Deliberacy

In my novel Stark Raving Mad, food plays a major role. Martin Stark, disillusioned chef and want-to-be rave club proprietor comes up with numerous recipes over the course of this story–but Creme Catalan was one of my personal favorites. So here’s the recipe and an excerpt from Chapter 12!

 

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Crème Catalan

Ingredients :
1 lemon
1 vanilla pod
1 teaspoon fennel seeds, crushed
3 egg yolks
1/3 c sugar
1/2 c milk
1 c cream
4 tablespoons brown sugar

Recipe :
Blanch the lemon in boiling water for one minute.
Run under cold water, dry and grate 1/2 zest.
Crush the fennel seeds, snap the vanilla pod in two and keep the seeds to one side.
Boil the milk, vanilla and crushed fennel seeds in a saucepan, then turn down heat. Cover and leave for 30 minutes.
Strain milk, add eggs yolks.
Whisk mixture, then add sugar and lemon zest, then whisk again.
Add the cornflour with a little more milk, cook gently, remove from heat just before boiling.
Pour into 4 ramequins and chill for 2 hours in fridge.
Sprinkle with sugar and caramelise for 2 minutes under grill just before serving.

 

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The rest of the week proved to be insanely hectic. Big surprise, right? My party menu was decided, now I needed to prepare it. Simple. Frederic shipped me a box of French miel et tomme cheeses. Everything else I needed had been ordered from my regular Wendell’s suppliers, making sure that my invoice was clearly separate from Bruce’s just in case he decided to make a stink about it. After a long conversation with Jean-Pierre, I ordered a case of Minervois wine from a little winery he recommended.

Preparations were ticking along quite smoothly – it’s great to have an entire kitchen staff available to do your dirty work – until I remembered the cake. First off, cakes at our house go begging. No one in the Stark family cares much for them, we’d prefer pies, pastries, cookies, ice cream, basically anything. And yet, every important occasion requires the presence of a cake.

Mom and I were sitting at The Store counter discussing the weekend’s logistics. She was reading over the menu and drink list I’d prepared.

“Martin, you’ve outdone yourself. It looks fantastic. Crème Catalan, mmmm. Make sure you let me know it there’s anything I can do – ok. I can probably handle the Salad Nicoise or the Potatoes a la Landaise, it’s basically just a French version of a warm potato salad isn’t it?”

“Basically.”

“Well, if you write down a recipe I’m sure I can handle it at The Store,” tentatively she added, “is there a cake?”

I could see from her expression that Mom knew her cake attachment was ridiculous, but she nevertheless was not giving it up. Because to my mother, cake was the ultimate symbol that someone cared. In the little southern towns of her youth, cakes accompanied life-events. Whether they were hand made angel cakes with pink frosting and sugared coconut or dark chocolate layers smothered in sickeningly sweet peanut butter icing, prepared by doting mothers or aunties; or pristine white cakes decorated in colored flower petals and ribbons that came in pristine white boxes from the local bakery, cake was the center of any family celebration.

I smiled warmly, “Of course there’s a cake. I just forgot to write it down.”

Mom returned my smile. She knew I was full of it, but she let it pass.

“I figured a massive chocolate and raspberry roulade, sort of like a Yule log with meringue toadstools and marzipan wildflowers.” It was the best I could come up with, right off the cuff.

My mother patted my hand. “Thank you, Martin.”

She paused in a way that indicated there was more to come and glanced around the empty room.

“As you know I’m not very good at apologies,” she began tentatively. “But I think I owe you one. That day we went to Tony’s pizza for lunch…I… well, I was out of line.”

I agreed with her entirely, but I didn’t want to make her feel worse by agreeing so I waited to see if she had anything else to say.

“It wasn’t fair to you. And it wasn’t fair to Dennis.”

“I never really understood why he put you off so much.”

She chuckled quietly, “I seem to respond like that to some people.”

