Salty, sweet, spicy, and simply divine.

This is what I did on my term break:

Went to bed late

Got up late

Had my heart broken by Wally Lamb (again)

Went to the Grampians for Easter (again)

Ate chocolate daily

Crocheted 3/4 of a beanie/beret thing

Worried over my youngest child, away on an arduous camp

Bought an AMAZING set of cheapskate knives

Celebrated my husband's birthday

Became addicted to kimchi

Are two weeks long enough to develop an addiction?  They must be, because here I am, craving mouthfuls of crunchy, salty, tangy, spicy, stinky goodness every hour of every darned day.  And not just any kimchi, but homemade kimchi, which is like nothing you get in either restaurants or shops.  Shop- or restaurant-bought kimchi is all right, but homemade is not anything you can call "all right" – nothing you can be ambivalent about.  It is either love with a violent passion, or completely turn away from.

This term break began with the discovery of Maangchi, whom I promptly fell in love with, for her skills, knowledge, warmth, sultry voice, and her honest and earthy enjoyment of everything she eats.  And it continued with trying a few recipes out here and there.  And then it culminated with my first batch of kimchi, made in desperation out of stuff I didn't want to throw away.

I came home from the Grampians (see What I Did on My Term Break, above), and had my usual shock-horror response when I saw the contents of my refrigerator crisper, which I'd totally forgotten about before I left. Even though I'd never made kimchi before, I decided to make it out of the things that most desperately needed using: a bag of discounted coleslaw mix I'd bought on impulse, a bunch of bok choy whose outer leaves were beginning to wilt, carrots, and a couple of bunches of spring (green) onions that were papery on the outside but still had sweet and tender centres.  

Obviously not a purist's kimchi, but it was good.  Even before fermentation it was like a million plus a million times better than any kimchi I'd ever had before:  the salting process totally removed the bitterness from the bok choy, and the flavours were rounded and full.  After a couple days' fermentation on the bench, the flavours had deepened and I now had something quite complex on the palate.

So I started me thinking: can you make kimchi out of anything? The nice people in Maangchi's forums assured me you could.  I had dreams of pumpkin and broccoli stem kimchi and all kinds of weird and wonderful things, but the first thing that came my way was a whole pile of Chantenay carrots on special.  I had this image of Maangchi munching on very crunchy cubed radish kimchi (kkakdugi) and I knew my time had come.

By this stage, I had availed myself of what is probably the most important ingredient making kimchi this way:  the chili flakes.  Now… I am the queen of substitutions, but after a few tries I have to say:  there is no substitute for Korean chili flakes here.

Chili powder won't do (it has too many foreign flavours), and ordinary dried chili flakes are too potent (plus they don't – at least in Oz – have the wonderful colour).  If you're happy to go to your closest supplier of Korean chili flakes, go, right now, and make this, straight after that.  And enjoy IMMEDIATELY.

See, this is the beauty of homemade kimchi, and an experience you cannot have when you're getting it in a restaurant or out of a box:  munching on freshly-made kimchi.  Yes, yes, fermented kimchi is delicious, but freshly-made is an absolute revelation.  Times like this, Maangchi says, all she needs is the freshly-made kimchi and a bowl of rice, and I can see why.  You just want to enjoy it straight away and have absolutely nothing come between you and it, except perhaps for the comforting earthiness of steamed rice.  I had leftover Asian-style broth from last night's noodle soup, so instead of rice, I made a delicious potful of fluffy ttukbaegi gyeranjjim to go with it.

It was Heaven.  Heaven, I tell you.  Go and make kimchi now.  It's quick, it's easy, you'll never be the same again.

Here's how.

You begin by degorging the veg in salt and sugar.

Look at all the liquid that's released after just 30 minutes.  You'll be draining most of this away.

Dump the other ingredients on top…

... and then just mix the heck out of it.  Hands are quickest and easiest, but wear rubber gloves.  I don't want to hear that you mixed this with your bare hands and then tried to remove your contact lenses and thought your eyes were going to melt off.  Not that I speak from personal experience or anything.

You can eat it right away or refrigerate it, or put it into a container to ferment for a couple of days before refrigerating.  Either way, it'll be salty, sweet, spicy, and simply divine.

