The Garcia Family - DEIB Cooking

Speaker: The Garcia Family

The Garcia Family: Hi, we're the Garcias and we're gonna make some Cuban style Flan and I'm gonna do whatever she tells me I'm supposed to do. All right, we're gonna start by turning our stove on medium heat and this is our special pan to make it. It's about four tablespoons of sugar, which we did not measure. The sweeter the better! And Gigi said, just eyeball it. So while Brittany is browning the sugar, I'm going to be scrambling five whole eggs, whisking them up. I need to add a little more sugar. Gigi says, so let's see. Is that good? Ok. I think the important thing with this is that you have to be really careful and keep an eye on it because it can burn really fast and keep it moving. All right, Gigi, my eggs are whisked. So now we gotta add the evaporated milk. So we've got one can of evaporated milk. Going in. Followed by two cans of sweetened condensed milk. Going in, it's real thick stuff. And with this recipe, the less whisking and agitating of the batter the better. So he's gonna whisk it very quickly, but just very minimal. I may need a spoon to get the rest of this stuff out. It's so thick. Let me grab a spoon. Excuse me, we wanna make sure to get all of this sweet and condensed milk in there. And then after that add two tablespoons of vanilla. Now there you go. It's starting to melt. Two tablespoons of vanilla. We got some Mexican vanilla here. Correction. One tablespoon of vanilla just do a little extra for extra liquid for the altitude, Not a full. So we live in Colorado. We tested this once, didn't turn out as we had hoped just because Colorado high altitude. So we have to adjust the baking. Normally we would bake at 350 for an hour but we have to increase the temperature a little bit and bake it uh less. I also have a can of evaporated milk. We're just gonna do a couple splashes of evaporated milk again to keep it nice and liquid-y and we're gonna mix fast but not too much. Oh, it smells so good. All right. That is all she wrote with that. All right. The sugar is getting nice and caramelized in here. So you gotta be careful because it can go from good to burnt really fast. Doesn't be around on us. Teamwork makes the dream work. Yeah. Ok. Almost all melted. That smells so good. It does smell really good. Yeah. So while Brittany is finishing this, I just want to share that my family is all from Cuba I've got family from Santti Spiritus Cuba and Holguin. My mom's family is from Santti Spiritus and then my dad's family is from Holguin, Cuba. They came in the sixties, I think the sixties, fifties and sixties is when they moved to the States. And fun fact, we have Gigi and Gpop Nick's mom and dad, his aunt, Olguita and Abuela from Cuba here. So we're gonna bring out a special guest to explain one of the last little parts of baking. Just a couple more little chunks of sugar and then we can let it cool. And, you don't have to let it cool all the way. Just until the sugar gets hard and then Gigi says when you put the mixture in it'll crackle a little bit or sizzle. OK? Turn off the heat now on that. Yeah, it's got a nice golden color. I'm gonna just break up that last little bit of sugar in there. OK? And then take it over, off the heat and just let it cool. Just kind of give us some air to kind of let it cool a little bit faster. Well, we can show them what it's gonna look like when it's all done while we're waiting. It's got a nice little caramel sauce when it cooks you dump it out. So the sauce kind of falls down the side and then grandparents brought this little Cuban decoration. Where, Here is where my dad's family is from. So if you guys are familiar with Cuba Havana is up here. So they're all the way on the east side of the island again. My dad's family is from Holguin, then right down here is Santti Spiritus, that is where my mom's family is all from. I lied. That is not where they're from. That is where they're from the center of the island. And then they brought us some Cuban coffee and we have our Cuban crackers here. Uh I know we like to eat these with butter on them. They're really good. And because I'm a fatty, my grandmother knows how much I love these. These are pastelitos. These are guava and queso pastelitos, these are so they're delicious from a shop in Buena Park called Porto, which is world famous Cuban shop. And we're also buying time because we're waiting for the sugar to completely down. You know, you could fan it. I think we can go ahead and put it in there. It's all right. So we got our sieve here. This is, yeah, you can pour it in. This is to get the air bubbles out of the mixture so that it's more of a thick custard and it's just going right on top of that. Caramelized sugar. Lift it a little bit, right? OK. Just keep that. So I can, I do hear it sizzling. All right. All right. So we are gonna put a little water in a pan to give it a water bath. A nice water bath. And in Spanish that is called bano-maria.

The Garcia Family: Ok. So with this pan Gigi's used it so much that we have to put foil on top of it so that the lid stays on because the clips won't make it tight. So you put it in like this and then, ok. And so we'll let Abuela tell us about putting it in the water. "The purpose of the water bath is to help moderate the temperature of the bake. As well as help prevent cracking across the top of the flan." And that goes in there for how long, Brit? Um, we're gonna bake it for 50 minutes at 375 because we're at 6500 ft. But if we were at sea level we would do... Grandma told her she didn't put it in there. So she's got to put it more in the middle. So we would, if we were at sea level we'd bake it for an hour at 350 But that's it. And that's how we make Cuban Style Flan.