"But Custard Still Cries for a Nice Safe Cage": salted caramel budino

I don't quite know WHY it stuck with me, but years ago, in grammar school, when we had "readers," there was an optional poem called "Custard the Dragon." It was the tale of a cowardly dragon. How cowardly was he? Well, besides being named "Custard," people teased him by calling him Perceval. Now THAT's a cowardly dragon: I mean, if you don't take someone out for calling you Perceval. REALLY.
Years ago, there was an experiment, published in some book of literary criticism: they took the authorship off of poems and then handed them to people and asked them to judge. Then, they took the same poems, put the authors' names on them, and saw what people thought.
You know what happened , right? Well, anonymous Shakespeare didn't do so well. Neither did Mr. Keats. But country priests? Yup.. And so on. Well, I mention this because, while I remembered the silly poem, I didn't know the author. You can look it up from the line, but I'll tell you: Ogden Nash. Go and read it. It will make you smile. I promise.
So, too, will making this custard. I believe that if you eat it, it will make you smile too. I did not eat it. I served it to the puppies and to my heart man last night. I saw what I thought were huge portions disappear before me, with smiles. And that was with cold custard , out of the fridge. When I eat it, I want it warm. Do it either way, but do this. It's everything you could want: it's easy, it's not expensive, and it's rather different in a nice kind of way. What I am putting forth is supposed to serve four. These are BIG portions, but they disappeared in front of me, even my "Guy" devoured his. You make the call.

First, let's make some salted caramel. Get a heavy pan, with high sides. A 3 quart sauce pan is good. If you are lucky enough to have one that is a light color, use it here, so you can watch the caramel change color. Combine a quarter cup of granulated sugar, a tablespoon of corn syrup (the light one) and three tablespoons of water. Heat t his to a boil, on HIGH heat, swirling it from time to time. When making caramel, NEVER stir the thing. Not a good idea. You will spoil the process. Trust me. Anyway, after about 3 minutes, the stuff will go to amber. When it does, take it off the heat, and add a quarter cup of dairy. You can use heavy cream, light cream, whole milk, half and half. You're going to be using a lot more half and half here, so maybe you should buy a quart, and use that. Keep your face back, it's gonna sputter hard. Now add two tablespoons of unsalted butter, and heavy teaspoon of flaky sea salt. This is important. MAKE SURE you use the flakier kind. THe texture will come out, as you'll see. Finally, add a pinch of vanilla extract, but not too much. NOW you can whisk. If, as happened to me, the mixture seizes, i.e, you get solid clumps, put it over the heat to melt, and NOW stir with a whisk. Pour this all off into a bowl, while you make the custard proper.

For this, you will need a couple of tablespoons of maple syrup. For some reason, they call the good stuff - the dark stuff - grade "B". Buy some grade B maple syrup. You will be glad you did. You will save money, it tastes SO much better than the wimpy pale one, and you will transform what you cook with it. Put this in a pot - maybe even the pot in which you made the caramel - with a half cup of brown sugar - either lght or dar, and a quarter cup of water. Add a teaspoon of regular salt. Turn the heat to medium and start bringing this to a boil. Stir it every now and then.

While that's getting warm, mix up two egg yolks and a whole egg, and add three tabelspoons of cornstarch to it. Stir it to a paste.

Ok, when the stuff you're heating comes to a boil, take it off the heat, and add at least 2 cups of half and half, preferably 2.5. If you don't have enough, you can make it up with whole milk. Now add that egg/cornstarch slurry. Whisk it all together, lower the heat, and put this on the flame.

DON'T go away. Just keep whisking. After about five minutes, you will see an amazing transformation as this turns from liquid, to a thick, viscous solid.

You just made custard!

Pour this into the "appropriate" sized serving dish you want, and then pour the caramel over it. Either let it cool to warm, or refrigerate it, or whatever you want to do.

My original recipe says to serve it with whipped cream. If you want to, by all means. To me, I think it looks just fine as it is. It comes out looking a bit like a dessert version of mashed potatoes and gravy. Nuthin wrong with that.

Perceval, you're an ok dragon in my book