CHANTENAY CARROT AND RADISH KIMCHI WITH GARLIC SCAPES

I used to think that kimchi was just a condiment or side dish.  Well, it is, but it's so much more than that.  Think of it as one of your essential ingredients.  Once you realise that not only can you eat it as is, but also add it as one of your special touches to whatever it is you're making, you'll never go back.

Ingredients:

1 kg Chantenay carrots, small as you can get them

1 kg white radish or daikon

3 tbsp sugar

2 tbsp salt

4 spring (green) onions, chopped

1/2 bunch garlic scapes (shoots), cut into same length as carrots

6 cloves garlic, minced

1 tsp minced ginger

2/3 cup Korean chili flakes

1/4 cup fish sauce

What you do:

1.  Cut the tops off the carrots, and place in large bowl.  (If some carrots are extra large, cut in half.)  Peel radish or daikon, and cut into sections as long as the carrots.  Cut each section into six or eight wedges, and add to the bowl.  Sprinkle over sugar and salt, mix, and allow to degorge for 30 minutes, stirring now and then.

2.  Drain vegetables, reserving the liquid.  Add remaining ingredients plus 1/3 of the liquid you drained off, and mix well.  Your hands are best for this, but please – wear rubber or disposable plastic gloves!

3.  Kimchi is ready to enjoy straight away, but you can also ferment it (in fact, you may want to do half and half).  To ferment, pack into a sturdy container, jar, or large Ziploc bag.  Leave at room temperature for 1-3 days.  Kimchi will be fermented when it begins to smell sour; it may also display bubbles on the surface.  Once fermented, store in the refrigerator.

Yumbo McGillicutty!

Turning and Two-minute Toum

We've all wasted food, but let me tell you, you know nothing about wasting food until you've been in a professional cookery class on Turned Potato Day.

For those of you who are too young to remember Nouvelle Cuisine or spent the 80s trying to master beurre blanc, turned vegetables are vegetables – usually roots and tubers – that are "turned" into five- or seven-sided barrel shapes with a turning knife (or ordinary paring knife if you're a Turning Genius).  It is not something that is relevant any more (when was the last time you saw a turned vegetable?) or something that you can learn in a few hours when you've also got another six precision cuts to learn, but still, it's in the curriculum, so we give it a go.

I show the students a video.  Then I demonstrate.  Once.  Twice.  Three times.  These kids try.  And fail.  Fail so spectacularly.  They fear cutting towards their thumbs, they fear the long continuous cut, they fear gripping the veg.  One potato looks like Headless Yoda.  One student thinks the pile of trimmings she's got is the turned potato.  I send them to get more potatoes.  The pile of potato trimmings – not peel, actual potato flesh – grows and grows.

While they try and fail, I chop up the potato trimmings and throw them into a pot for potato soup.  While I chop, I remember when I learned to turn veg.  I'd already had the obligatory lesson on turning vegetables but the turning moment, so to speak, was during a week's work experience at Mietta's in 1993, when Mietta was still alive and her restaurant was one of Melbourne's flagships.  Mietta's had a traditional French kitchen brigade (read: arrogant, tough, and properly sexist towards women in the kitchen) and a traditional French menu.  No vegetable was ever served in its original form.  Spuds were sliced thickly and then cut into rounds with a scone cutter.  Perfect baby turnips were shaved.  And carrots were turned.  So my real lesson on turning veg happened when the sous chef pointed at a 10kg bag of carrots and said, "Turn those!"  By the tenth carrot, my turning was pretty damned perfect.  (And I suffered.  That amount of turning meant that I ended up with microscopic cuts all over my thumbs from the motion of stopping the turning knife.  Not a problem, until the sous chef got me to shell 10kg of Moreton Bay bugs immediately afterwards.  Ever had an infection on your thumbs?  Not nice.)

But I digress.  I hate waste.  I use up the potato trimmings for a soup that isn't altogether a success, and while I'm putting it in the coolroom, I notice the leftover falafel from a barbeque we catered a few days ago.  They won't see another day, the students prefer the leftover sausages for their lunch, so I decide to take them home for dinner.

They're pretty good falafels, but because they were made to not offend teenage palates, they are on the bland side.  So I decide to make some Lebanese garlic sauce to go with them.

Toum, toom, or zait b'toum is the Holy Grail for garlic lovers.  It's what aioli should be but isn't since it's been discovered and reinvented for non-Spanish palates.  It is garlic extreme – there's not even a drop of olive oil to detract from the garlic flavour – and in my house, I have to stop people pouncing on it with a spoon.

