Crema Catalana - cooking recipe

Ingredients

600 milliliters single cream
1 pinch Tiny pinch of salt
1 stalk vanilla pod, split in half lengthways
1 stalk cinnamon stick
1/2 stalk lemon zest
1.2 stalk orange zest
6 egg yolks
100 grams castor sugar

Preparation

Preheat the oven to 1700C. In a small saucepan, combine the cream, salt, vanilla pod and scraped-out seeds, cinnamon stick and lemon and orange zest. Warm the cream mixture over a medium heat, stirring occasionally, and bring to a simmer. Remove the saucepan from the heat, cover with a lid, and leave to infuse for at least 30 minutes. Put the egg yolks and castor sugar into a large bowl, and whisk them until pale in colour. Remove the vanilla pod from the cream, and pour the infused cream through a sieve into the egg mixture, whisking continuously until well blended. Return the mixture to the saucepan and cook over a low heat, stirring constantly with a wooden spoon for about five minutes, until the mixture has slightly thickened. Place six or eight small ramekins in a deep roasting dish and pour the custard into the ramekins. Place the roasting dish into the oven and carefully pour hot tap water into the tray so that the water rises three-quarters of the way up the sides of the ramekins. Bake in the oven for about 25 minutes, or until the custards have achieved a wobbly set. Remove the custards from the oven and set them on a rack for 20 minutes to cool. Place them in the fridge for at least two hours, to chill fully. One at a time, dust each cold custard with one tablespoon of sugar and immediately take a brulee branding iron or gas torch and caramelise each top. Do not be afraid to go quite dark with the caramel - a subtle bitterness from the caramel is a very good thing.