Snowy Saturday, Bloody Oranges?

I've been mentally busy of late. Making life changing decisions has a way of sucking the life blood from one's bones. For years I have been playing with the idea of culinary school. I was so happy back in 2001 when I received my acceptance letter and materials from CIA (Culinary Institute of America) up in Pough (Poughkeepsie) Town, NY. I read through everything slowly and my heart swelled with joy with each paragraph I finished. And then the hammer dropped. The $75,000 tuition hammer, that is. The CIA never happened.

This past Wednesday I attended an open house at The Institute of Culinary Education (ICE), were the attendees were told why they should choose ICE. This was not my first introduction to ICE. I once had a friend who attended Peter Kump's New York Cooking School. I called it "Peter Kump's" years after they changed the name to ICE. For a little while I thought ICE was a completely different school; until I decided to try my hand at a culinary education again, and made an appointment to speak with an admissions counselor at The Institute of Culinary Education, formerly known as Peter Kumps… I did not feel comfortable at that meeting, let's just say, the environment was uncomfortable. Yet here I am again, visiting ICE and planning to change my life drastically and praying to the whisks Gods that I do not end up in a ditch begging for pennies. Why you ask? ICE is moving into a new state of the art facility, and I knew this before I got the mass invitation to the open house. When I found out about the new facility, my heart said, "It's time." The email felt like a good omen, so I said to myself "fuck it, I want my hole in the wall!"

My 1 friend that reads my entries (heart you Mel) understands that last statement. I don't need to be on foodtv. Shit, I don't have the personality to be on TV let alone food TV where everything is grounded in trends and what is hot today is cliché tomorrow. I just want my piece of the American dream, which to me is to make money doing what you love to do. I love food.

So why the hell did I just bother my few readers with all of that? Because I can, and because that is the point of my blog; to share with you the things I create as I let food relax me. But I tell you, since I decided to try and pay more attention to this blog…sheesh, blogging ain't easy!

Anyway back to the food. This week's visit to Trader Joe's was a test of my patience, but I'm glad I went. I picked up these beauties, Moro Blood Oranges

 
During the open house at ICE Dalia Jurgensen made Pote de Crème and it was delicious. With these Moro Blood Oranges, and learning from a very old Mario Batali PBS show that blood oranges hail from Spain, I decided on Flan. When I made these I made a mistake (forgot the juice, life changing decisions on the brain) however the recipe below is accurate.

Flan de Sanguinello Moro
1c Milk
1c Almond Milk, cold
3 large eggs
1 egg yolk
1/3c sugar
¼ tsp salt
1 tsp vanilla
¼ c blood orange juice
Zest of 1 blood orange, use a peeler

Caramel
1 cup sugar
1 tbsp honey
2 tbsp water
3 tbsp blood orange juice (juice from 1 Moro orange)

Cook over low-medium heat until thermometer reads 250 degrees. I've been making caramel for flan for years so this is a sight/smell thing for me. But the juice changes the color of the sugar so you have to be very careful. Use a thermometer!

1. Heat oven to 325 degrees, prep molds with caramel
2. Heat 1 cup of milk with the zest of 1 blood orange (use a peeler, not a microplane) until it simmers. Turn off heat add salt and 1 cup of cold almond milk
   

   
   
   
3. Beat the 3 whole eggs and 1 egg yolk while streaming in 1/3 cup of sugar, add ¼ cup blood orange juice and 1 tsp of vanilla.
4. Slowly stir the milk mixture into the egg mixture. You want to be very careful and do this a little at a time so you don't cook the eggs. (Adding the cold almond milk to the hot milk helps with this step)

Strain the mixture and slowly pour into prepared molds.

1. Put molds into a hot water bath and cover with foil. Bake for 40 min or until only a slight jiggle remains in center. Remove from heat and chill at least 5 hours or overnight.