A SIMPLE FLAN

Leche flan. Its very name is a redundancy of sorts. After all, what else do you make flan with but...milk?

Come to think of it, only Flipinos use the term "leche flan". Even the Spanish, who originally brought the dish to our country, simply call it "flan", as do the Portuguese. The French version of this dessert is called creme caramel, while its American counterpart is called custard. Whatever it is called elsewhere in the world, all incarnations of this dish include three basic ingredients: milk, eggs, and sugar.

My earliest memories of leche flan take place in my grandmother's kitchen. I remember those ubiquitous oval molds, which looked like cans of ham with their tops taken off. My lola would caramelize the sugar in those molds, and we would get startled everytime the syrup crackled as it cooled.

Lola Viring used to make her own leche flan, when my Lolo Maning was still alive. When it got to be too much trouble, she just started ordering it from our favorite bakery, Merced Bakeshop on EDSA. The Merced version was round, not oval like my Lola's, and it came with an extra serving of syrup on the side.

My adventures with flan started when I found the perfect round pan at McFrugal's, which reminded me of the Merced flans of old. To this day, it is the only mold I use. It's not easy to find a good mold. You have to have a pan that can withstand direct heat from the stove, or else you won't be able to caramelize your sugar for the syrup. (My sister-in-law, Anna, foregoes this step and just uses plain bottled syrup, but she says it doesn't come out the same as mine.)

Now when it comes to leche flan, I am a purist. Some people choose to be fancy, adding bits of macapuno and langka to the melange, but I like a simple, straightforward flan. No frills for me, thank you.

My forays into improvisation go as far as grating some lime zest into the mix, but since most of it usually ends up in my strainer, I just do away with this step altogether. I do, however, add a liberal sprinkling of vanilla for flavor, but I wonder if this is at all necessary. I forgot to add the ingredient once, but the people in my church pot luck didn't seem to notice.

Most people I know make leche flan with egg yolks. I personally find it too bothersome to separate the yolks from the whites, so I use whole eggs instead, mixed with evaporated milk and sugar. Sometimes, I use condensed milk with egg yolks, but only after my husband makes egg white omelettes, conveniently setting the yolks aside for me. This makes for a richer version of flan, so I don't make it often, at least not until Lorenzo's next protein binge. Then it's egg whites with every meal and enough leftover yolks in the fridge to send my inner Marie-Antoinette to the nearest whisk, screaming "Let zem eet flan!!!"

Actually, I AM up to my ears in flan right now, this being the holiday season. My husband gave my first holiday flan to his boss, and requests have been pouring in since. I've been turning them out, twice a day this past week alone. No mean feat, considering I only have ONE mold.

A minor emergency ensued once, when Lorenzo forgot the pan at work (my husband unmolds my creations in the workplace as flans generally get sloppy in transit). I seriously considered making tocino del cielo that day, foolishly thinking I could use my muffin pans.

My bravado was short-lived. Turns out you need a contraption called a bain marie to make tocino, which is as much akin to leche flan as creme brulee is to creme caramel. Oh well, people will just have to wait for a neighborhood Dulcinea to open here in Modesto, because no tocinos del cielo will be coming out of the Sereno kitchen any time soon. I'll stick to making tocino's poor cousin, thank you, at least until I find myself a bain marie.

There is also a story behind this season's first holiday flan. There I was, ready to pop the mixture in the oven when I realized I had run out of vanilla. Normally, this wouldn't even faze me (thanks to my church pot luck experience), but this was a special flan. It was going to my husband's boss, so it had to be GOOD.

So there I was, late at night, seriously considering hopping over to the store, when an inspiration hit me: why not make coffee-flavored flan, which I remember tasting when I was a kid! I nearly shot the idea down, when I realized all the coffee I had at home was ground coffee, which would not dissolve in milk. I needed instant coffee, which I haven't had in my house in ages.

Luckily, a thorough and desperate search yielded a single instant coffee packet, salvaged from Lorenzo's old MRE (Meal Ready to Eat) ration from the U.S. Army. I used this to flavor the flan in place of vanilla, and came up with my first cafe au lait flan, which I told my husband to present to his boss with a fluorish, no apologies needed. Necessity is truly the mother of invention.

The inspiration doesn't end there. On our next trip to the grocery store, I made sure to get the biggest jar of instant coffee I could find, along with a monster bottle of vanilla. Next time, I will try adding a heaping tablespoon of coffee, along with vanilla, into the mix. If it meets everybody's approval, I will call this my cafe con leche flan.

So much for "simple and straightforward". And I called myself a purist!

All this hue and cry is making me realize what I should've thought of long ago. Leche flan, which bakes for two hours and takes overnight to set, is hardly the perfect candidate for holiday mass production.

I think it is time to reconsider next year's holiday offering from the Sereno household. I need something that's fast, easy to prepare, and delicious enough to carry the Sereno label. Next year, I think I will walk the simple, downtrodden path many a housewife has taken in convenience. I will turn out that old American staple...fudge!

Now when it comes to fudge, I am a purist...nothing but milk, sugar, marshmallows and semi-sweet chocolate chips. Not for me those fancy-schmanzy creations, with nuts, dried fruits and every other stir-in Betty Crocker can conjure up. I like a nice, simple, solid chocolate fudge.

No frills for me, thank you.