For many years, I relied on my Lebanese friend Lily for it, because every time I made it, it would curdle, to the point where even though my children would still eat it, they would call it Garlic Fail.  Until the fateful day when I found Fouad's recipe and I was able to turn out an entire canister full of Garlic Win.  The family rejoiced and grabbed spoons.

Fouad's recipe is foolproof, and ideal for when you need a large amount of toum – I'll keep on using it for the rest of my life – but despite the food processor, it takes considerable care and time.  It is the only thing I make in the food processor that actually heats up the motor.  And Fouad has since posted a quicker and easier way to make toum for smaller quantities, but after a recent article on mayonnaise in Serious Eats, I suspected - sorry, Fouad! - that I could do better.

I did.  Last night's toum took two minutes flat with the stick blender - including the time it took to gather ingredients and peel garlic.  And it was full of win.  Not just garlicky, but white, perfectly fluffy and of such enviable texture that I could have cut it with a knife.  The leftover falafels went from being falafels to Those Little Round Things We Can Put Garlic Sauce on.  No waste.

  

TWO-MINUTE TOUM

No joke – this toum will take you two minutes flat, if that.  You're after a light, fluffy texture, and this recipe will give you that without any effort whatsoever.  No streaming oil in, no stress about how the emulsion will happen.  Just put the stick in and watch the magic happen.  The technique is easy, but if you're nervous, check out the Serious Eats video.  

(Makes 1 cup approx.)

Ingredients:

6-8 cloves garlic, peeled

1 tsp. salt

1 egg white

1 tbsp. water

1 tbsp. lemon juice

1 cup (250ml) neutral oil (not grapeseed)

What you do:

1.  Put the garlic and salt into the canister of your stick blender (immersion blender, stab mixer – whatever).  Stab a few times to process the garlic to a paste.  Remove stick blender, pour in remaining ingredients, and allow to settle for about 15 seconds.

2.  Put stick blender back into canister, resting it on the very bottom, and switch on.  Mixture will begin to emulsify from the bottom up.  When it's 2/3 emulsified, slowly begin lifting out the stick blender.  By the time it reaches the surface, all of the mixture will be completely emulsified and fluffy. 

Yumbo McGillicutty! 

Self-raising flour: what it is, how to make it, and other questions on which the world hangs. Or not.

A bag of self-raising flour is a common sight in pantries across the UK and Australia, but the mention of it tends to send cooks elsewhere into a bit of tizz.  What is this strange and mysterious substance?  

What it is is no mystery.  Neither is how to make it.

SR flour is flour with a leavening agent added, so that whatever baked goodie you’re making won’t require baking powder or baking soda/bicarb-plus-an-acid-component to make it rise.  It’s very handy to have lying around, but if you can’t buy it, or if you run out, you can make yours in a trice.

The proportions are:

2 tsp. baking powder for every cup of flour

Sift together a few times, or if you’re a hard case like I am, just whisk it all vigorously for a minute or so.

Make it in bulk to have it ready to go when needed, or make as much as you need for what you’re making at the time.

OK, so I realise this is a piker’s post.  After all, it’s the last day of the year and I am in proper vacation mode right now.  More or less, I am:

a) not cooking, just subsisting on AWESOME leftovers

b) sitting in front of the telly watching all the DVDs I got for Christmas

c) crocheting

d) reading thick summery novels, and/or

e) any combination of the above.

So it’s like… yawn... Yumbo McGillicutty?  Whassat?

In my defense, however, this is a well handy hint, and I’ll be posting some recipes requiring SR flour soon.  So there.

Happy New Year everyone!  May 2012 be full of all good things for you and yours.

Mamá's Pan Dulce (Panettone)

 

My mother died twelve years ago.  It’s strange:  in those twelve years there have been hard times when I’ve hoped and prayed for a sense of her presence and received nothing.  And times when I’ve not consciously wanted any such thing and unexpectedly been given it.  So obviously, the subtleties of communication with passed-on loved ones are totally lost on me.  When I don’t want to leave it to chance, when I want a shortcut to connection and memory and loving vibes, I open up Ma’s cookbook and cook.

Opening up Ma’s cookbook is invariably a bittersweet experience – particularly seeing her beautiful strong script before infirmity made her elegant hand shaky – but nonetheless curiosity always gets the better of me.  It isn’t just a cookbook, but a book where she jotted down all kinds of things, including clothing designs and the measurements of the women she was making them for.  This means, alas, that I know what my measurements were back in 1985.  Dammit!  Not all tears are for you, ma!

