cream of tomato soup, HCE, p 130-131
salmon roasted in butter, HCE, p 583
roast asparagus, HCE, p 258-259
Jim Lahey’s no-work bread, HCE, p 833
chocolate-caramel tart, HCE, p 940 (chocolate tart crust, HCE, p 930; vanilla pastry cream flavored with chocolate, HCE, p 943; chocolate glaze, HCE, p 921; creamy caramel sauce, p 922)
- cream of tomato soup: I followed the recipe exactly. It was delicious.
- salmon roasted in butter: I followed the recipe exactly. It was delicious, though I think I like grilled salmon much more, both in texture and in flavor.
- roasted asparagus: I followed the recipe exactly. Again, it was delicious. Again, I prefer grilled asparagus to roasted asparagus.
- Jim Lahey’s no-work bread: I followed the recipe more or less exactly. (The “more or less” refers to all the travel and associated temperature fluctuations it experienced during the first rise.)
- chocolate-caramel tart: This was the most difficult. I’d never made anything like a chocolate tart before, so nearly all the steps were new. I pressed the tart crust (quite unevenly, unfortunately) into a round cake pan rather than rolling it out and placing it into a tart pan. Baking that was straightforward. Making the pastry cream was also easy, and it turned out excellent. Making the caramel was the biggest challenge, and one that I didn’t entirely overcome. I thought that I followed the recipe exactly, but clearly not. At first, the caramel wasn’t browning, even though it was nearly at the target temperature (245 F). Then, all the liquid evaporated and I was left with a grainy sugar-cream paste. Finally, the sugar melted rather suddenly and browned. When it cooled, it was hard. I’d gone past soft caramel and made a hard candy. Next time, for the caramel, I’ll heat up the sugar until it’s a light caramel, and then I’ll add the cream; hopefully, that will make a softer caramel. Finally, making the chocolate sauce went well, though I accidentally used granulated sugar instead of confectioners’ and nearly double what the recipe called for. This made for an extremely sweet and slightly runny chocolate glaze. Because it was poured on top of the tart, I think this was more a change of style from the original than an actual mistake.
