Life often happens by accident. Daughter was unloading the dishwasher and I told her to put the small Pyrex bowl away. I couldn’t remember their formal name so the only thing I could come up with was “carafe” but I knew that was wrong. First I had to look up the word carafe. Daughter couldn’t believe it was a real word. Once we established that the small bowls were not in fact carafes, I had to figure out what they were really called.
I knew I had made a dessert that called for these bowls so I started through my cookbooks trying to find the mousse or souffle or whatever it was that called for little bowls. Ramekin. Ah, that was the right idea. But they weren’t quite the right bowl. They were Pyrex and so with a trip to the Pyrex web site, I found they were they were custard cups. Daughter learned 2 new words from this.
As I was looking through the books, I read titles of desserts that all sounded very good. Butterscotch pudding sounded particularly interesting so Daughter decided she’d make that for a chore.
She commented:
This the first time a recipe reads more like a potion than any thing else. It’s not like a recipe for a pastry. ‘Stir 9 times in one direction, then stir once in the other direction.’
What she was describing was the roux. It is a little like making a potion. She didn’t quite get the hang of the process and there were lumps in the pudding. But it was all eaten in the end with little complaint.
I liked this idea of potion making – something out of a Hogwarts class.
