The Florida Cookbook: From Gulf Coast Gumbo to Key Lime Pie - Couverture rigide

Rum Spanish Flan with Caramelized Oranges
Makes 8 to 10 servings

There's no contest for the top dessert of Spanish Florida: baked caramel custard unmolded to show its golden crown. The rule in a Spanish kitchen that you can't use too many eggs makes a flan that stands up handsomely, and is easier to work with than a crème caramel, which may be so creamy that it relaxes on the plate. Nuns in the first mission in St. Augustine probably brought this style of dessert to Florida almost 450 years ago. Latter-day Hispanics brough their versions from the Caribbean and Europe. A Florida flan has a velvety texture and can be cut in pretty slices. The caramelized oranges with it are a new wrinkle, and a good one. Flan usually is served as is with a bit of the caramel spooned over it.

Custard
1 2/3 cups sugar
3 tablespoons water
8 large eggs
Pinch salt
2 12-ounce cans evaporated milk
2 tablespoons dark rum

Caramelized Oranges
1 large orange, peeled and sliced 1/4 inch thick
1 cup sugar
1/3 cup water
1 tablespoon dark rum

Butter a 9 x 5-inch loaf pan. Place the 2/3 cup sugar in a large heavy skillet and stir over moderate heat until it turns golden. Work out any lumps, taking care not to let the sugar burn. Stir in the water with a long-handled spoon (the hot syrup will splatter). Cook, stirring, a minute or two, until blended. Pour into the prepared loaf pan, tilt the pan to coat the sides and bottom, and set aside.

Preheat the oven to 325 degrees. Place a baking dish large enough to hold the loaf pan in the oven. Pour hot water to a depth of 1/2 inch into the baking dish. In a medium-size bowl, beat the eggs with the remaining 1 cup sugar until blended. Add the salt and stir in the undiluted evaporated milk and the rum. Mix will and pour over the caramel in the loaf pan. Place the loaf pan in the baking dish with the water in the oven. Bake 1 1/2 hours, or until a table knife inserted in the center comes out clean. Remove the pan from the water bath and cool the custard, then chill it overnight or for at least 8 hours.

Meanwhile, prepare the oranges. Cut the orange slices crosswise into half circles. Place the sugar and water in a large heavy skillet. Cook and stir over moderate heat until golden brown. Add the oranges to the hot caramel. Using tongs or a spatula, turn to coat them with the caramel. If the caramel sticks, stir in a bit more water. Sprinkle with the rum and cool the mixture.

To turn out the flan, loosen it around the edges with a thin-bladed knife, invert a platter over the pan, and invert it quickly, so as not to lose any of the caramel; lift off the loaf pan. Garnish the platter with the caramelized oranges or pass them seperately. Slice the flan to serve. Refrigerate any leftovers and serve within a day or two.

More than 450 years ago, Florida became the cradle of American cooking as we know it now, the place where European foods were first blended with the foodways of Native Americans. The great mix was set in motion in 1513, when Ponce de Leon staked a claim for Spain near Ponte Vedra. The exchange of multicultural food customs has never ceased, creating a cuisine of more ethnic diversity than any in America, and possibly in the world....

It was the founding of St. Augustine in 1565 and, two years later, the Nombre de Dios mission that introduced European cooking to the new continent. Franciscans traveling the mission trail to Pensacola were making egg custards in the Spanish manner and using rice and spices unknown then in the Western world, and settlers in Florida were eating in the Spanish style long before Father Junipero Serra, the culinary trailblazer in the West, founded the first mission in California.

However, two powerful influences moderated the Spanish flavor of Florida. First, there were the people of African heritage. A small number of Moors and Africans came as free persons with the Conquistadors, then thousands were brought here as slaves, starting in the middle of the sixteenth century. The blacks carried with them sesame seeds, yams, eggplants, and okra, for their own use. The second influential non-Spanish group was the Anglo-Americans descendants of settlers in New England, Virginia, the Carolinas, and Georgia, who began to trickle into Florida before the American Revolution. They brought sweets, a taste for rice cooked differently from the Spanish, and quick hot breads. Not until the Spanish migrations to Key West and Tampa after the Civil War did European-type wheat breads come into general use, except in Pensacola, where a unique hardtack was made for the salad called gaspachee.

From the Hardcover edition.