“You mean you didn’t hate him ‘cause he was this middle-aged guy with zero prospects who’d been dating your daughter?”

“I didn’t hate him at all,” she confessed.

This was starting to get frighteningly personal.

“I reacted the same way to your father when I first met him. I couldn’t speak to him without spitting fire.”

“That’s not terribly hard to imagine,” I said in an attempt to lighten things up.

She smiled, “Yes, things seem to have come full circle in that regard.”

Mom rubbed her forehead with one hand. Her face was sad but not resigned. “Can you remember when it wasn’t like this?”

I nodded.

“I just want to be happy, Martin. And maybe this is my chance, I really don’t know.”

She didn’t need to tell me that this chance was Dennis.

“I want someone to do something for me, for a change.”

“Dad does things for you. Or he tries to, at least.”

She shook her head. “There’s a difference between actually doing something for someone and doing things with them in mind. Do you know what I mean?”
I thought I understood what she was getting at.

“Take this chocolate and raspberry roulade with meringue toadstools and marzipan wildflowers that you’re making. You’re doing that for me, Martin. You never intended to make a cake, but now you will, just because it’s important to me. Somewhere along the line your father stopped doing that. If I had asked him about a cake he’d have told me that no one in the family ever eats cake and there are plenty of other desserts already on the menu. And he’d be right, except…

“Except that he’d be wrong,” I finished.

She chuckled again. “No, not wrong, just not aware. We’ve been married for nearly thirty years and it’s like he understands me less with each passing day.”

“Maybe you aren’t so easy to understand, maybe he thought he was doing the right thing but it was always wrong and after awhile he just stopped trying.”

She looked at me skeptically, “You don’t seem to have much trouble understanding me. The excuse you are referring to is what my women’s group calls the universal male cop-out.”

Carried away by the frankness of the conversation I found myself less guarded than usual.

“What do the Neolith…” my voice dropped off.

Mom laughed dryly, “Oh yes, I know all about the Neolithic Ladies nickname. Your father doesn’t hide his opinions from me; I’ll give him that. So what about them?”

Now that I was on the spot I’d sort of lost my nerve, but my mother waited expectantly.

“What do they think of, you know, a certain new factor in the equation?”

“Well they certainly aren’t planning to put mud in the stranger-man’s hair, if that’s what you mean.”

She was thoughtful for a moment.

“We bought you that book on your fourth birthday. Your father and I took it in turns to read to you and Christian. And later to all of you.”

I smiled at her phrasation, and she raised an eyebrow questioningly.

“You’ve picked up some Briticisms.”

“Hmmm, I hadn’t noticed.”

“It’s been a long time since I actually read those stories,” I added. “In fact, I’m not sure I ever have.”

“All four of you practically knew them by heart.”

I nodded again. “I can’t recite much now though.”

My mother gazed out the front window, focused on some unknown object speaking in a low voice:

“I AM the Most Wise Baviaan, saying in most wise tones,’
‘Let us melt into the landscape – just us two by our lones.’
People have come – in a carriage – calling. But Mummy is there….
Yes, I can go if you take me – Nurse says she don’t care.
Let’s go up to the pig-sties and sit on the farmyard rails!
Let’s say things to the bunnies, and watch ‘em skitter their tails!
Let’s – oh, anything, daddy, so long as it’s you and me,
And going truly exploring, and not being in till tea!
Here’s your boots (I’ve brought ‘em), and here’s your cap and stick,
And here’s your pipe and tobacco. Oh, come along out of it – quick.”

I didn’t know what to say. Or do for that matter. It wasn’t like I could go home and tell my dad that the answer to his marital strife lay in the correct interpretation of a Rudyard Kipling rhyme. Instead, I found myself feeling apologetic as I watched my mother lost in her own thoughts.

“I’m sorry,” I said finally. “I wish there was something that I could do.”

Mom shifted her attention to me and smiled. “There’s nothing you can do, but just having you around makes me happier.”