Pastel de Nata – Portuguese Custard Tarts
As explained to me on a lively on-line cooking course, these little items of rich sweet deliciousness are more than Portuguese, they are fully international. Chef João Batalha from the Lisbon Pastelaria Batalha taught us that the Portuguese sailors and explorers took the recipe with them and versions are now found throughout China, South America and Europe. The difference to the custard tarts of English heritage is the flavouring – these use lemon and cinnamon instead of vanilla. Chef João Batalha, being a proper cook, made his puff pastry from scratch. Me, being an imperfect cook, used the bought rolled puff pastry, and they turned out great nevertheless. I have João’s permission to use his recipe – many thanks for sharing, João! I’m sure everyone will appreciate how easy these are and how super tasty. They are eaten for breakfast with a cup of strong coffee, as a snack or for dessert. They do use a LOT of eggs, but you can always use up the whites in meringue, add to a quiche filling or fluff up an omelet with them. I took these round my Senior’s Lunch Club group, along with mince pies for the Christmas treat, as we do have some dried-fruit dislikers in the group. We had a lovely Christmas Party audio conference call, discussing what we were looking forward to at Christmas – mainly it was seeing what relatives we’re allowed to meet. Anticipating the crispy fluffy roast potatoes and the boozy trifle was also a popular theme. It seems you don’t lose your zest for festive meals in your 90s! We wore home-made paper hats, shouted “BANG!” in chorus, groaned at some truly dreadful cracker-jokes and played a few rounds of Christmas-character Who Am I? Frosty the Snowman was quite easy, but Rudolph defeated our guessing capability. Makes 15 tarts. Timings - 30 minutes preparation, 15 minutes cooking, then cooling time.
Take the pastry out of the fridge, remove it from its cardboard wrapper and the plastic wrapper and leave it on the worktop, still in its greaseproof paper wrap, to warm a little bit while you start the custard. Put the milk in a pan. Add the cinnamon stick/cassia bark and the piece of fresh lemon peel. Heat the pan strongly to bring the milk to the boil. Sieve the flour and sugar into a bowl. When the milk is heated, just before boiling, take it off the heat and add in the flour/sugar, a little bit at a time and whisking to avoid lumps. Put the pan back on the heat and cook until the mixture is getting thick, stirring all the time. It doesn’t take long to reach a texture like cream. Take the pan off the heat and leave it to cool. It needs to be about body heat before you mix in the eggs. Now deal with the pastry. A key feature of Pastel de Nata is the puff pastry laminations can be seen on the bottom of the tart like the rings in a tree trunk – they run in concentric circles. This is partly why the tarts are so crispy, so it’s important to get right. Unroll the pastry to a flat rectangle – keeping it on its own greaseproof paper square. Taking the long side, start to roll it very tightly into a long sausage shape. You might need to really pinch the first roll or two to make sure there are no air spaces trapped inside the roll. Roll up the whole thing quite tightly, wrap it back up in the greaseproof paper it comes in and put it back in the fridge to chill. Heat the oven to quite high – you need a good hot air circulation to encourage the pastry to rise up and crisp and the custard to puff up, so if you have both fan and top/bottom heating, use both, and take it to 240°C. Get the oven good and warm, let it reach temperature fully and give it another few minutes. Take the pastry out of the fridge and cut the sausage shape as equally as you can into 15 little roll-shaped sections. Take a section of pastry and put it cut side down in the tart tin. You can use special individual Pastel de Nata tins, which are non-stick, and have a slightly flared shape. If you use a 12-cup bun tin, you will need to be quite agile with the forming of the pastry, but it can be done. Have a bowl of cold water to hand. Dip your thumb into the water and then press it into the middle of the pastry section, squashing down the pastry to the bottom of the little tin. Using your thumb, and turning the tin as you go, squish the pastry up the sides of the tin, until it comes up over the edge. You need it higher than the edge, to hold in the filling. And you are fine if it’s quite thin on the base, as that will make it crispier. Keep on doing this until all your tins are filled with pastry. Now add the egg yolks to the cooled milk/flour mixture and remove the lemon peel and the cinnamon/cassia. You will notice that the flavouring has entered the custard and is very delicate. (well, you will if you’re like me and can’t resist licking the custard off the cassia piece.) Fill each pastry case with the custard mixture to about 1/2cm below the rim. Put into the oven for about 6 minutes, then turn the tray round to cook the tarts evenly and cook for another 5-6 minutes, keeping an eye on them. You want the custard to cook on the top and form those lovely caramelised light burn marks but you don’t want it to catch and go darker brown. Take out of the oven when the custard has only the slightest wobble. Leave in the tins to cool down, then put on a wire rack to cool fully. They are utterly delicious eaten luke-warm – but you’ll burn your mouth on the hot sugary custard if you don’t leave them a while – they hold the heat a long time! You can sprinkle them with a very light dusting of cinnamon sugar if you like but they really need nothing more than a good cup of coffee.
