Post #621609 by Professor G on Thu, Jan 19, 2012 6:30 PM

Crème Rangoon

Once again, my T.C. Amigos de Aloha have gone around putting ideas in my head, or, more frighteningly, shining lights in the dim recesses of what I like to call my mind and making me remember . . . things.

One night at the restaurant, I was thinking about crab Rangoon while I was blowtorching a crème brûlée, and then, out of nowhere, I was thinking about crème Rangoon. I shook the dirty dessert notion off and hid it in the darkness of my soul. Then Tiki Tom D. brought up Rangoon in the Spam thread and it all came back. I had to put it together.

Turns out, I failed to dig the vanilla custard in the first experiment and a wonton wrapper was too dang small. It was a vanilla fried pie. I don’t like to do innocuous. So this time, I used an egg roll wrapper which gave me the appropriate material for crunching: the crab Rangoons of my memory had the filling enclosed in the fried shell, so that’s what I went for. I replaced the crème with a pineapple chess filling.

Pineapple Chess Filling
1 cup of granulated sugar
2 eggs, beaten
1/4 cup melted unsalted butter
1/2 tsp all-purpose flour
1/2 tsp cornmeal
1 1/2 cups crushed fresh pineapple

Mix the first five, then add the pineapple. Pour the mixture in a small baking dish and cook at 350° for about 45 minutes, until it is set. Chill it until you need it.

Cut six 7” egg roll wrappers corner to corner to get six triangles. Put about a tablespoon of filling near the right angle corner (that’s right . . . Jr. High math coming back to get you) and fold it over. You should have enough moisture from the filling that it’ll seal itself; If not, dip your fingers in a little water and moisten the edges you want to seal. You can make these any shape you want: beggar’s bags, flowers, or my favorite--abstract giant manta.

In the meantime, heat vegetable oil for deep frying, at 325°. If you have a fry-master-2028Z, that’s great. I use a big heavy pot and a candy thermometer.

You can drop these in two at a time. It takes no time for them to golden up. Pull them out; put them on paper towels to drain; repeat. Makes twelve or a few more if you feel like it. As they came out of the oil, I sprinkled a mixture of 4 parts granulated sugar to 1 part store-bought five spice powder (my home-made kicks a little too hard for this application).

I did two sauces: cinnamon whipped cream (1 cup heavy cream whipped with a little under 1/4 cup of granulated sugar and a few drops of cinnamon extract) and a mixture of pineapple preserves and orange marmalade melted with a few nuggets of ginger which were then removed.

There it is. I have messed with (respectfully) another Tiki classic. I hope you all enjoy and mess with these ideas in turn. Serve these little guys with ice cream? Absolutely. The sauce I did with my first experiment was a blackberry/ginger syrup that looked beautiful. Cut some of the pineapple out and replace it with toasted coconut. Dip half of it in tempered chocolate. Be your own mad scientist: mad scientists have all the fun.

Granted, it's a pretty weird kind of fun.

[ Edited by: Professor G 2012-01-19 19:15 ]

[ Edited by: Professor G 2012-01-23 13:38 ]