Not much for visual appeal, but it tastes a lot better than it looks.
The prompt: Make
a dessert based on a family member’s favorite music. For the first day, I chose
my sister and roommate, who provided me with “What Death Leaves Behind” by Los
Campesinos!
The thought process: After
listening to the song initially, I knew immediately that I wanted a dessert with
its consistency closer to liquid than solid. Taking a look at the lyrics let me
know that I wanted some sort of fruit flavor within the dessert as well—the song
speaks of ‘what death leaves behind,’ but takes on a tone, especially towards
the end, that gets a little bit more optimistic about the rather morbid
subject. The lines “death will leave behind love” and “we will flower again”
were what confirmed the fruit flavor for me. Fruits of a plant are both the result
of a life and hold potential for new life in the seeds they carry, and as such
fit into both the idea of being what is left behind by death and the hopeful
potential of ‘flowering’ once more. A quick search online revealed strawberries
as the fruit most commonly used to represent love. Combine that with the
instrumentation of the song that tasted like a more liquid consistency, and lo
and behold, strawberry custard.
Self-reflection: I
was happy to use my blender again. A while back I almost broke it trying to
blend cashews for a vegan mac and cheese recipe (that I was making entirely
wrong), and haven’t really touched it since. Thankfully it worked fine, and the
pureed strawberries were delicious. Hulling the strawberries took a painfully long
amount of time, though. I don’t really have an effective system set up for that
yet.
Boiling milk is a skill I have yet to develop. I caught this
one foaming way before the last time I had milk on a stove (though to be fair,
I was not on a phone call with a friend during this recipe), but it still
overflowed a bit.
Listening to the song on repeat while I was cooking
definitely helped me confirm that the dessert really went with what I was
listening to, even if some parts of the music started to get a little too
lodged in my head.
The custard itself is certainly delicious, though it occurred
to me after I was done making it that I am not entirely sure how custard is
supposed to taste.
Quote to sum up the
cooking process: “They say you and me are tautology.”
Recipe credit: http://lickthatspoon.blogspot.com/2012/11/strawberry-custard.html
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