Vanilla Bean and Lemon Caramel Custard
I cannot believe that May is over! We are five months in to 2020 but honestly, I have living through the stages of the Lockdown. The only solace has been that lockdown has seriously increased our need to cook and your need to make my recipes! In part with the blog’s new tradition, here are my high and lows for the month of May.
Highs
On the work front, we launched a phenomenal new project! I think one of the best things about my job is how well it dovetails into my other passions. We are currently building a private social network for a B2B brand that promises to be engaging while remaining neutral. Its complex but I am so excited to be part of the larger trend of private social engagement.
I am also building personal skilling capacity by enrolling in an online course— something that I see being highly popular right now. It was hard not to find value in upskilling in a format that while till now might have seemed sub-par, will soon become a norm for how we educate ourselves.
Lastly, from a blog front— Shirin, Natasha, and I took part in a “pitch fest.” We pitched our podcast to Spotify in collaboration with an online artist community called Kommune. Out of the 250 entries, we pitched our ideas over Zoom and the judges chose our podcast as one of the two that will produce! Now, to be honest, we still don’t know what that might look like but its so validating to have a popular RJ like Roshan Abbas and the head of podcasting at Spotify India validate our content. We are so happy to see what is in store for this asset and so proud of the team that works on this. Shirin adds so much energy to the podcast and I truly think audio is her forte. And pitching with her again reminded me of our pitches back when we used to work together— some of my most cherished times with her. Natasha has been the silent crusader in the team. She has built a lot of the creative aspects of the product— from building the artwork to learning audio software to actually edit our podcast. 50% of our entry depended on the trailer and that was all her. I am so proud of this team!
Lows
Work from home has been hectic. The line between when work begins and ends is a constant blur. No matter how hard I try to segment that line, I can see myself working every day of the week. If you follow the IG page, you might even notice that stories about my daily life are down and that’s only because I really don’t have anything exciting to share on the weekdays. I am just working. The volume of work is so high that I literally have no time to pick up my phone. The only solace has been all of you that have been cooking constantly and tagging me. Your food keeps me going and planning more food shoots for the weekend!
I am loving how the lows are reducing month on month. Here’s hoping that June looks like this or better. Baking desserts has never been a skill that I have been proud of but as I was cleaning my pantry, I found this jar of Vanilla Bean Paste that I bought from a trip to Hong Kong exactly one year ago. With the lockdown in full force and my penchant of making something speckled with little vanilla stars, I decided on making this caramel custard aka Flan. This Iberian dish is Latin American classic that (while I don’t know how) is so popular in India. The flan is such a fun recipe to make, filled with caramel, hints of nutmeg and lemon, and a lot of hectic upside down action haha!
Glimpses from the week
Recipe
Ingredients
2 ½ cups sugar
3 cups whole milk
2 strips lemon zest
⅛ teaspoon salt
6 large eggs
2 egg yolks
½ teaspoon pure vanilla extract
Freshly shaved nutmeg, to taste
Method
Make the caramel: Pour 1 cup sugar and 2 tablespoons water into a saucepan, preferably one that is white or light-coloured inside. Place over medium heat and bring to a boil, swirling the pan to combine the sugar and water. Do not stir. Let boil until deep amber in colour, swirling the pan occasionally to caramelize evenly, about 10 minutes total. Watch the pan carefully after the mixture starts turning golden; it will quickly become light brown, then amber, then dark amber. Immediately pour caramel into a 9-inch cake tin and swirl to coat the bottom evenly. Set aside to harden.
Heat oven to 165 degrees celsius. In a saucepan or microwaveable bowl or pitcher, combine milk, lemon zest, salt, vanilla bean paste, and remaining 1 1/2 cups sugar. Over low heat or in the microwave, heat through, stirring to melt the sugar. Set aside. In a bowl combine eggs, egg yolks. Whisk well. Remove the lemon zest strips from the hot milk mixture.
Remove the milk off the heat and place next to your bowl of eggs and vanilla. pour the milk mixture into the eggs. Go very slowly at first so that the eggs don’t cook from the heat of the milk. Whisk just until smooth.
Pour the egg-milk mixture into the caramel-lined pan. Place a 9- by- 13-inch baking dish in the lower third of the oven. Carefully place the loaf pan in the baking dish. Pour hot tap water into the baking dish until it comes about halfway up the sides of the loaf pan. (Don’t worry if the oven seems to be losing heat; the flan will adjust.)
Bake 55 to 65 minutes, until flan, is set but still jiggly in the centre. Remove flan from the water bath and cool on a rack for 30 minutes. Refrigerate, uncovered, until cold and firm, at least 8 hours or up to 3 days. The caramel will soften as it sits.
To unmold, run a thin sharp knife around the edges. Centre a flat-bottomed platter or serving dish with a rim on top of the pan and, holding both, carefully flip the pan and plate together. The flan will fall onto the plate with a squelch; lift off the pan and let the caramel run all over the top. (If the flan doesn’t come out, flip it back over and rest the bottom of the pan on a hot wet kitchen towel for a few minutes, to melt the caramel.) Serve chilled, in slices.