But I digress.

It is the time of year when I open up her cookbook and make her recipe for pan dulce and give thanks.  In Spanish, pan dulce means “sweet bread”, which means that throughout the Spanish-speaking nations you will encounter all kinds of sweet breads called pan dulce.  In Argentina, however, it only means one thing:  the traditional sweet Christmas bread that the myriad Italian migrants brought with them.  Panettone.

Homemade panettone bears only a passing resemblance to the (admittedly tempting on account of the fancy packaging) bought ones.  Commercial ones are airy and dry, with the occasional raisin for interest.  Made at home, they are rich, studded with fruit and nuts – particularly pine nuts – throughout, and most of all, fragrant.  The moment I combine orange blossom water, vanilla, and brandy, the combined scent, heady and exotic, rises up to my nostrils and I whisper, “It’s Christmas”. 

Despite the yeast, pan dulce/panettone is also a boon for the harried cook.  While we all know that fruitcakes and plum puddings need to be made at least a month in advance to mature and be at their best, panettone doesn’t.  It can be made the day you intend to eat it, or the day before.  Or a week before, and kept wrapped in cellophane.  Or six months before and frozen.  Leftovers are rare.  Any that don’t get snarfed make the world’s best French toast or bread pudding.

The instructions for this pan dulce/panettone are for a mixer, but it isn’t necessary.  This isn’t a particularly difficult dough to work, it’s just that because I usually make a minimum of six loaves, I’ve streamlined the process.  And I’ve streamlined the recipe, too.   You should hear the conversations I have had with Spirit Ma over her imprecise recipe:

“How much fruit, Ma?”

“As much as you like.”

“What do you mean?”

“As much as the dough will take.”

“Sigh… OK.  How many loaves will this make?”

“One.  Maybe two.  Or three.”

“What about the brandy?  The mazahar?  The vanilla?”

“Enough.”

“Of course.  How hot should the oven be?”

“The normal temperature.”

Death never stopped a person being frustrating.  Or providing you with the best darned Christmas treat you ever had.

**********

The fruit doesn't have to be perfectly spread, just relatively even.

When you've finished rolling, folding, and rolling and folding again, the fruit should be evenly distributed throughout.  Remember:  each mouthful must contain tidbits!

The scaled balls of dough in their giant paper cases.  I actually imported these, which yes, makes me a little insane since carrying them as hand luggage through a 14-hour flight without them crushing is the stuff of which Hollywood blockbusters are made.

Slashed and brushed with eggwash (yes, you're right, I need a new scalpel).

Behold!  Burnished perfection.

MAMA’S PAN DULCE (PANETTONE)

A word on the “fragrances”.  First, the brandy:  while it gives a particular flavour, the brandy’s real role here is to react with the yeast and give it a boost.  This is much needed since this is a dough rich in butter, sugar, and eggs, which affects a dough’s ability to rise.  (No, you cannot use extra yeast:  it’ll just taste yeasty and overferment the dough, giving you a dry, and crumbly loaf.)  Next, the orange blossom water (mazahar):  I have used a lot here, but depending on the quality, you may need to use a lot less.  As a rough rule, the smaller the bottle, the stronger it is.  If you buy yours in tiny 50ml bottles that cost you a decent amount of cash, you may only need half as much, but my big 500ml bottle isn’t that concentrated.  On no account, not EVER, substitute orange extract; use the zest of an orange, instead (but make it a point to find mazahar before Christmas next year). 

Makes 3 loaves

Ingredients:

1 kg. flour, plus a few tablespoons for the fruit

2 1/2 tsp. instant yeast

1/4 tsp. salt

150g. sugar

150g. butter, softened

3 eggs

1 cup warm milk

1 tbsp. brandy

1 tbsp. orange blossom water (mazahar)

1 tsp. vanilla essence

500g. mixed dried and candied fruit, and nuts (see below)

Eggwash

1/4 cup melted butter, extra

What you do:

1.  Place flour, yeast and salt in mixer bowl.  Give a few turns with the K beater.  Add sugar, and give another few turns to combine.  With motor running, add butter.  Mix until butter is mixed in.  Add eggs, milk that has been mixed with brandy, orange blossom water and vanilla, and enough water to make a soft dough.  Replace K beater with dough hook, and knead for 5 minutes.  Place dough in a greased bowl, cover, and allow to rise in a warm place until doubled.

