Flans
Flans, often also known as quiches or tarts, are pastry based recipes. A flan is usually composed of a basked pastry base with a filling in it that is then baked or left to set. Some flans may also be made from a sponge base as an alternative. It differs from a pie in the fact that it has no lid or topping.
Flans can be made up of sweet or savoury ingredients. So, for example, you could have a cheese and onion flan or a fruit flan. These kinds of dishes, or variations thereof, appear in cuisines all over the world in some form or other.
Most savoury flans (and some sweet ones) will incorporate eggs in some form or other. This ingredient will be used to help the flan to set and to stop the ingredients from simply sitting in their pastry case as a runny mess.
You cook flans in specially designed flan cashes or dishes. These are usually round with an open top. They will have sides which will help construct the pastry casing which will in turn act as a holder for the actual flan filling.
The cases that you can bake flans in come in all kinds of designs and sizes from individual portion sizes through to dishes large enough to make a large flan. You can, for example, use a flan dish that has straight sides or one with fluted sides. A fluted flan dish will give the outer sides of your flan a ridged or fluted appearance. A standard straight flan dish will simply give you straight sides.
Getting flans out of their dishes isn’t technically absolutely necessary but some cooks do prefer to do this before serving up the flan. This can be hard if you have an ‘all in one’ flan dish as you will have to ease the flan out the dish, hopefully without breaking it up, which can be difficult.
One way round this is to use a flan dish that has a detachable bottom/side arrangement. Here the bottom and the outer rim or sides of the dish are separate. You put them together to cook the flan but you can then push the bottom away from the sides when you are ready to serve your flans.
This kind of dish will then leave the flan sitting on the base of the flan dish. This can be useful to use as a serving platter. Or, if you prefer you can simply then slide your flans on to a separate serving plate.