Even my late Aunt Luz, who is probably one of the greatest cooks I’ve known in my life, sometimes had trouble with her flan. I remember visiting her apartment in Washington, sitting in their little kitchen as her bath of flan was pulled from the oven, and the little ramekins were floating in a curdled mess of eggs and burnt sugar. Quietly, I took it in, expecting some sort of yelling fit as her husband – my favorite Uncle – would have uttered had he been involved. Instead, she laughed it off, and I got my first lesson in gracious dignity while in the kitchen. Andy’s Mom had similar difficulties – according to him she was about 50-50 when it came to producing a decent flan. For my very first attempt at this Filipino leche flan, I was hoping for something that didn’t burn the kitchen down.
Yes, my bar is that low.
Suzie challenged me to give it a whirl, and of course I took her up on it, perhaps over-confident from our last kitchen skirmish (which feels like ages ago). The online recipes I read were quite enthusiastic about how easy a leche flan was to make. The ingredients certainly seemed simple enough: a dozen egg yolks, a can of sweetened condensed milk, a can of evaporated milk, a teaspoon of vanilla extract, and some sugar.
The instructions seemed simple enough too: line a baking dish with some cooked sugar (boil it with a couple of tablespoons of water) then add the egg mixture and bake in a water bath. There were a few things I didn’t do right – the melted sugar freaked me out a bit, so I took it off the heat way too soon, resulting in the relatively clear liquid and coating you see at the end. Next time I’ll be brave and let it go dark.
I strained the egg mixture, which was a good move, as some of the egg whites were caught before they made it into the final dish. I whisked it as gently as possible, per instruction, but bubbles will be bubbles and that didn’t bother me. The flecks of vanilla bean, while decadent, weren’t quite the creamy look I was going for – another mistake of mine for putting in vanilla bean paste instead of vanilla extract. (A reminder that being fancy isn’t always necessary.) Other than that, though, this turned out surprisingly edible, if not downright decent. I’ll give it another go in a while, and send some to Suzie.
