KP+: Fig Leaf Flan
Summer Hours on Kitchen Projects
I’m currently on my way to Southern Spain with two suitcases filled with tins, linens and vanilla pods. I’m headed there to host my first-ever food retreat alongside my bestie Milli Taylor, as well as a ragtag gang of other people I absolutely adore including the outrageously talented Jordon Ezra King and utterly brilliant Holly Cochrane. So, HEADS UP - the newsletter may be on a bit of a ‘summer hours schedule’ til I’m back.
It’s taking place in the foothills of Málaga, at Rancho del Ingles, which Milli’s parents built from the ground up. It was Milli’s idea to name the retreat ‘Sobremesa’. In Spain, sobremesa means ‘over the table’ and refers to the time spent at the table after a meal, talking, laughing, and enjoying the moment. We’ve been plotting and planning since the beginning of the year, and it’s hard to believe it’s finally here!
This past week has been filled with a LOT of testing and organising. With breakfast, lunches and dinners to produce for our guests + staff (30+!) over four days, I cannot wait to get started. I have lists in every format possible - email drafts, notes app, google docs, word docs, in note books, on random scraps of paper, whatsapp threads. Shopping lists run into ideas for breakfast spreads, dessert blueprints collide with workshop teaching points - it’s a glorious melting pot that will soon be organised, cooked, served and eaten.
I love writing and recipe development, but cooking IRL always helps me feel connected to the ‘why’ of all this. Getting to see a dish make it all the way to the table is crucial punctuation for this job; It can sometimes feel like cooking without that final presentation, the joyful exclamation mark, is like going to the hairdresser’s but leaving with your hair still wet. I’m so excited to lock in and get into the rhythm of cooking.
From special breakfast buns to big sharing plated desserts, a daily rotating granita (the granita calculator is going to be in FULL SWING - I’m definitely considering a spicy tomato, as well as a pina colada…) along with house jams and preserves, I’m just so ready! I will be taking my sourdough starter, named baby G, and see if the spirit moves me to bake sourdough each day.
Over the coming weeks, I’ll be sharing recipes that I’ve developed especially for this retreat. One of my favourite things about doing pop-ups (which I’ve basically swapped for book talks/events over the past year) is the intense period of creative recipe development that comes before it. In those sprints, you are forced to consider unsexy things like logistics and fridge space, along with the more alluring topics of form and flavour.
I haven’t gotten too strict with the planning, and I’m waiting to see what is available: Rancho has fig and lemon trees - neither has fruit that is ready, but I am delighted to freely access delicious leaves that have been warmed in the sun for months. I love living in London, but I admit that the fig leaves I forage can sometimes be a bit questionable, being constantly hammered by bus exhaust pipes and bubblegum-flavoured vape liquid.
Olives and stone fruit are plentiful, and the tomatoes will be at their peak. The “Huevo de Toro” tomato, a native variety grown outdoors in the Guadalhorce Valley, where Rancho is located, and its peak harvesting season coincides with our retreat. There’s even a tomato festival that we’ll be heading to to meet local growers, who bring their prized Huevo de Toro to be judged in the town square, along with other general festivities.
In Spain, for example, you CAN get your hands on good butter (canned! And Kerrygold), but it is expensive and, in the heat, difficult to work with. Many of my menu ideas in the coming week involve olive oil instead. There’s a manufacturer just 20-minute drive away from Rancho, so how could we not make the most of that? From olive oil brioche to olive oil choux, flaky olive oil pastry to olive oil shortbread, it’s been a relatively steep learning curve to make things work and not to give up. The usual ‘tricks’ of emulsification don’t work the same when it’s oil instead of butter.
Same for cream - my beloved, beloved cream. Although we will use it occasionally, it cannot serve as the reliable crutch it does in the UK. Good fresh whole milk is delicious and plentiful, and I’m turning my sights to useful products like condensed milk, which is where today’s recipe is coming in. I know some of my readers are going to be at the retreat, so SPOILER ALERT, flan is DEFINITELY going to be making an appearance. I mixed up a test batch this week, and I was so overwhelmed by the effort-to-impressiveness ratio. I actually still can’t quite believe how good this dessert looks:
I wondered.. was this just a fluke? But no. I made another and it came out just as beautifully.
On Flan
Of course, there are different ways to make flan, but as a condensed milk fan, this felt like an easy win. Compared to a classic custard tart, flan uses much less relative fat and is much lighter and springier; Whole milk and condensed milk with whole eggs, rather than double cream with egg yolks.
The final custard is lighter, bouncier and closer to a lemon tart texture. It cracks and pulls away in rich shards rather than in wanton scoops. Milk is a useful ingredient in desserts because it is so easily infused - I tested this with fig leaves, but it could have just as easily been roasted almonds, sweetcorn kernels or coffee beans.
The key thing you adjust is the depth of the caramel. Taking it a bit deeper, just a few seconds, than you might be comfortable with is advised. The caramel absorbs into the top layer of the custard while the rest re-liquifies as it rests to provide a lovely sauce.
Though not crucial, I also developed a little salty maple coconut flake brittle to go with the flan. A classic brittle doesn’t work here - far too crunchy. I wanted it to hold together just about, so it wouldn’t be too dissonant with the flan. It is definitely optional.
Alright, let’s make it.