BAM! Roasted Garlic and Goat Cheese Flan

Okay, yeah, this an Emeril recipe. But stay with me... I've been wanting to play around with flan and panna cotta lately, and this is my first venture into the neighborhood. As this is copyrighted material and all, I'm not going to post the actual recipe, but I will say that the basic ingredients for this custard are cream, eggs, roasted garlic, goat cheese, grated Pecorino (I used Parmesan), and garlic chives (I used regular chives), and anyway, the recipe can be found here, so if you decide to try your hand at this, and I encourage you to do so, go there for the amounts and technique, then follow along... First things first, you'll need to get your garlic into the oven to roast.

The flan can be made in ramekins, or in a muffin tin. Or in a mini muffin tin, which is the way I went here. While your garlic is roasting, combine the custard ingredients in a food processor and blend until smooth. Next, butter your containers of choice and line the bottoms with parchment paper cut to fit. You can then layer in a few slices of garlic:


Then, pour in the custard and place into a water bath (don't bring the water any more than halfway up the sides of the ramekins or tins, lest it bubble over and invade your flan):


Bake for 30 minutes at 325F, and BAM! Let me say that again: BAM! Roasted Garlic and Goat Cheese Flan! Slide a knife around the edges to loosen, invert each ramekin over its respective plate and flip, tapping to release if necessary (if you use muffin tins, flip the flans onto a sheet pan). You could sauce this, but I opted for just a light dusting of freshly grated Parmesan. While mine turned out a little on the soft side, as you can see from the photo (Next time around I'll need to "kick it up a notch" temperature-wise, or play around with the egg/cream ratio), they were very tasty nonetheless. Buon appetito!