Crème Anglaise

There’s a little restaurant around the corner from where we live.  Its ambiance is pleasant, the food good, and the prices reasonable.  Besides, it’s the only restaurant within the radius of a fifteen-minute walk from our home.  So every other Tuesday, when our cleaning lady comes to us, we go there for lunch.  Last week at the restaurant, while my wife was finishing her salad, I thought about dessert.  I had reached the stage at which I was no longer hungry.  In fact I was pleasantly full.  Still, I wasn’t satisfied.  I wanted something more.  To be precise, I wanted a rich dessert, bathed in calories, preferably with vanilla ice cream.  If your moral character has kept you from entertaining such thoughts let alone succumbing to them, read no further. I have no intention of insulting your virtue or leading you astray.

The dessert menu contains six or seven items, all suitably fattening and artery clogging, all likely to make a dietician faint.  It was hard to choose which path to hell to take – all were alluring, all invited a depraved plunge into indulgence – but after much difficulty I chose warm brioche bread pudding with crème anglaise, mixed berries, and vanilla ice cream.   Please understand that it was mainly scientific curiosity that motivated my choice.  What, I wondered, was crème anglaise?  This was a question that had long been unanswered.  At last I was to find out. 

Finally, our waitress brought a large plate on which four slices of brioche pudding were arrayed in a circle surrounding a large scoop of vanilla ice cream.  Sprinkled over the pudding and the ice cream were blueberries and raspberries.  The ice cream had slightly melted into the fruit, resulting in a pretty purple coulis. Or was that the crème anglaise?  Where was the crème anglaise?

We summoned the waitress. "Where is the crème anglaise?"  She consulted the kitchen and returned.  “I’m so sorry. There is no more crème anglaise.”    No more crème anglaise!  I felt absurdly disappointed, not at all mollified by the waitress’s assurance that she would reduce our bill by two dollars.

So it shouldn’t be a total loss, as my father would say, we asked her what crème anglaise is.  It’s a thick, slightly sweet custard sauce made with vanilla, egg yolks, and sugar.   I’m sorry we asked, for now that I know what it is, I'll have no excuse for ordering, at some point in the future, warm brioche bread pudding with crème anglaise, mixed berries, and vanilla ice cream.   For of course I’m going to order it again, after first checking that there is still some crème anglaise left.  After all, you have to die of something.

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