How to Not Make Flan

MEXICO CITY—Cooking is not something I take lightly. Earlier this year, I began trying new recipes every time I returned home from school, indulging in my cooking high whenever I had the opportunity. But considering I had just graduated from boiling pasta, I was surprised to find my culinary escapades reaching new heights in Mexico.

Maria Elena is an elderly lady who rents me a bedroom in her apartment and sleeps with the TV on. When I told her that I wanted to make tamales, she scoffed. Apparently that’s not something you do at home. When I came back one day with a bag of raw black beans, she just blinked at me silently. I soon found out that they take hours of simmering and stirring to cook. When I said I wanted to make mole sauce, she told me to just go to the market and pick up a quarter kilo of it. So finally, fed up, disgruntled, and itching to cook, I decided that I was going to make flan, and that I wasn’t going to tell her.

I Googled “flan.”

A few clicks later,

Flan al Caramelo

azúcar, 11 cucharada

agua, 1 cucharada

leche, 3/4 litro

canela en rama, 1 ramita

yema de huevo, 7 unidades

Cool.

I proceeded to the kitchen, pulled out the ingredients and got a giant bowl. I turned on the stove and was about to caramelize the sugar when I remembered that I needed to preheat the oven. I looked around the pint-size kitchen. I opened all the cupboards, even the one above the fridge: No oven. Then I noticed a small cubbyhole in the corner. It housed something that looked like an Easy-Bake oven from the Stone Age. I opened it. A rusted pan fell out: Oven! Did it work? I pushed a button. Nope.

I sighed. There went my hopes of making the most traditional flan ever (it had to be baked, not just refrigerated—otherwise it was cheating). I was left standing alone in a birdhouse-sized kitchen with a broken, light-bulb-powered oven really craving flan. So I walked to my room, grabbed my wallet and headed outside. Thirty minutes later I was back in the kitchen with a packet of Jell-O™ Flan. It even came with a ready-made pouch of caramel sauce. Just add milk, the box said. So I added milk, filled the mixture into little bowls and put them in the fridge.

I came back to the kitchen a few hours later to eat a cup of faux flan. Maria Elena smiled at me in approval. You made flan, she said.

Yes, but not exactly.

Eesha D. Dave ’13, a magazine writer, is a Romance Languages and Literatures concentrator in Leverett House.