2.  Toss mixed fruit and nuts with flour.  This will allow them to disperse evenly through the dough.  Turn the oven on so that it is just barely warm.   (If you have a gas oven, the pilot light is enough.)  Tip dough out onto floured work surface and pat out flat.  Distribute fruit over the surface and roll up.  Roll out with rolling pin; fold in three, and roll out again.  Repeat this a few times to distribute fruit through dough.  Scale dough (see below) and divide in three.  Form dough into neat mounds and place in paper panettone moulds or tall greased pans.  Place in oven and allow to rise.  When breads are 3/4 of the way to doubled, slash tops with a scalpel or samurai-sharp knife, and brush carefully with eggwash.

3.  Place breads in warm oven and crank it up to 180oC.  (This method of only partly rising and putting into gradually heating oven givens oven spring like nobody’s business – trust me.)  Bake 30 minutes, until risen and lightly golden.  Drizzle with melted butter and bake another 15-20 minutes, until tops are deeply coloured and breads sound hollow when tapped on the base.  Cool on wire racks completely before serving.

NOTE:  The fruit and nuts you use are up to you, but you should include some glacé/candied fruit, lots of pinenuts, and chopped walnuts or pecans for bite.  “Scaling” is a fancy term for weighing out individual portions of dough to get a consistent size.  To scale these loaves, I weighed the dough (it was about 2.4kg) and divided that number by three (800g).  I divided the dough in three and weighed each portion to make sure it weighed 800g.  Behold, three loaves the exact same size.

Yumbo McGillicutty!

Recycling Fridays: what to do about that leftover tomato paste

We all do things in the kitchen as a matter of course that we never think to share with anyone because they’re so simple, until, of course, someone asks you a simple question.  Like, “What do I do with leftover tomato paste?”

Ah.  Good question.  Tomato paste is one of those things that, unless you’re like that hard-case friend of mine who used to go at it with a teaspoon, you only use a bit at a time of.  In between those times, if the time between the times is too long, it goes mouldy.

 The classic way to store a jar of leftover tomato paste is to cover the surface with oil, but this method isn’t foolproof, because every speck and skerrick must be covered with oil.  Any exposed paste goes mouldy, which means you have to scrape all the paste off the sides of the jar with a spatula and push it down before you add the oil.  And when you spoon out tomato paste, you have to do it all over again.  And what if you don’t want oil with your tomato paste?

Tomato paste in a tube is absolutely brilliant, and possibly the best thing to happen to tomato paste, but again, this massive 500g. jar cost me the same as three of those tubes. 

What to do?

Enter the freezer, which is the friend of every cook running through the kitchen shouting, “Can’t cook now!  Cook later!” on their way somewhere else.  Times like these, with goopy, liquidy leftovers like these that you use in small amounts, people will usually tell you to press your ice cube trays into service.  If you’ve got enough of them.  And aren’t using them for ice cubes.  And can actually be bothered unmoulding the tomatoey cubes afterwards.

I don’t, and I can’t, so I use baking trays and my trusty silicon baking paper (which I buy in industrial quantities).  Dollop tablespoonfuls onto the trays, freeze…

and when frozen…

transfer them to baggies.

They are dropped, still frozen, into simmering sauces, soups and stews, and if there’s nothing simmering, they will thaw out on their own in a few minutes, or 15 seconds in the mikey.

If you’re feeling fanceh, you can press a fresh basil or oregano leaf into each dollop before freezing.  Cool.  And simple.

These are a few of her favourite things

I have many nieces whom I love and adore, but my third niece was my first pretend child:  she was serious and a little intense and didn’t give herself easily, but she was always up for it with me, whatever it might be.  I took her everywhere – sometimes with her brother, sometimes not - and I cooked for her and with her.  We made real jelly out of orange juice and agar-agar and set it in orange cups.  She helped me make apricot jam from her grandparents’ tree.  We had barbeques where she instructed me that her sausages should not only burst, but the exposed meat where it had burst should be scorched almost to black.

She turned 30 yesterday, and I asked her what she wanted me to cook for her celebratory barbeque (at which point it should be noted that she has outgrown her penchant for burst-and-burnt snags).  Her request was something potatoey – potato salad would be good – and something custardy.  Well, d’uh.  Potatoes and custard are two out of her very favourite foods in the whole wide world right there, along with jelly (which my daughter took care of, admirably), bok choy, and Chinese dumplings. 

