Description

Learn how to cook a romantic dinner - coeur a la creme dessert in this video from Chef Patrick O'Connell from The Inn at Little Washington.

Transcript

Hi! I’m Patrick O’Connell. We’re at the Inn at little Washington and we’re getting ready for Valentines Day. We’re going to show you a wonderful, simple French desert Coeur a la Crème which is a double on tumbler. It means heart of the cream and it is molded into a little heart shape mold and lined with cheesecloth. The whey or the extra liquid drips through the mold, leaving just the heart of the cream. As you will see, it’s a quick assembly using mascarpone cheese. You can use cream cheese if you can’t afford mascarpone cheese or can’t find it. Mix with a little confectioner sugar. This is about eight ounces of cheese and about a half cup of sifted confectioner sugar. And we’re going to put those in a bowl and mix it all together until it’s smooth, just like a little cake batter. And then we’re going to add a tablespoon of vanilla extract for wonderful flavor, about a tablespoon of fresh lemon juice, and some Chambord—raspberry whatever kind that you like. This happens to be black raspberry liquor so that gives it kind of that wonderful perfume of raspberries. So, we’re just going to mix those things together into a kind of smooth paste and then we’re going to lighten it with whipped cream. We’re going to take one on a quarter cups of liquid cream and either put that in a mixer or get a little arm work out and whip it by hand as we have here until it has medium stiff peaks. We’re going to gently fold the cheese, the flavored cheese and the confectioner sugar and the whipped cream all together. Then to prepare our mold, were going to take squares of cheesecloth about this size and we’re going to dip them in cold water so that they lay neatly into the molds, squeeze them out. And of course this is all been done the night before you wish to serve the dish. So, nothing could be more effortless when you’re actually going to plate it because you will just pull them out of the refrigerator and unmold them. So, you want to take a little extra time in lining your mold with a dampen cheesecloth by pressing it neatly into all of the corners so that what you end up with is a good-looking heart. So, we’re going to give a little taste to our mixture. And the thing to remember about the dish is it’s a great way to enjoy fresh fruit it’s more—an accompaniment to the fresh fruit of your choice either hopefully red fruit because it’s Valentines Day, raspberries, fresh raspberries as we have here or really good strawberries. But this is not the best time of year in Virginia for strawberries and we can get pretty good raspberries. So, now all we need to do is fill our molds and smooth them down. And it’s important to tap it so that the cheese mixture falls tightly down into the mold. Otherwise, it might be an imperfect heart and that could be a bad omen. So, you want to have perfectly shape hearts. Then, we’re just going to wrap it up because it’s going to have a nice night sleep in the refrigerator and we’ll just fold its little blanket over it. And if you wish you can put a little plate underneath it so in a way will drip onto a little plate. Were going to put overnight in the refrigerator and then when we pull it out, it will be quite firm. And any excess liquid will have dripped through these holes. It’s very important that you do this in a proper mold that has holes in the bottom to allow the way to drip through. Then what we’re left with is the literal heart of the cheese or the cream. And we will unmold it, we’ll be taking its little blanket off. And of course even this part can be done well in advance because they hold beautifully just like a nice flavored cheese wood in your refrigerator. So, as you can see the top is free of cheesecloth and I’m just going to take a nice plate. This one has wild strawberries on it. We kind of like to serve it with this. And I’ll drop it onto the center of the plate and tap to it a little bit, curse it if necessary, and tell it to come out. Sometimes it will and sometimes it will not. Sometimes it’s temperamental but in this case it’s even pretty like that. But you can’t eat the cheesecloth so we’ll gently peel that off and a perfect heart! Then we’re going to take our fresh fruit, our raspberries or strawberries, whatever you have, or even cherries and make a puree by throwing them in the blender. And then if it’s raspberries of course you want to strain it. And we’re going to flavor it a little bit with a little bit of lemon juice and a little bit of sugar to taste. We actually like it rather tart because we’re going to garnish the dish with some berries and you could put a little bit of your raspberry flavored liquor into the puree also. And you want a consistency that it will kind of roll on the plate but not look runny. Then to serve it, we’re going to put it in a little squared bottle. And you might want to garnish with a little fresh mint, so it looks like the plate kind of came to life. And that’s all there is to it. Happy Valentine’s Day!