When preparing for a class like this, we sometimes have to tweak the recipes before we make the recipe packet for the guests to take home. The chef provided us with copies of his recipes, and as I expected, they were his restaurant production recipes. Luckily, most of them were scaled appropriately for the home cook--the paella for example is meant to serve 3 to 5 restaurant guests, so that required just minor adjustments in the instructions to make it easier for the home cook. The pan con tomate tapas was scaled to make 4 quarts of the tomato topping, but it was easy enough to scale down to make 1 quart. The flan, on the other hand, was scaled to make 105 servings. The flan recipe was going to take a little work.
Flan is a traditional Spanish custard dessert. Generically, custards are made from dairy, sugar, and eggs. Depending on the type of dairy and whether the eggs are whole or yolks only, custards can range in consistency from creme anglaise (vanilla sauce, which when processed in an ice cream machine becomes vanilla ice cream) to something firmer, such as creme brulee (firmer than a sauce, but still soft enough that it must be served in the dish in which it is baked), to flan, which is firm enough that it can be unmolded from its dish and stand alone on the plate. Cream and egg yolks will yield softer custards, milk and whole eggs generally yield firmer custards.
The chef's recipe for flan used sweetened condensed milk, evaporated milk, liquid eggs and coconut extract--and the measurements were along the line of 3 quarts of liquid eggs, 2 gallons of evaporated milk, etc. On top of that, the chef used a combi oven to bake the custards. A combi oven is a restaurant appliance that combines a convection oven with a steamer, and when using a combi oven, you can set temperature, fan speed, percent steam, even add superheated steam. So, the baking instructions for the chef's restaurant recipe consisted of the different dial settings and a time to bake. Needless to say, the recipe as written wasn't going to work for the home cook.
I started by converting all of the measurements to ounces and then used basic math to adjust from 105 servings to 1 serving, then looked at how the measurements worked for 4, 6, 8 servings, etc. My goal was to see if I could get the math to work out for round numbers on the eggs, hoping to avoid something like 4.6 eggs. The math for a 6 serving conversion came out to 3.1 eggs, so I used that as my starting point. But, I knew I needed to make a batch of the flan using the converted recipe, because when you scale a recipe to that degree, things can go sideways pretty quickly.
The first batch of the flan didn't quite work. The flavor was spot on, but the texture was totally wrong--it was spongy. The flan had cooked too quickly, and for too long, and the custard curdled. I had looked up a flan recipe on the internet and used the basic baking instructions as a substitute for the combi oven settings, but clearly I needed to make some adjustments. I asked our R&D chef to take a look (we share our cooking school with his team), and he agreed that the temperature and time were off, but he also thought that I might want to add a couple of additional egg whites to lighten the custard. I didn't have enough time to bake another batch at work that day, so I quickly packed up the ingredients I would need and took them home with me to test the next day on my day off.
So, that next afternoon, I pulled the bag of ingredients out of the fridge to start the next test batch of flan. In my rush to get out of work the day before, I had inadvertently grabbed the extra large eggs (instead of the large eggs), and two cans of evaporated milk instead of one evaporated and one sweetened condensed. (Grrrrrr....) I really didn't feel like getting out and going to the store, so I decided just to go with what I had on hand--my biggest concern was the oven temperature and cook time, and I decided I could probably sort that out with the ingredients I had on hand. If not, I could go in to work early and make a third test batch when I got there.
Sometimes, the best recipes are the result of happy accidents. I added sugar to compensate for not having the sweetened condensed milk, and instead of adding egg whites, I used the extra large eggs and increased from 3 to 4. I reduced the baking temperature and time, and it all came together beautifully. The recipe we gave the students still uses the sweetened condensed milk and large eggs, to keep it as close as possible to the chef's original, but this version below I will proudly claim as my own.
Flan
Makes 8 to 10 servings, depending on ramekin size
For the custard:
2 12-ounce cans evaporated milk
½ cup granulated sugar
4 extra large eggs
2 Tablespoons vanilla extract
For the caramel:
1 cup granulated sugar
½ cup water
Preheat the oven to 300 °F. Arrange ramekins in a shallow baking dish or roasting pan.
Place the custard ingredients in a blender and blend on medium-high speed until well blended, about 2 minutes. Set aside.
Take the remaining 1 cup sugar and water and place in a small saucepan. Heat over medium high heat until the sugar is fully dissolved and the liquid is boiling. Do not stir the sugar solution from this point forward, gently swirl the pan as needed. Continue to cook until the syrup is a deep golden brown. Remove from the heat and carefully pour the caramel into each of the ramekins, making a puddle fully across the bottom of each ramekin.
Pour the custard into each of the ramekins, filling them just up to the rim. Fill a large pitcher with hot tap water, then carefully pour the water into the roasting pan around the ramekins. The should be deep enough to come about halfway up the sides of the ramekins.
Cover the roasting pan with foil, then place in the oven. Bake for 45 minutes. Remove the pan from the oven and peel back the foil. The flan is cooked when the custard is set and is slightly wibbly in the center. If the flan still seems soft, replace the foil and return the roasting pan to the oven, but turn the oven off. Check the flan again in about 10 minutes, they should be set.
Remove the ramekins from the roasting pan and allow to cool on the counter to room temperature, then wrap and place in the refrigerator. To serve, run the tip of a paring knife around the inside edge of the ramekin to loosen the custard, then turn out onto a plate.
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