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Thy Yummy Valentine

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By JEFF HOUCK, The Tampa Tribune

Published: February 13, 2008

You had me at crème brûlee.

Yes, you, Christopher Kimball.

There you were, standing in a tastefully designed teak kitchen wearing your crisp, baby blue, button-down oxford rolled up at the sleeves and a blue-with-white polka-dots bow tie. Your apron was a perfect shade of Free Speech Red. Your wire-frame glasses screamed of authenticity and Poindexter-style research. Your flat hairstyle, with its receding hairline, looked like it came from Dwight Schrute on "The Office." And you were doing your usual wonderful job as host of "America's Test Kitchen" on public television.

This was the crème brûlee segment, the one that started with a jaunty piano intro and the camera panning across two shiny, white ramekins filled with perfectly cooked, delicious, creamy-on-the-inside, crispy-on-top desserts. It's the segment that's part of your new three-disc DVD collection, "The Best of America's Test Kitchen." I'm on disc No. 2, "Best Baking Recipes."

I've been watching the DVD set nonstop for hours, drinking in every tip. After the years I've spent reading your Cook's Illustrated and Cook's Country magazines and devouring your franchise of "America's Test Kitchen" books, having you available on demand is intoxicating.

I've wanted to make crème brûlee for years. My son bought me a kit for Christmas a while back, but I've been too intimidated by the combination of cream, eggs, sugar and open flame.

"Well, if we're going to make crème brûlee, we ought to at least define what it is and what it isn't," you said during the segment with a taciturn tone. "What it isn't is crème caramel. It's not a thin, custardy kind of dish."

I'm with you, Chris. I'm hanging on to your every word. This is a culinary man crush of the highest order. Even my wife is jealous.

"It's thick. It's creamy. It's much richer. It has a very simple topping, which is crunchy and sweet."

Go on. The suspense is killing me.

"Now, what it also isn't is that stuff you get in fancy restaurants these days where they put ginger in and all sorts of nonsense and raspberries."

We speak each other's unspoken language.

"Look, this should be simple, a nice, custardy filling that's rich with a simple sugar topping."

Now you're pointing and gesticulating. You mean business. First you said it wasn't custardy. Now you say it is. I don't care.

"Two things, that's it. We're going back to basics."

Yes, yes, yes. A million times, yes. Basic! Unfancy! Plain! Three words that soar through the hearts of viewers and cooks everywhere who are tired of gaudy Food Network travel shows that used to be about food, confused by Travel Channel food shows that used to be about travel and weary of Bravo cooking-show, drama-queen soap operas. You are so delightfully New England plain that if I didn't know you were a multimillionaire TV host, publisher and motorcycle enthusiast, I'd swear you were Amish.

Then Julia Collin Davison steps in, she who is senior editor for the Cook's book division and on-screen test cook for "ATK." (That's the acronym we fans call the show on message boards that gossip about you, Julia and her on-air colleagues Jack Bishop, Bridget Lancaster and Adam Ried.)

Apparently, Julia will be joining us for crème brûlee. I wasn't aware there would be three of us.

Before long, she's walking us through making the dish. At one point, she hoists a blowtorch to sear the crust on the dessert while you fumble with a clumsy butane tank. Hers, with its turbinado sugar, is perfect and crispy. Yours, with a clumpy layer of molasses-filled brown sugar, is engulfed in flames.

"Mine looks like San Francisco during the great fire," you joke.

Oh, Chris. You slay me. Self-deprecation plays so well on public television.

"I'm actually showing you what not to do," you say.

And there, in a sentence, is the essence of what makes you so appealing. You are an everyman. You, as my kitchen surrogate, represent viewers who have botched a million recipes. You're not afraid to fail. That's what makes you so approachable.

As you've said before, "The problem with most recipes is that they're very unreliable, which could be the fault of the author, or could be the fault of the cook. But the fact remains that people often find they're disappointed when they cook at home; therefore, they develop a fear of failing."

You and your staff take that fear away, Chris, through your endless trials and tastings. Yes, even Julia, the one who came between our brûlee.

You explain with great patience that you've tried a technique or a different ingredient or a particular tool or food processor. You state why something worked and why it didn't. You're the Consumer Reports of food. As you've said, taking the viewer and reader along as an equal makes it much more likely the recipe will come out the way it does on the page. As a result, we're much more likely to be successful as a cook. And, as a result, we'll want to cook more often and, as a byproduct, rely on your show.

That explains why you have 640,000 paid readers of Cook's Illustrated and why your show is the most popular cooking series on public television.

And it explains why I'll finally take a stab at making crème brûlee.

How do I love thee and thy show? Let me count the ways.

Happy Valentine's Day, Chris.

XXOOXX

Reporter Jeff Houck can be reached at (813) 259-7324 and jhouck@tampatrib.com.

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