Before I met my husband and his family 40 years ago, I really knew nothing about food. Our meals had consisted of hamburger gravy, venison and small game, and pancakes. I’m not even sure I knew beef came in a form other than ground. I’ve come a long way, baby! And I owe a lot of it to my mother- in- law, she opened my eyes to a whole new world of cuisine and flavors.
Homemade breads, desserts, appetizers, various cuts and varieties of meats, salads with more than just iceberg lettuce, every meal was an adventure at her house! My interest and curiosity had been peaked. Over the following years her encouragement with gifts of kitchen tools, cookbooks, magazines and everything else food related gave me the opportunity to explore a whole new world of food.
One of the delectable delights I had first tasted was a dessert recipe called Flan. What a beautiful, simple bit of sweetness. It has become a most requested treat and my youngest son requested it for his birthday this week. For some reason I can never find the recipe I had originally gotten from her and always end up picking up the phone and calling her for it. Maybe I have intentionally lost it so we can have a food chat 😉
This time I was sure I knew where it was. I was kind of right, the version I found was one from probably 10 years ago. My oldest son wanted to make it for a class at school. I think it was for Spanish or maybe one of his Consumer Ed classes. They had this bakery class that the students would bake items to sell in the cafeteria before school started, it included marketing the item, pricing it and tracking who sold the most. He really enjoyed it. Anyway, I have gotten off track now.
He had decided he wanted to make the flan (mostly because I think he wanted some), so I told him to call his Grandma and get the recipe, write everything down and we would get going on it. This is the recipe I found in my search. Good thing I can read his scratch and already knew what to do.
Of course, this meant I didn’t REALLY have a reason to call her, but you know I did anyway. And you know we chatted. Because we can and we will.
After the chat, I whipped this baby up and tried to keep everyone out of it until after suppertime. Quite the challenge I might add, especially when the birthday boy wants to snitch a taste.
As I was tipping this out of my glass pie plate, it dawned on me I had asked for a flan pan a few years ago for Christmas, so it is on my radar again to make soon. The pan has smaller diameter and I’d like to see the difference a thicker flan would make. In the pie plate I use, it turns out much thinner than I would like. But it is delicious. Very delicious.
As you can see, it didn’t make it out of the kitchen or to the table, but I was able to barely keep it in tact until after supper. He had it sliced and served before I could even stick a candle in it!
