Cream of Blueberry Soup with Yogurt Charlottes

Remember that song from A Chorus Line: "Dance 10, Looks 3"??? Or when someone says, "Wow, you have a GREAT face for radio!"??? Um, yeah. That pretty much sums up my experience with this particular dessert.

Taste? The best.

Presentation? Not so much.

I'll explain it as I go.

Up first? The yogurt charlottes. The first thing I did was combine some cream with some of the sugar in a small saucepan and bring it up to a simmer, stirring until the sugar was dissolved. I then soaked a gelatin sheet in some cold water to soften it, wrung out the excess water and stirred it into the hot cream and sugar until it was dissolved:


Then, I stirred in the whole milk, plain yogurt and let the mixture come to room temperature:


Time to pour them into little 4-ounce stainless steel molds! The kitchen supply store didn't have any, but what they did have were 3.5-ounce plastic molds in one sheet, so I took a chance and made them using these:



I covered them with some aluminum foil and put them in the refrigerator for about a day and a half. Next, I made the crème anglaise. I scraped the seeds from a vanilla bean into a saucepan, added the vanilla pod, cream, milk and some sugar and brought it to a simmer, stirring to dissolve the sugar:


Separately, in a bowl, I whisked 5 large egg yolks with some more sugar, tempered it with the hot cream mixture, then poured the tempered yolks back into the saucepan with the cream mixture and stirred it until the custard thickened and coated the back of my wooden spoon. Sound familiar? Yeah -- you read about this process a few posts ago when I made the ice cream... because crème anglaise is pretty much pre-frozen/melted vanilla ice cream. I don't have a photo of the final crème anglaise, but melt yourself a bowl of vanilla ice cream and you'll get the picture.

The next thing to do was make the tellicherry pepper syrup. The Co-op was fresh out of tellicherry peppercorns, so I used regular black peppercorns instead. Here's the mise en place:


This was the easiest part of the whole dish. I just put all these ingredients into a saucepan, brought it to just under a simmer, and let it cook for 45 minutes. I then strained it and there was about 2C of syrup when all was said and done:



Next, I did the blueberry soup. Again, pretty easy. I brought a cup of white wine to a boil, then added some lemon juice and zest:


I simmered it until it had reduced to a quarter-cup of liquid. Then, I strained the liquid into a larger saucepan, added the blueberries, and cooked them over medium heat until they began to burst:


I then added a cup of the tellicherry (or, um, black) pepper syrup and some sugar, and simmered the mixture for about 15 minutes:


Then came the fun part -- I had to pour this hot blueberry mixture into a blender (in parts, of course, since there were so many blueberries) and liquefy it. I had visions of the blender top flying off, despite my practically sitting on it to ensure that wouldn't happen, and coating my kitchen in blueberries, much like the projectile-vomiting-pie-eating-contest scene in Stand By Me.

Alas, and lucky for me, that didn't happen. I successfully liquefied and strained the blueberries and let the mixture chill in an ice bath.


Once it had chilled, I poured some of the crème anglaise into the blueberry liquid to make and further chill the cream of blueberry soup:


At this point, as far as I was concerned, everything was going swimmingly. The afternoon had progressed nicely, I'd made plans to have dinner with my neighbors, and in return I would treat them to this dessert. I was a happy camper. And then, the dacquoise reared its stupid head.

I've shown how to make dacquoise here. This was almost exactly the same recipe, but with almonds instead of hazelnuts. I'm not sure that's why this didn't work. In fact, I thought I did everything right, but these suckers were just a mess and didn't crisp at all. They got sort of crispy around the edges, but then remained chewy in the middle of the baking sheet.


Looks like someone needs a pastry class, eh? What an annoyance. But wait, there's more. When I went to get the yogurt charlottes out of their molds, they were set nicely. And as soon as they hit the tray I was removing them to, they started to get all glurpy. Time to improvise, as my neighbors were due to arrive in two minutes.

So, what do you do when your charlottes are glurpy and the dacquoise is pissing you off? I am about to blind you with some serious f-ing science right about now. You pour the soup into the bowls, add the yogurt charlotte the middle (like a dollop of sour cream in a savory soup), then crumble the dacquoise on the top (like tortilla chips in a Mexican soup). Ta-da!



Those of you who own The French Laundry Cookbook can turn to page 266 to see what this was supposed to look like, and then have yourselves a good laugh. Especially you, Stephen Durfee. You probably created this recipe because you knew someday I would want to make it, and would crap it up somehow. I know how you roll, you wiley little coyote. I bet you're cackling up a storm out there. Fine. Be that way. See if I care. Crap. I do.

But let's talk for a minute about how gooooooooooooooooooooood this tasted. A certified PlateLicker™, that's for damn sure. We swirled the yogurt into the soup and enjoyed the crunch of the dacquoise in some of the bites. The textures weren't off-putting in the least, and it was rich enough to be a real treat, but clean enough to make you forget about all the cream and sugar throughout the dish. In fact, my ten-year-old neighbor "M" ate every last drop AND took home the leftovers. Usually, she tries a bite or two of these dishes and lets the rest of us pick over the rest of her plate like the vultures we are. When she ate this, she was hunkered down over the plate, spoon to mouth every six seconds, not a word coming from her mouth.

That, my friends, is success, indeed.

Up Next: Chocolate Cakes with Red Beet Ice Cream and Toasted Walnut Sauce

Resources:
Organic Valley milk and cream
Eggs from Smith Meadows Farms
Stonyfield Farm yogurt
Vanilla bean and almonds from TPSS Co-op
Fruit from Whole Foods
Mint from neighbor Linda's garden (thanks!)
Bogle sauvignon blanc

Music to Cook By: Simple Minds; Once Upon a Time. Since I've gotten back from vacay, I'm feeling a tad retro and am listening quite a bit to music from my high school years, and loving it. The food-memory connection is so strong for so many, but the music-memory connection is equally as strong for me. This Simple Minds cassette didn't leave my rockin' two-toned gray Ford Escort at all from 1985-86. We'd pop out the sunroof, store it in the trunk (remember those days?), and jam out (sort of) to Simple Minds, Tears for Fears, Roxy Music, OMD, INXS, 'Til Tuesday, and a-Ha in the school parking lot during lunch. I also had a curly perm back then, but won't talk about that because HOLY CRAP WHY DIDN'T SOMEBODY TELL ME HOW BAD I LOOKED?!