Two types of crème brûlée, and pears poached in port

Sometimes, rather unexpectedly, you find yourself living in a largely Francophone city, working at a vegetarian restaurant, and learning fun new names for common foods. Pomme de terre, petis pois, pamplemousse.

Even more unexpectedly, one day your chef might catch wind of your excitement for baking, and set you challenges, recipes scrawled on pieces of paper, and a promise that if you can succeed in these then "you are a chef!"

Anyhow. I don't like to do things by halves, so when I told my friend Jesse about said recipes we stocked up on wine, poured ourselves some calvados, and embarked on a 48 hour dessert marathon. Here are the results.

There was also an apple rosemary sorbet, stirred and tended to every half hour until it set, though suffice to say we'd drank a bit too much of the calvados by that stage, so the frosty pink end product never got photographed.

 x CB