Saturday, August 27, 2016

Flan, you say

Laura is not adventurous about food. When she was small and at her mother's house, her siblings were quite resourceful at concocting meals from food bank donations, but soup and beans don't give pre-teen cooks much latitude. When there was a perceived delicacy to hand, the same siblings described its make-up just short of cockroach legs and mouse tails. It's only in the last year Laura has tried cheesecake and found it worthy.

I ordered flan at a restaurant once, and Laura looked carefully, but declined my offer to share. Since then flan has been bandied about: "Well, you could send us to bed with nothing but flan to eat." "Mind your P's & Q's, young lady, or you'll have nothing but flan and water for supper." That sort of thing.  Emily has had flan, Laura not.

We took inventory of the refrigerator this morning, preparatory to a short grocery run, and found Emily left us an unopened half gallon of 2% milk, and the dregs of a full gallon. Milk has not passed my lips in fifty years, and Laura doesn't drink it, either.

"Well, we could always sacrifice it to the dreaded flan," I observed. We  fired up our computers for recipes. 

Because she had no confidence in the custard part, Laura stuck with finding caramel sauce. I went through recipe after recipe for custard cups, caramel on the bottom, caramel on the top, a fluted spring form pan...I was close to giving it up when I found what I knew my grandmother made: 12 eggs, five cups of milk, sugar and vanilla, in a glass baking dish. Now we needed twelve eggs to go with the milk.

All Laura's attempts at caramel sauce included sweetened, condensed milk. I'm fairly confident our grandmothers didn't have sweetened, condensed milk available, so I turned Google pages until I found the real deal: brown sugar, butter, milk. I made the custard, Laura the caramel. We knew it would be so good, we each ate little tiny suppers, in anticipation.  We weren't wrong.


30 comments:

  1. Hari OM
    ... I was gearing up for cheese and spinach flan.. then you went all custard tart on me!!! though minus pastry it is a baked custard - and one my own personal favourites. slurperoonies. That's a lot of eggs though. I'll send my recipe! YAM xx

    ReplyDelete
  2. yum, I do love a baked custard tart. And just baked custard too as Yamini says.
    I do savoury flans too, I could send you a recipe for crab quiche? Quiche is just a fancy name for flan.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Sometimes I love them sometimes not so much glad yours turned out well.
    Merle......

    ReplyDelete
  4. I like custard as part of a fruit pie recipe, for example rhubarb custard, or strawberry/rhubarb custard. I'll bet the caramel sauce was good! Do you not like milk, or are you lactose intolerant? -Jenn

    ReplyDelete
  5. sounds so totally delicious!

    betty

    ReplyDelete
  6. I have never eaten anything like that either. The cheese and onion or bacon flans are common here. But sweet flans haven't reached us yet.

    ReplyDelete
  7. I make a lot of sacoury quiches too, but apart from baked custard sweet flans are not big over here. That one looks deliciou Joanne. Enjoy the rest of it, I am sure it won't last long.

    ReplyDelete
  8. It looks delicious. The best best is making it with your sweet girl!

    ReplyDelete
  9. I love flan/custard and that looks really good! What fun you two must have had in making this dish.

    ReplyDelete
  10. You've just reminded me of my grandmother's custard in those little glass cups with the surprise of caramel on the bottom.
    And now Laura eats flan! Funny how people will try something if they had a hand in making it. Clever grandma.

    ReplyDelete
  11. If ever anyone makes a flan - or quiche - with the bottom layer of pastry cooked right through, then I might consider eating it. Until then, I stick to the old saying, 'real men don't eat quiche'.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Part-bake the pastry before adding the cooled filling then finish baking.

      Delete
  12. My Spanish mother-in-law loved flan and would make it from time to time. I've eaten it and it's good, just not something I'd go looking for. Good use of the milk though, I have never voluntarily had a glass of milk.

    ReplyDelete
  13. Looks delicious. But sweetened condensed milk has been available since the civil war, so our grandmothers would have had it. The history is quite interesting.

    ReplyDelete
  14. Wow! looks great. I was hoping you might post the recipe....

    ReplyDelete
  15. Looks great. Yes, you can find all kinds of recipes on the Internet.

    ReplyDelete
  16. I love custard, and I think that's basically what this is ... and it's actually quite good for you with all those eggs and milk. I'm glad you were able to convince Laura to try it. It's a shame what siblings will do to a younger one's attitude to food. My older brother told me that tapioca was frog's eggs, and it took me fifty years to even consider trying it again. It is delicious :)

    ReplyDelete
  17. Oh my goodness. My mouth is watering. It looks and sounds so good.

    ReplyDelete
  18. Great looking flan! I love flan, also egg custard, custard pie, creme brule, etc. And I recently made caramel sauce using the same brown sugar, butter, and heavy cream. It is so good...

    ReplyDelete
  19. What a fantastic adventure for the two ladies left at home. I'm glad she tried and liked it.

    ReplyDelete
  20. looks yummy! this is going to be a fun time for you and Laura I think. Well, you know, besides the usual teen age angst.

    ReplyDelete
  21. Wish I had been there. To help eat, of course��Linda@Wetcreek Blog

    ReplyDelete
  22. Oh my goodness that really sounds yummy. I don't know that I have ever eaten flan. I am so glad I don't have any picky eaters here!!

    ReplyDelete