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Chocolate Custard – the easy version
You know, like all kids, I didn’t give my Mum much credit for being a good cook. The food appeared; I ate it (being a greedy skinny active child) and ran off to play without thinking about the effort that had gone into the meal. Actually, not much, she liked to keep it simple, especially lunches. This was a dish that we had very often on school holiday lunchtimes – quick to make, easy to eat, non-challenging to the fussy, and made from cheap store-cupboard ingredients. No chemicals, no e-numbers or stabilisers, just cornflour, sugar, milk, eggs and cocoa. Yes, it has sugar, so maybe not the dessert for absolutely every day. Pour it over bananas or poached pears, or grated apple or eat it by itself – we did and called it Chocolate Pudding. It takes 10 minutes to make from scratch and is nice and filling, so feed the little darlings or terrors (whichever mood they are in today) a lunch of baked beans on toast and chocolate custard with bananas and send them out to play in the cold knowing they won’t need a snack before the evening meal – another healthy habit to cultivate while they’re small. It's also comfort food for grown-ups if you need something warm and easy and you can't face another bowl of cornflakes for dinner. Of course, there is a sophisticated version of Chocolate Custard, more suited to the adults and taking more time – I’ll do a recipe for that another day. Serves 4, timing – 10 minutes.
Pour 430ml milk into a pan (use a non-stick if you don’t like washing up) and get it on the heat, reserving the little bit of milk, about 2 tablespoons. Sieve the cornflour and cocoa into a bowl (there are often little gritty bits in the cocoa if it’s a good brand), stir in the sugar, then stir in the egg yolks and the reserved milk. Mix to give a nice thick liquid paste. The milk in the pan should be near to boiling by now. Take it off the heat, pour into the bowl of chocolate paste. Stir well and pour the whole lot back into the pan, scraping out any bits at the bottom of the bowl. Put the pan back on the heat and stir the sauce with a wooden spoon as it thickens – it only takes a couple of minutes. Eat straightaway, poured over whatever fresh or tinned fruit you like or just as it is. Lucky kids! (You can use the egg whites to make meringues or maybe toppings for Little Lemon Meringue Tartlets - see my post from 28th November.) Lemon Meringue Tartlets
Crisp almondy pastry, oozing lemony filling, soft sweet meringue – these little tarts are really delicious and a superb treat. Easy to make too. Their one disadvantage is that they’re a bit squishy to transport, so less suited to a lunch box than some of the more robust cakes. I made them for my seniors lunch group and had to wrap each one very carefully in silver foil for delivery. They can be eaten cold or warmed up for a real winter evening luxurious pud. This week’s theme with the lunch club group was Advent, but it seems that most families in Britain didn’t really celebrate Advent very much before the 1980s, so there were few reminiscences from their own childhoods. They mainly remember buying advent calendars for their own children and grandchildren. We wondered at what age do you stop buying advent calendars for your adult offspring? One of our volunteers was wrapping up a big advent set, complete with chocolate in small fabric pockets for her 22-year-old daughter living in London. Her mother felt that at this season, any small gesture of family love and unity would be welcome, and I’m sure she’s right. We were united however, in thinking that the advent calendars with wine or beer & scratchings didn’t really reflect the spirit of the season! These little lemon meringue tarts were very popular with the group. Made this way, as individual tartlets rather than one big pie, would be a good way of contributing to a Covid-secure celebration. Makes 24 little tartlets. Timings - 1 hour.
Pre heat the oven to 180°C. In your mixer using the pastry paddle, mix the flour, butter and ground almonds to a breadcrumb texture – or do this in a bowl rubbing in the fat with your fingertips. Mix in the icing sugar and then mix in the whole egg. This should bring the pastry together into a soft ball. If it needs a little water, then use just a teaspoon at a time until you get the right consistency. Roll it into a ball, knead very quickly just to even out the texture, and wrap it in cling film. At this stage you can leave it in the fridge for an hour or so, but you don’t need to chill this pastry before cooking. Grease two 12-cup pie tins, roll out the pastry and cut rounds to fit the pie cups. Place a few baking beans or dried beans in each little pastry round to keep the bottoms flat and bake blind for 15 minutes to give you a very crisp pastry case. While they are baking, make the meringue. In your clean and washed mixer bowl, whisk the egg whites until stiff and then tip in the sugar and keep whisking – you want it forming “stiff peaks.” Scoop it into an icing bag with a wide star nozzle. When the pastry cases are baked, bring them out and carefully remove all the baking beans. (And I do mean carefully, using a teaspoon and checking that you have got them all, they have a tendency to embed slightly in the pastry and it would be a disaster to leave one.) Fill each pastry case with a dessert spoon of lemon curd. Top each one with a swirl of meringue piped generously. I found it used up nearly exactly the amount of meringue but if you have any left over you can always make tiny little meringues just for decoration or treats. Bake in the oven for about 20 minutes but check to see how brown they are getting. If you have both trays in the same oven you might want to change their positions after 10 minutes to get an even brown. Take out of the oven and get the tarts out of their tart tins as quickly as you can, as if you leave them the curd will set like glue and they’ll stick in. Eat within a couple of days, although the pastry does stay nice and crisp. |
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