base in special dishes (a thin layer only!) in a hot water bath. Once cooled, coarsely granulated sugar is sprinkled over the top and torched. Repeat the sugar/torch process three times until a nice hard shell has formed at the top. Let cool and dig in! Or, let cool and watch others dig in!
Finally, Chef had us make Chantilly Cream. What, you haven’t heard of Chantilly Cream? Well, you’ve eaten it. It is just sweetened and flavored whipped cream. When you make whipped cream by hand (I’m not sure why any of you would) always beat with cold cream, over a bowl of ice. This helps the cream whip up faster and prevents it from separating into butter. Interesting to note that my partner confused vanilla extract for Rum and used that instead. Also note that it worked well, if you like rum flavor, and that i'm not entirely sure that it was a mistake. It was a nice accompaniment spooned on top of raisin studded bread pudding in any case.

-Custard-Crazed Sarah