Mr. Glad did love the flan I made, but turned down my offer to make more right away, because by his way of thinking the caramel part made them too sweet to enjoy often. I took up the challenge to make something just as yummy but less intense that way, and while I was at it I made variations on the theme with pumpkin and chocolate. Too experimental to tell about in detail, but it was easy, and they are certainly easy to eat.
I couldn’t find my old Sunset Magazine recipe for (Filipino) chicken adobo, so I researched online and discovered that quite a bit of controversy persists over the proper method and proportion of ingredients. It seems to depend on what region of the Philippines you or your mother came from, whether you will use equal portions of soy sauce and vinegar, or will include tomatoes — and more variables than that. Cooking is folk art, isn’t it?
Eventually I settled on this recipe from The Splendid Table, created by two women who don’t appear to be Filipinas themselves, but I liked that they authoritatively state: “One of the cooking techniques that sets Filipino adobo apart is that you brown the meat after it is cooked, not before. That aroma of a browning, marinade-saturated chicken can drive you crazy.” Theirs was the only version I found that included this instruction. By the way, in Spain when they talk about adobo they refer more generally to a marinade, and not to this particular dish.
Even I tweaked the recipe a bit. I used a little less vinegar and more soy sauce, and I fried the onions separately and threw them on the rice at the end.
However you adjust your ingredients — and unless your mother insists that you make it her way, you should feel a great deal of freedom to experiment — the essential flavors that make adobo are vinegar, soy sauce, black pepper, bay leaf, and garlic. Pork and beef liver are commonly used instead of or in combination with chicken. This version called for 10 large cloves of garlic, and mine were actually gigantic.
The whole dish was quite piquant and delectable; I was glad that I did saute the chicken at the end because the skins got nice and crispy-tasty. I served white rice to soak up some of that garlicky sauce, and a vegetable, and we feasted.
Though I did more cooking than gardening the last few days, flowers are making me happy. How wonderful to have enough of the cutting varieties to decorate the house — I remembered to bring in some zinnias yesterday. And our Pristine rose is blooming its sweet September gift.
I made flan this week. It was the third time for me, and the most enjoyable all around. As in my lemon cake, I allotted plenty of time for the project because it still seems like a big deal; I hadn’t made it for a couple of years at least.
I know some people just make a custard and put caramel sauce on it, but from my first attempt, I wanted to do the caramel in the traditional way, and it’s not hard. It just takes some concentration, and it is a little odd melting sugar in a pan the first time you try it.
I like that you can make the caramel as a separate project, almost, and get that part of the recipe all done before starting the custard itself. That made it a pleasure to “slowly and constantly stir the sugar” as I stood by the stove and realized that the aroma of melting sugar had taken me to the county fair and the experience of walking past the cotton candy booth.
But actually I was still standing in my kitchen stirring, fascinated by the warm sweetness in the air and the stages the sugar goes through on its way to becoming caramel. I didn’t exactly stir constantly, as I kept pausing for a few seconds to 
take a picture, and when I did my spoon got all caked with partially melted sugar, but it all turned out fine in the end.
I was using custard cups this time, and wasn’t sure if the quantity of caramel in the recipe designed for a pie plate would suffice for all the cups, so I made 50% more caramel, which turned out to be more than needed. When it was ready, I set the burner to “warm” and for each cup in turn I put in a spoonful of the hot syrup and tilted the cup quickly to swirl it around the bottom and up the sides a little way. 
What was left over I added to the bottom of the cups, and then set the “caramelized” cups in a roasting pan to wait for the custard.
Then I got busy with the blender. In the background, though, the caramel was cooling and hardening on the other side of the kitchen and kept making “plink!” noises as it squirmed against the glass cups.
You can find the quantities of ingredients in: my first flan post from 2011. It’s definitely a rich combination of foods, but I like the resulting density of custard better than anything I’ve eaten elsewhere.
After the custard is poured into the containers, hot water is added to the pan and everything bakes for about 40 minutes. I had a little extra custard that I put into a ninth cup, which one couldn’t exactly call “plain,” but it was without caramel.
And here are the baked puddings, all tender, creamy and brown.
