Royal Egg Flan

It's been a while since I've posted a recipe. Now that food is officially murdering my bank account, it's nice to settle to some home cooking and just have a quiet night in.

Egg flans have always been a sort of comfort food for me. It was always the thing that mum fed me when I was sick, or upset...or recovering from surgery (it's one of the few things you can slurp with a straw when you're recovering from having your wisdoms taken out).

Anyway, over time, I've slowly upgraded this recipe to give it a little more pizazz.

It's a pretty basic recipe consisting of two parts. The egg flan, and the sauce to go on top of the flan.

The list of ingredients is pretty basic. Frozen peas & corn, a couple of eggs (around 4 or 5 large eggs will suffice), tofu, garlic, chicken stock and corn starch mixed with water. Depending on how heavily flavoured your chicken stock is, you may want to add more salt.

It's also a pretty healthy recipe provided that you don't consume the entire egg flan by yourself. Sharing is caring my friends.

First, you steam the mixture of chicken stock and egg flan. While it's steaming, feel free to work on the sauce. Multitasking is also your friend.

A note to remember, however, is that the heat must be turn on low. Slow steaming is the way to go or your flan will have trappled air bubbles and end up with an uneven top.

Then throw in your prawns and tofu in a wok and go for your life. Don't flavour too heavily here because you'll be adding in chicken stock in here as well to match the flavours of the egg flan.

The key to this part is to make sure you don't overstir the mixture. The last thing you want is to have little bits of broken up tofu floating around your sauce. Let the sauce simmer away and then turn the heat on low and pour in the corn starch mixture, let it thicken slightly and take it off the heat.

The colours should be vivid. Your family will hate you if you turn your vegies yellow.

Lastly, just simply pour the sauce on your cooked flan and garnish it with a few sprinkles of spring onion.

Go on. Give it a go.


Royal Egg Flan
Serves: the family

Buy
5 peeled prawns, diced
3 blocks of tofu, diced
1 clove garlic, crushed
3 tblsp peas and corn
5 large eggs
1 tblsp corn starch, mixed with 3 tblsp water
400mL chicken stock
salt (optional)
white pepper (optional)
1 sprig spring onion, chopped finely

Cook:

1. Beat the eggs in a large bowl
2. Pour in 1 cup of chicken stock and beat until evenly distributed
3. Transfer mixture into the bowl you want to serve in (you can't transfer the flan into a bowl after it is cooked)
4. Place the bowl into a steamer, and steam for about 15~20mins on low heat.
5. Set aside
   
6. In a wok, pour a teaspoon of oil and saute tofu and prawns with garlic.
7. After prawns turn pink, pour in the remaining chicken stock and bring to simmer.
8. Add peas and corn and sprinkle with white pepper and gently simmer the mixture for about 3 minutes.
9. Turn heat down to minimum and pour in corn starch mixture. You may not need all of it, depending on how much of the chicken stock evaporates off.
10. Once sauce thickens, pour onto the steamed egg flan
11. Garnish with spring onions and serve hot.

Nom it.

Caught out.

One should know, that in every household, there's always a couple of things that never run out.

Never. Ever. Ever.

Common items can include the likes of milk and bread, the emergency roll of toilet paper that's tucked away in some random place so no one will actually bother going to find it unless they're really THAT desperate, or even to the occasional cat-lover -- a can of whiskers. Simple things that you never really think to run out on.

Well, that said...

There's two things in life this household would never be caught without.
1.) Fresh Tofu
2.) Some other form of tofu.

Seriously. We've run out of toilet paper many-a-times, and bread, and milk, and chicken feed for the chickens - oh and did I mention rice? (Like honestly, which Asian household could possible forget to buy rice?) But alas, there will always be a box of fresh tofu. Or two. Or three.

Usually you'd just ignore their existence in the corner of the fridge out of habit. But once in a while, when you're in charge of dinner-duty, but you're running about an hour late from work and hit in the face with the horror of an absent-minded family who forgot about getting groceries for the week...you become relieved to see the slabs of tofu in the corner, as if some long lost friend had just come to the rescue.

And then the two of you produce this baby:



Hells yeah.

I'd have that baby anyday.

It's my little trusted dish that's well and truly been tested over and over again. Foolproof. Stressproof. Goodsmellingmouthproof.


As Huey would say, there's about 3 tonnes of garlic in there. And by about 3 tonnes I really meant 3 cloves. But there's a lot. And that's really about the point of this paragraph.

Alas I yabber too much. Here's the recipe:

Tofu. Guaranteed-you'll-need-a-breath-mint style.
Preparation time: <2 mins
Cooking time: Around 7 mins if you multitask.

Buy:
6 blocks of tofu (this is half a big tub)
3 cloves of garlic, roughly chopped
2 small spring onions, thinly sliced
2 tblsp light soy sauce (or preferably Lee Kum Kee Seasoned Soy Sauce for Seafood)
2 tblsp vegetable oil

(I also used some left over carrot juliennes from my sushi-making adven-churrs, but this is strictly optional. You can also add sliced snow peas if you want.)

Cook:
1.) Stack the tofu on a plate and let it sit for about 5 minutes. It lets the tofu release some of its excess liquid.
2.) Drain liquid in a manner of your choosing. Just make sure the tofu doesn't fall into the sink.
3.) Place carrot/snow peas on top and place plate in steamer for about 5 minutes. Tofu doesn't need much cooking, but it's nice to just warm it up and let the vegies release its vibrancy.
4.) Remove plate from steamer. Drain excess liquid.
5.) Sprinkle garlic on top of carrots and tofu.
6.) Garnish with spring onions on top.
7.) In another pan, heat oil until just smoking.
8.) Drizzle soy sauce onto tofu.
9.) Pour hot oil onto the tofu. Aim at the spring onions to cook them. Enjoy the sizzling sound and the smell, but please be careful with the hot oil.

Nom it while it's hot.