The story of these incredibly delicious custard tarts is very curious: the Portuguese monks started selling these cakes for the upkeep of the monastery. On our first-morning walk in Madeira, we went to the local bakery and enjoyed delicious Portuguese custard tarts with a cup of freshly brewed coffee.ĭown bellow you can find 2 recipes of delicious pastel de nata: one with runny filling↴ and the 2 – with soft tender filling↴. Matt already liked them from his time in Lisbon, and before we went to the Portuguese Island of Eternal Spring, he would always tell me: “We have to try them.”Īnd so we did. The first time I tried it was in Madeira. Once the custards come out of the oven and cool, you can sprinkle them with icing sugar and cinnamon.Pastel de nata is a Portuguese custard tart, a puff pastry filled with creamy custard that’s crispy on the outside and tender on the inside. Place the molds in a very hot oven (250 to 300 degrees centigrade). Remove from the heat and wait until the mixture cools down. To prepare the filling, mix all the ingredients and bring them to a boil. Moist your thumb in water and spread the dough to the edges of the mold. Place the dough at the center of a small mold. Cut the rolls into pieces of 2 to 3 centimeters. Cut it in stripes and fold into long rolls. Repeat the operation twice, first using the second third and then the last third of the butter. Stretch the dough again forming a square. Fold the dough from bottom to top and from left to right, making sure that the fold fits perfectly at edges and on the sides. Spread one third of the butter over the dough, leaving a strip of one inch at the edges of the square. Knead some of the butter until it has the same consistency as the dough. Next, stretch the dough into a square form. Kneed the mixture until it becomes homogeneous and let it rest for 20 minutes. Place the flour on a stone table and make a hole in the middle of the flour to pour the water. Melt the salt in warm water and divide the butter into three equal portions. Ingredients for the filling: 5 deciliters of cream, 8 egg yolks, 3 tablespoons of flour, 200 grams of sugar, and one lemon peel. Ingredients for the puff pastry: 500 grams of flour, 500 grams of butter, 2 to 3 deciliters of water, and salt. It is a place where it is ordinary to find the extraordinary: heavenly pasteis de nata sold for a modest price in every street corner. After a few hours of work, we were rewarded with two dozen delicious pasteis de nata.Īll the effort that went into making these pastries made us appreciate Portugal even more. We started by making a version of rough puff pastry, folding the dough to create delicate layers of butter and flour. The ingredients are humble: flour, butter, cream, eggs, sugar, water, and lemon. She tells us the key elements of the recipe and expects us to improvise the rest. They’re more like jazz lead sheets than classical music scores. Modesto’s instructions assume we know what we’re doing. The old pages creaked, surprised to be turned with such urgency. We opened with trepidation “Cozinha Tradicional Portuguesa” (Portuguese Traditional Cooking), the imposing tome of vernacular recipes compiled by the legendary Maria de Lurdes Modesto. Far from a purveyor of “pasteis de nata,” how else can we satiate our craving for these divine custard tarts? Do not try this recipe at home unless you’re desperate! Which is how we feel.
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