Monday, March 11, 2013

FFWD Chicken Breasts Diable and Cheesy Creme Brulee


I actually made both of these recipes on the same night.  Since the creme brulee had to chill in the refrigerator anyway, I decided to go ahead and make it to serve on the following night.  Despite how easy and relatively healthy they are, I almost never make boneless skinless chicken breasts.  I have a very hard time cooking them so that they're cooked through but not dry, I find that they don't re-heat that well (key for me since we almost always eat dinner leftovers for lunch), and--most importantly--Paul doesn't really like them and is prone to complaining.  However, I absolutely love anything with mustard and this recipe definitely sounded easy, so I was happy to give it a try.  The verdict?  We both loved the sauce, I think it would taste good on almost anything, and given how quick and easy it was this is a recipe I would make again.  I served it with carrots provencal (an old favorite of mine from Jacques Pepin) and some hash browns I made with leftover boiled potatoes.  Definitely an enjoyable Sunday night dinner.


The creme brulee, on the other hand, I most likely will not be making again.  I'm very curious to see what everybody else thought of this recipe.  I love custards and am a big fan of creme brulee, so I had high hopes for this recipe.  The oven temperature called for seemed way too low to me, but Dorie's recipes almost always work, so I proceeded along.  When I checked the custards after the suggested amount of time, they were nowhere close to being ready.  I turned the convection on and kept cooking them, checking whenever I remembered, but they just would not cook.  At some point I turned the oven up about 50 degrees, but I think I should have gone higher.  I finally pulled them out after 2-3 hours (at some point I lost track of time), when they were finally set.  When I served them the next day, I was sad to see that the bottom layer of cheese hadn't melted at all!  I just don't think my oven ever got hot enough.  This is probably my fault, although I've never had problems with my oven before and double-checked the oven temperature in the recipe several times, but I thought this dish was pretty gross.  I normally have no problem eating very rich things, but the layer of rich (but pretty flavorless) custard followed by un-melted, room temperature cheese did not appeal to me at all.  Paul was a total trooper and made himself eat several of these (he follows in his father's footsteps and cannot bear to see food go to waste), but this is one of the few things in recent memory that I actually threw away.  It just didn't feel worth trying to make myself eat it.

1 comment:

  1. Sorry to hear you had brulee woes. I did have to turn the temperature up on these to get them to finish off (and my oven runs hot). The salad you paired it with looks good.

    The sauce on the chicken was really good, wasn't it? Its been requested to show up again in our house (repeatedly).

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