This cabbage flan is a dish of substance that does not lack elegance.
Rustic but not overdone, it is the right pact to welcome winter.
And you, are you more a flan or a soufflé person?
Some differences
Flan and sformato are the same thing. Flan is the French word used worldwide, while the second is the Italian term.
Sformato, or flan, and soufflé are often confused but different.
There is no Italian translation of the French term soufflé.
All over the world, it is called soufflé.
The flan has a firm consistency and is usually baked in a mold with a hole in the middle (but you can use a cake round hinged mold).
Alternatively, you can also use single-serving molds (even disposable ones).
Its preparation is simple. You just beat the eggs and mix the ingredients in a bowl before pouring into the mold and baking.
The soufflé is soft and light.
To achieve this fluffy result, you will need to whisk the egg whites separately, gently incorporate them into the other ingredients, fill the mold no more than halfway and say a couple of prayers.
When it comes out of the oven, it should be puffed up well beyond the edge of the mold and emit a kind of breath. With no breath under the surface, anything could have happened. It could be undercooked or overcooked.
Both flan and soufflé can be either sweet or savory.
The main differences concern several aspects.
For soufflé, beat egg whites until stiff; for flan, beat whole eggs with a fork.
The mixture in the soufflé should fill the mold halfway, get the edge with flan’s compote.
Flan can be baked in a bain-marie in the oven (the inside will be softer) or not; soufflé does not tolerate a bain-marie, which would prevent the dough from doubling in size.
Last thing, the success of the flan is always for sure, while soufflé comes when someone in France says ok (lol).
Cabbage flan
If you’ve been reading the blog for a while, you’ll know that I love poetic dishes and culinary challenges. But I have a clear preference for comforting, warm, nourishing, seasonal, and simple recipes.
Everything I love in the kitchen is in the flan.
Between flan or soufflé I prefer flan. A dish that doesn’t fear the breeze, never grumbles, and never disappoints.
As a base for the flan, you can choose between vegetables or cheeses.
Once you have decided on the main ingredient, add milk or cream, eggs, and grated Parmigiano.
In my childhood home, flan was a dish that was frequently prepared.
The simplest flans, warm and filling, were for the everyday table.
In my grandma’s repertoire, however, there were some recipes of flan that were not lacking in understated elegance.
I hope you will like my cabbage flan recipe.
Cotechino and amaretti seemed to me, from the start, to be a great companion to enhance and add flavor.
After much testing, I added crumbled amaretti biscuits also into the dough. The sweetness of the cookies matches the savouriness of the cotechino. And this flavor contrasts nicely with the cotechino.
For me, the best thing is to chop the cotechino with a knife, no mixer, so that the “crumbs” have consistency and flavor in the mouth.
Finally, in the first test, I only cut the leaves of the vegetables with a knife, but it is better to blend them in the mixer and only partially chop them with a knife. In this way, the flan is more compact and the slices more beautiful.
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Food tips
You can replace the Italian cotechino sausage with knife-chopped smoked bacon.
You can omit the cotechino but double the amount of Parmesan cheese.
If you use a mold with a hole in the center, you can serve the flan by filling the center with peas or small baked potatoes.
Cabbage flan with Italian cotechino
serves 4-6
18-20 cm hinged mould or mould with a hole, capacity 1 liter
List of the Ingredients
500 g of cabbage
120 g of cotechino
3 eggs
50 g grated Parmigiano
20 g amaretti biscuits + 3 amaretti biscuits
breadcrumbs to taste
salt, pepper, nutmeg, olive oil to taste
Method
Clean the cabbage, remove the hard, central white part (also from the leaves).
Blanch the cabbage in salted water for 10 minutes or until soft.
Drain, finely chop cabbage but set aside about 50 g of it.
Cook the cotechino according to the instructions on the packet. The amount you need is about two slices.
Leave to cool and chop finely with a knife (do not blend in the mixer, otherwise instead of cotechino crumbs, you will have a paste which, once mixed with the mixture, will be lost).
Use a knife to chop the cabbage that you set aside.
Again, chop the cookies, leaving three of them at the side.
Beat the eggs in a bowl with oil, salt, pepper, nutmeg to taste, and Parmigiano.
Add the other ingredients to the eggs, mix, season with salt, pepper, and nutmeg.
Chop up the last cookies and mix the powder with the breadcrumbs.
Grease the mold, sprinkle the bottom and sides with the mixture of breadcrumbs and cookies (keep some of it aside).
Place the dough into the mold and bake in a preheated oven at 180C degrees for about 45 minutes.
When the edges are golden, the flan is ready.
Remove from the oven and leave to cool before turning out onto a serving plate that can go into the oven.