My daughter's Broken Glass Jelly

 For the potatoes, I decided against the potato salad and made instead a “potato feast” comprising of many steamed pink-eye baby spuds and four types of creamy sauce for spooning over the top:  bacon, tomato and chive, avocado mayonnaise, minted yoghurt, and toum (Lebanese garlic sauce).

And for the custard, I made her the precise same dessert I made her when she turned 21:  coconut flan (flan as in the original Spanish caramel custard, before the French stole it and called it crème caramel) and many, many mangoes (since they are another one of her favourite things).

An addiction to custard – and in particular flan, of any persuasion – is a peculiarity of all the women in my family, and it’s easy to see why:  soothing but classy, rich but light, sweet but never cloying, it is the perfect dessert.  (Yes, I said the perfect dessert:  chocolate is not dessert, it is a meal.)  And I am very, very fussy about my flan and crème caramel.

See – flan and crème caramel aren’t just about the flavour, they are about the texture.

What is wrong with this picture?  Well, there’s nothing wrong with the picture per se, it is very nicely shot, but the dessert itself?  Check out the dots all over the sides:  they are air bubbles, and have no place in either flan or crème caramel.  So while I’m sure it tasted very nice (I didn’t make this one, just found the picture on the Internet), the texture, the mouthfeel – which are every bit a part of the experience as flavour – would be all wrong.  What a shame.

And so easy to avoid.  You avoid air bubbles by simply not incorporating air into the mixture:  you lightly break up eggs, and you mix in, not beat, the remaining ingredients.  And you stay the hell away from recipes telling you to use electric beaters, blender, or food processor.

Here are the ingredients (plus a little vanilla, if you like).  It’s a little unbelievable that so few ingredients will make a dessert worthy of going on bended knee for, but oh, they will.  They so will.

First, you make a caramel and line a pan with it.  How do you do that?  Glad you asked!

Next, you lightly beat the eggs.  Now I am being very serious here:  you just want to barely combine yolk and whites, and this amount of bubbles, just on the surface, is about the maximum you want.

Add remaining ingredients, combine, and again:  see?  Very few bubbles.

Pour into your caramel-lined mould or pan.

Your dessert needs to be cooked au bain Marie, or in a water bath.  Ignore any recipe that tells you to put in hot or boiling water:  water MUST be cold or you will run the risk of cooking it too fast and again, wrecking the texture.

Remove from water bath as soon as it’s done, cool, then chill, preferably overnight, before unmoulding.   

COCONUT FLAN WITH FRESH MANGOES

This makes a firm flan – firm enough to cut and handle with ease.  If you would like a wobblier flan, you can use 1 1/2 tins of coconut cream.  Although we had our mangoes plain as a foil to the richness of the custard, they are also lovely drizzled with a lime and ginger syrup just before serving.

(8 servings)

Ingredients:

3/4 cup sugar

1/3 cup water

6 eggs

1 tin (395g.) condensed milk

1 tin (400ml) coconut cream

 1tsp. vanilla (opt.)

4 perfect mangoes, to serve

What you do:

1.  Make up caramel with sugar and water and use it to line a mould or pan, or 8 ramekins or crème caramel moulds.  Set aside while you proceed with recipe.

2.  Preheat oven to 160oC.  In a medium bowl, lightly beat eggs, just until whites and yolks are amalgamated.  Add remaining ingredients, and stir (not beat) with a whisk, just until combined.  (The condensed milk tends to settle to the bottom of the bowl, so make sure that even though you’re using a light hand, you’re being thorough.)

3.  Pour mixture into caramel-lined mould/s.  Set in a roasting pan, and pour enough cold water into the roasting pan to come about 3cm up the sides.  Bake 50-60 min. for one mould, or 30-35 min. for individual servings, until custard is set and only just wobbles in the very centre. 

4.  Remove custard from roasting pan, and allow to cool at room temperature, then transfer to ‘fridge and allow to chill several hours, preferably overnight.  To unmould, there’s no need to loosen the sides.  Place serving plate over the top of the custard, then flip upside down.  It will fall out without problem, and caramel will flood the top and pool around the sides effortlessly, and look like a picture.  Halve mangoes and serve with flan.  

Yumbo McGillicutty!