What’s great with flans, clafoutis and even tarts is that, from a simple base – just mixing eggs with milk or cream – you can do all kind of delicious savory dishes.
What is a flan in French Cuisine?
Flan is a basic of French home cooking. It’s actually the custard used for quiche, the difference between a flan and a quiche is that flan is kind of a crustless quiche. All you need is to grease with butter (or oil) an oven-proof pan and pour the egg and cream (and/or milk) batter with the chosen filling.
Filling: You have to pre-bake and drain the vegetables which lose a lot of juice or vegetation water while cooking (tomatoes or zucchini for example) because otherwise they will completely soak your flan and it won’t bake properly.
You can accommodate this flan recipe with any vegetable of your choice, the products you have at home, or that you find at the market (leeks and caramelized onions, pumpkin, and spices…).
Cook at 350°F: As for the quiche, you should respect a cooking temperature between 170 and 185°C otherwise the egg proteins won’t coagulate properly and once more the flan won’t get the right consistency. You might even get a preparation with for example some liquid at the bottom of your dish. This reason is that egg white and egg yolks mixture coagulates at 165 °C. Therefore the target temperature is just a little bit over 170 to 185 °C, not less and not beyond. I always bake flans, clafoutis, quiches and tarts at 180°C / 350°F.
A few information on the recipe
In this recipe, I used generous bright red cherry tomatoes and chopped fresh chives. Cherry tomatoes are previously cooked in the oven with olive oil (eventually also add herbs de Provence and garlic) and cooking juices are drained. But don’t through away this lovely juice and use it for example to flavor sides or vinaigrette.
Cherry Tomatoes and Chives Flan
Ingredients
- 400 gr cherry tomatoes
- 1/2 bunch chive
- 1 tablespoon olive oil
- 2 eggs
- 125 ml milk
- salt
- pepper freshly ground
Instructions
Roast cherry tomatoes
- Preheat your oven to 190°C / 375°F. Wash and dry cherry tomatoes. Put them in a shallow gratin dish. They must cover the entire bottom of your dish. They can even be a bit packed. Sprinkle salt and pepper. Pour a tablespoon of olive oil and mix so that tomatoes are coated with olive oil on all sides.
- Bake for 15 to 20 minutes. The tomatoes will start to cook, crack, and lose some of their vegetation water. Their aspect becomes somewhat withered.
Prepare flan
- Meanwhile, make your flan preparation. Beat 2 eggs as you would do for an omelet. Add milk and mix. Wash and dry chives. Cut chives into small parts of ½ to 1 centimeter. Add chives to the preparation and mix.
- Remove from the oven the cherry tomatoes. Lower the oven heat to 180°C / 350°F. Remove the juice (you can keep it; you‘ll see below how to use it).
Bake
- Pour the flan preparation over the tomatoes and bake for 20 minutes at 180°C / 350°F.
Notes
Bon appétit !
What is a half bunch of chives? I’m picking from my garden and don’t know how much that is.
Bonjour Annie sorry for the late answer. I would say a large handful of minced chive is nice here.
Dear Florence,
The tomato flan was superb, specially with the herbs added; I grow all my herbs.
Merci Brian I’m happy you liked it. Maybe you’ll turn like me baking this dish over and over We had some again yesterday! It’s fantastic you can grow your herbs. So tasty when very fresh!