Kurt and I had Jay and Chris over to break in our new wedgewood china and speigleau wine glasses. Also broken in: Kurt’s new Jamie Oliver T-FAL saucepan; 5-quart Kitchenaid stand mixer; fancy-schmancy empire red Kitchenaid ice cream scoop; yet another Kitchenaid item–this time a spatula; and the last-minute strainer purchase referenced below.

Kurt made his signature steak with a red wine reduction (cabernet franc this time) and tried to emulate the provencal tomatoes we loved at our Chez Cesar lunch in Cassis.

Our dessert was inspired by the Oeufs a la Neige I had at La Maree Verte in Paris. In searching for the perfect oeufs recipe, I came across this beautiful blog by La Tartine Gourmande that had an Iles Flottantes recipe. Apparently it is oeufs a la neige except with hard caramel. Armed with her pictures and my Cordon Bleu dessert cookbook, I made my first attempt at this yummy meringue recipe.

The creme anglaise from the cookbook turned out very nicely. There was a hiccup at the end–I didn’t have a big enough strainer to do the creme all at once, so most of it curdled on me before I could ice it. Kurt did an emergency strainer purchase and Round 2 came out perfectly.

The meringues were trial-and-error. My cookbook told me to shape the meringue into egg shapes using two slotted spoons. Either my meringues were not stiff enough or the slots of my spoons were too large, because they kept oozing out through the cracks. So I tried a different shape: how about making a mountain peak, like La Maree Verte did? No luck either. The saucepan poaching method didn’t seem to work for non-egg shapes. Even if I did manage to place the conical meringue into the syrup, the peak collapsed or contorted as soon as I tried to poach it on its other side. I reverted to a ball shape using non-slotted spoons.

Once I did manage to poach them, they puffed up like I expected…for one minute. After that, the volume deflated significantly and produced very flat, limp ovals that weren’t meringue-like at all. Scrap cookbook technique.

I whipped out my ramekins and baked the rest of the meringue in a hot water bath as La Tartine Gourmande suggests. I also tried to create a caramel nest to crown the dessert, and with Jay’s help, we managed to do a decent job on the first meringue. Unfortunately, the caramel cooled down too quickly for us to continue making ribbons. It was just as well since our tasters had a hard time eating said caramel without getting it hopelessly stuck in their teeth.

Lessons learned:

• make meringues stiffer and bake them in ramekins
• use a soft caramel sauce instead
• dress the provencal tomatoes with way less breadcrumb, less herbes de provence, and a ton more olive oil