In the end, all the extra caramel was so hardened at the bottoms of the cups that it didn’t come out. There was just the right amount that stuck to the bottom, now the top of the custard, and enough liquid to run out over and form a puddle when I turned the cups upside down. They are perfect little medium-sized flans. Mr. Glad and I agree that if we are to get the most enjoyment out of them, one of them ought to be shared between the two of us, but the first ones were consumed extravagantly. 
My father scorned Meyer lemons. Growing his own lemons made him, and all of our family, partial to the intensity of a Normal Lemon. If anyone wants to give me lemons, Meyer or otherwise, I will never turn them down, but I also prefer what I grew up with.
When I cook with lemons I usually think of my father and our trees. If as I child I ever found my father lying on the living room floor it was not because he’d been wrestling with my brother, but more like he’d been wrestling with those trees. During pruning season he’d invariably put his back out doing that necessary work on our ten acres (We had twenty more acres in oranges.) That would be more than a thousand lemon trees.
I learned to drive a tractor before I was old enough to drive a car, because Daddy needed me to pull a trailer between the rows when my sisters and I were picking the second, smaller crop of lemons that wasn’t worth hiring a whole picking crew for.
In those pictures that I retain in my mind, my brother wasn’t old enough to buckle down and help yet. He was sitting under a lemon tree crying, and the dust mixed with his tears to make a miserable face. I must say that he’s more than made up for it in the years since, and is one of the most buckled down and hardworking people on the planet.
The latest thing I cooked with lemons is this meltingly appealing cake, which Mr. Glad requested for his birthday last month. That he wanted cake was very strange, because it’s been Blackberry Pie as long as anyone can remember, and a good month to be born if you want that. But I was happy to oblige with the cake, and I devoted most of one Saturday to making it, so I had plenty of time to enjoy the process.
In the past I’d only baked this glazed cake for tea parties that I used to have in a bygone era. Now that it’s been revived in my repertoire I’ll want to make it more often. It uses a lot of lemons in the form of juice, and in this recent case, even more fruits to get enough lemon zest to impart the deep lemony flavor. It can be made up to three days ahead and freezes well.
1 3/4 cups flour
1 teaspoon baking soda
1 teaspoon baking powder
1 cup unsalted butter, room temperature
1 cup sugar
3 large or extra-large eggs at room temperature
1 tablespoon minced lemon zest
2 teaspoons lemon extract
1 cup sour cream
The Glaze:
1 1/2 cups powdered sugar
1/2 cup strained fresh lemon juice
2 teaspoons finely minced lemon zest
Preheat the oven to 350°. Butter and flour a 9-inch lightweight Bundt pan. Sift the flour, baking soda and baking powder together into a medium mixing bowl. Set aside.
In a medium mixing bowl, using an electric mixer on medium speed, or in a food processor fitted with the metal blade, beat the butter and sugar together until light and fluffy, about 4 minutes. Beat in the eggs, minced zest and lemon extract and mix for 2 more minutes.
Reduce the speed to low or pulse with the food processor. Add half of the flour mixture and mix until well combined. Add half of the sour cream, mixing constantly, then add the rest of the flour and sour cream, ending with the sour cream.
Pour the batter into the prepared pan. Bake for about 35-40 minutes, or until a skewer inserted into the center comes out clean. Let cool in the pan for 10 minutes, then invert onto a wire rack and remove the pan. Make the glaze while the cake is still warm.
To make the glaze, using a fine-meshed strainer, sift the powdered sugar into a small, non-aluminum bowl. Add the lemon juice and lemon zest and whisk to break up lumps.
Transfer the cake to a rack placed over a rimmed baking sheet lined with wax paper. Using a long skewer, poke holes in the cake at 1-inch intervals, almost going through to the bottom. Slowly pour the glaze over the cake, giving it time to absorb as you pour. Let the cake cool to room temperature. Cut into wedges and serve.
Every time I make this cake, about 1/4 cup of the glaze ends up on the baking sheet under the cake, and would be wasted and washed down the drain in all its precious lemonzestiness if I didn’t find a way to use it. This tim
e I whipped some heavy cream and slowly drizzled the syrup into it at the end when it was getting nice and thick. I froze the mixture in custard cups, and ate one of them the next day. It was quite delicious!
Gladsome Lights 