I'm a Nerd About ... Plant-based Cooking

Lan Margosis ’19 dreams  of flan. But their reveries feature no milk or eggs. Margosis is working out the recipe for a vegan dessert in their sleep. Strangest of all? She’s not a vegetarian herself.

They are, however, a vegan chef. Since September 2018, Margosis has been preparing pop-up dinners in their apartment as Magnolia City Speakeasy. Since the beginning, making a delicate dessert that’s just right has been a particular challenge. With a base of coconut milk, silken tofu and agar give the agave-sweetened dessert a lascivious jiggle. “This one is flan-adjacent,” they declare at their February Tex-Mex dinner. It’s better than that. It’s enough to fool even the pickiest sweet lover.

Margosis’ love story with food began in their mother’s kitchen. Though it didn’t stick, they became a vegetarian when they were 7 or 8 years old. “I was like, ‘Oh my God, meat comes from animals,’” they recalls with a chuckle. Margosis credits their mother for instilling a passion for cooking, but also a flair for dietary substitutions. The family kept kosher, but that wasn’t as much of a challenge as cooking for Margosis’ two brothers, who both have celiac disease. 

“There was a lot of creativity in making food that worked for all of us,” they say.  She’s worked in professional kitchens, but it was last summer, spent doing the work trade program at Hana Farms in Hawaii, that truly opened Margosis’ eyes to vegetarian cooking.  Their job was to cook lunch for fellow farmers, using the products of their labor.

However, it was a science class that made the policy studies major think differently about cuisine. “It’s been the most useful class I took at Rice,” they say of Chemistry of Cooking. “It had a huge impact on how I think about food.” The skills they learned in that class are what inspire them to constantly improve her wares, like the flan, which has appeared in some form on nearly every Magnolia City menu.

The future is uncertain for the 13-guest pop-ups after Margosis graduates. Ideally, they’ll combine their public health education with her flair for whipping up local produce into covetable meals. “I really believe in plant-based eating being the way forward,” she says. One way or another, she’s confident that she’ll continue on a path of sharing food that’s as delicious as it is healthy for the planet.

Recipe: Lan's Flan

“My vegan flan recipe is simple, delicious and highly adaptable. I prefer to add flavors of oranges and vanilla. The flan gets its structure from agar, a virtually flavorless powder made from algae, and silken tofu.”

For the caramel:
1/2 cup sugar

For the custard:
2 1/2 cups full-fat coconut milk
Juice and zest from 1-2 oranges (optional)
2 teaspoons vanilla extract
3/4 teaspoon agar-agar powder 
1/2 cup silken tofu
1/4 cup agave nectar
Pinch of salt

DIRECTIONS

1. Melt sugar in a saucepan over medium heat until deep amber. Pour into cupcake pan until the bottom of each well is coated in syrup. Set aside.
2. In a clean saucepan over medium heat, reduce coconut milk to 2 cups. This provides a better ratio of fat to water for a creamier texture.
3. Add the vanilla, orange juice and zest, and agar-agar powder to the coconut milk. Bring to a gentle boil for a few minutes until slightly thickened. 
4. Mix coconut milk with tofu, agave and salt and blend until very smooth. 
5. Pour the custard mixture over the caramel to the top of each cupcake well. Refrigerate until firm but still jiggly, about 2 hours. Shake the pan once or twice while chilling to help prevent the flans from sticking to the sides.
6. Submerge the bottom of the pan in warm water for a few minutes, then flip the flans out onto a clean surface. If they do not come out right away, put the pan back into the warm water and/or run a knife around the edge of each flan.
7. Serve and enjoy!