#FlanFridays: Mojito

¡Hola! It’s Friday and another flan creation for you. This one, though I was completely against the flavor, was a special request by a young Latino doing some fun, cultural things in the East coast… a road trip of sorts. His last stop is D.C. and in talking about the day’s activities, we mentioned having flan and café together. He ever-so-slickly threw in there how much he’d love to try a mojito flan. Joy! I had every intention of making a watermelon one. It was a challenge I put myself up to and supported by some chef friends on Facebook.

No less, here we are with a mojito in solid form. The second most complicated one I’ve made to date. If you recall, the blueberry one, which I’ll reiterate, is insanely delicious and gritty, gave me a hard time. By contrast, this one was {relatively} easy, just very time consuming. Sure, I could have taken short cuts and saved myself some time by using extracts; but I wanted the real deal. It was pouring late last night and I seriously debated using a cocktail of extracts versus picking some leaves from the stash in our backyard. When the rain subsided, I ran outside, made a beeline for the patch and picked a few stems with flowers. I was determined to mirror a real mojito — no extract in that popular cóctel. None here either, friends.

I extracted mint flavor by boiling the fresh leaves in milk.

As you can imagine, I then had to strain it and let it cool. Doesn’t seem so bad, right? Well, while mint has a strong effect, when boiled in milk, the flavor is somewhat diffused, requiring a long, simmering process to really get it all out. That’s even with a pre-boil muddle.

I could have also cheated with rum extract, but I used a generous amount of Havana Club dark rum to grab a strong liquor flavor since most of it was going to evaporate. Lastly, some citrus! A good amount of fresh squeezed lime and lemon juice and the custard was well on its way to cooking up and becoming minty and creamy goodness.

I woke this morning to a lovely full-sized flan which emitted really strong scents of mint and rum. I was actually a bit surprised. I thought the chilling process would have deflated the bold aromas it gave immediately after removing it from the pressure cooker. But it didn’t and my morning was off to a great start. All that was missing was some espresso.

I’m not sure why it took me a few years to make one to share with you, but better late than never, as they say, right? It’s all muy bueno and well worth the extra time spent baking.

One important note, though. I would not make this mojito one in the more traditional method of setting in a bain marie. Honies, you’d be in the cocina, sweating it off, for about 2+ hours. Yes, it’s great, but we have other things to tend to! Like making a liquid mojito!

Happy #FlanFridays, lovelies! Eat, love and pray.

A P.S. on Photo Details: While I enjoy taking my pictures and sharing some good material, I’m just not pleased with these at all. I shot in partial natural night and the dining room (was still raining this morning) and had my settings to manual where I could manipulate the ISO, etc… yet still, the raw files look okay and the editing process kicked my butt. I spent too much time and just walked away. I’m a perfectionist, but not today. I have to just let it go. I think I still offer a picture that entices the palate!

Eat well, love unapologetically, pray with true intention, and take care of yourself.

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Enjoy

MOJITO FLAN

Ingredients:

• 3 whole eggs
• 1 can sweetened condensed milk
• 14 oz. milk (2% or whole)
• 3/4 cup white sugar
• 1/4 cup fresh mint leaves, muddled
• 10 mint leaves for garnish
• juice from 1/2 lemon and 1/2 lime
• 2 Tbsp. rum (dark or light)
• 1 tsp. vanilla extract

Method:

In small saucepan, add milk and 1/4 cup mint leave and bring to boil. Reduce heat to low, cover and let simmer for 30 minutes. Add rum and let sit for 5 more minutes. Strain milk and transfer to bowl. Chill for 30 minutes.Whisk eggs in a medium sized bowl. Add and combine sweetened condensed & whole milk, lemon and lime juice and vanilla extract.  Set aside. Add sugar to an 8″  flan mold and caramelize on medium-high heat until it is golden color, stirring constantly. Make sure not to burn sugar.  When sugar is fully melted down, carefully  coat entire flan mold, covering all sides, using  circular motion (I suggest using a brush if you are not experienced in handling extremely hot caramel). Move fast if using a brush. Close flan mold.

Add 3 cups of water to a 4 or 6 qt. pressure cooker. Gently place flan mold in cooker and close lid. Place jiggler on lid. If your pressure cooker jiggler has different PSI settings, set it to 10. Cook on high for 10 minutes, or until pressure cooker starts hissing. Turn off heat and allow all of the pressure to release itself, or for another 5 minutes.

Remove from pressure cooker after all pressure is released. Refrigerate for 8-9 hours or overnight for best taste. Remove from refrigeration 30-45 minutes before serving to loosen some. To serve, using a butter knife, loosen the sides of the flan all the way around. Take a large plate, place upside down on top of flan and flip. Garnish each individual slice with 2-3 leaves of mint and flower sprigs.

Serves 8.

* Chef’s notes: you can add the rum to the finished flan instead of fusing it in with the milk. It will thin out your caramel, so you may make your caramel thicker by adding 1 additional tablespoon. Simply pour two tablespoons over the custard and let blend into caramel. Continue to cut individual slices.