White Truffle Oil-Infused Custards with Black Truffle Ragout

I had this canapé at Per Se in October, and it was absolutely delicious. I knew I could make the custard without much difficulty, but the thought of gently slicing through the eggshell to make those adorable little custard cups without cracking the whole thing was daunting. Okay, maybe not exactly daunting... more like it was an easy opportunity for me to deplete the world's egg supply just trying to get eight eggshells to not shatter all over the place. I'm not exactly known for my patience. I also knew the chive chips would be challenging, since I hadn't really had much luck with earlier versions of potato chips.

So, even though this canapé sounds uncomplicated, I brought a whole cargoload of culinary baggage as I prepped for this dish.

Let's start with the chive chips, which as you'll see, did not turn out as I'd hoped. After preheating the oven to 300 degrees, I peeled a russet potato, then pared it down to be the shape of a very thick Band-Aid (about 4" tall by 1" wide). I sliced it as thinly as I could with my mandoline, then put a slice on a Silpat-lined baking sheet that had been brushed with melted clarified butter. I put a chive tip on top of that slice, then topped it with another matching slice of potato:


I placed another buttered Silpat face down on top of these chips, weighted it with another baking sheet, then put them in the oven for 35 minutes, turning the pan halfway through the cooking time. Here's what they looked like when they were done:


Whoopsie. Obviously, I need more practice in the slicing arena. The French Laundry Cookbook says you can store these chips in an airtight container for up to two days. So, I let mine cool, then stored them for just two hours and they got all floppity, bendy, and depressing. Only one of the chips stayed nice and crisp and stiff, and you'll see that in the final photo. The rest just looked tired and sad and in need of a certain little blue pill when I picked them up. Poor little guys.

But let's not dwell on that. Just like the agnolotti, I'll get those chips right if it's the last thing I do. On to the custards!

When I read that I had to cut the bottoms off multiple eggs to make this dish, I was CERTAIN I'd screw up at least a dozen of them in the process, so I bought three dozen eggs for this dish, even though I only needed 8 eggs. What can I say? I wanted to be prepared.


I took each egg, one-by-one, and placed it on the counter, gently swaddled with a dishtowel:


Isn't he just precious?

Using a serrated knife, I gently sawed back and forth on the wide end of the egg until I could pop off the "lid" that formed. I put the egg whites and yolks into a bowl nearby and rinsed out each eggshell, gently wiping out the inside with my finger so as to remove all the membrane.


I threw away the lids and turned each eggshell upside down in the egg container so they could drain and dry out a bit before I put the custard into them. And, I know you must be dying to know -- did it take all THIRTY-SIX eggs to get the eight I needed? No, it did not. It merely took nine of them. I am proud to admit (and please feel free to call CNN to get this on the crawl), I mutilated just one egg beyond repair -- all the rest happened quite easily.

As the eggshells dried, I made the custard. I heated milk and cream in a saucepan then added it to a blender. I turned on the blender, and while the custard base was misxing, I added truffle oil, two eggs, salt and white pepper. I strained the mixture through a chinois and into a small pitcher -- in this case, my coffee press carafe:


See how it separated? That's a good thing. I removed the foamy top part and poured the darker yellow custard into the empty eggshells, which I'd turned upright in the carton, and placed in a baking dish with some newspaper on the bottom to more evenly disperse heat:



This is one time I wish I had used white eggs instead of brown eggs because the edges of the shell might not have looked so haggard.

Next, I filled the baking dish with warm water so that it came up around the sides of the eggshells:


The French Laundry Cookbook suggests baking the custards in this water bath at 275 degrees for 45 minutes. After about 40 minutes at 275, I checked on them to see if I needed to take them out a few minutes early and was surprised to see how runny they were. So, I decided to up the temperature to 350 degrees -- for a total cooking time of an hour and 15 minutes -- 40 minutes on 275 degrees and another 35 minutes at 350. Here's what they looked like when they were finished:


While they were baking, I made the truffle ragout. I combined some veal stock and a few drops of white wine vinegar in a small saucepan and brought it up to a simmer until it had reduced and thickened from a stock consistency to more of a sauce. I added some minced black truffle and a little bit of butter and white truffle oil to finish it:


I wish you could've been here to smell this ragout. I don't think there are adjectives in the English language to do it justice. It's like when you've been cooking something and then you walk outside to pick up the mail or take the dog for a quick walk around the block and you come back and open your front door and the *ka-pow* and *aaahhhh* are followed by a huge grin of satisfaction that something you created can make a house smell like a home.

To plate, I placed each egg on top of one of my grandmother's green shot glasses (because I don't have egg cups and didn't feel the need to buy any), spooned in a bit of the truffle ragout, and stood a chive chip in the custard. This was the only chip that looked good (and that's even a stretch). I didn't take photos of the sad, droopy ones because they were too pathetic.


We stood around the butcher block in the kitchen and ate them with little espresso spoons... which was kind of funny, since these were the de facto birthday cake for my neighbor's birthday. Of course, we had to bust on him for having a manly-man birthday and eating these dainty little treats instead of diving into a steak and big-ass chocolate cake. Guess you had to be there.

Anyhoo, these custards were really, really good -- and if I do say so myself (which I can because it's my blog and I can do whatever I want, so there), these were almost as good as the one I had at Per Se, which made me feel pretty frickin' spectacular. I'd make these custards again in a heartbeat because they were really pretty easy to do, and that truffle ragout was out of this world and added so much depth and fragrance to the dish. I'm a big fan of all things custard-y, so I knew I'd enjoy both cooking and eating this dish. It's just those damn chips that I need to work on for next time. I think I need to go to chip school. Must look into that. Could you imagine what an awesome place chip school would be? Almost as good as bacon school, caramel school, or coffee school. Chip school..... a girl can dream, can't she?

Up Next: Roasted Sweetbreads with Applewood-Smoked Bacon, Braised Belgian Endive, and Black Truffle Sauce

Resources:
Chives, and russet potato from Whole Foods
Eggs from TPSS Co-op
Organic Valley milk and cream
Black truffle from D'Artagnan
Saveurs white truffle oil
365 organic butter

Music to Cook By: Gap Band; Ultimate Collection. And now I can't stop singing "Ooops, up side your head, I said ooops upside your head." I also remember the dance the Gap Band did to "(You) Dropped a Bomb on Me" when they were on Soul Train back when I was in sixth or seventh grade, so of course I had to scuttle around the kitchen doing that dance while the custards were cooking. I can't tell you the year that World War I began, but I can remember the Soul Train dance to "You Dropped a Bomb on Me." I'm excellent.

Read my previous post: "Coffee and Doughnuts"