How to make the perfect pastel de nata – recipe | Felicity Cloake's How to Make the Perfect…
Calling pastel de nata a Portuguese custard pie is a bit like calling a pâté a Cornish calzone - similar in principle, but a very beast different in reality. Instead of a short, crumbly dough, pastel de nata has a crisp, lightly salted, layered crust; and, rather than the firm, egg-rich fillings of classic British or French custard tart, the filling is almost melted and spiced with cinnamon and lemon zest, unlike our peppery nutmeg or vanilla sweet.
As chef Nuno Mendes explains in his love letter to his hometown, Lisboeta, they were originally sold at Mosteiro dos Jerónimos in Belém . When the monastery was briefly closed in the early 19th century, the recipe ended up in the hands of an enterprising local businessman, and his shop now sells around 20,000 a day. I won't claim that my recipe below is as good as a visit there, but I like to think these pies are a pretty delicious tribute.
PastryBad news here, I'm afraid. I try Mendes' recipe using ready-made puff pastry, and it just doesn't have the same crispy effect as the real deal, which is somewhere between puff and filo. If you really must have pastéis de nata and can't be bothered with the effort of making your own pastry, be sure to get the kind of all-butter puff pastry and roll it as thinly as you can before making it. shape as below, or layer sheets of filo spread with soft butter instead.
The pastries I make all have the same basic ingredients: flour, salt, butter and just enough water to bind everything together. (Lard or shortening, with their lower moisture content, may give a crispier result, but they don't taste as good, and I can't find any recipes suggesting them, although Mendes tells me that "a little pork fat in the pans is nice”.) Where they differ widely is in how much butter they use and how they introduce it into the dough.
Unlike shortcrust pastry, it is a puff pastry in which the fat acts as a sandwich filling between the sheets of pastry, separating them into the incredibly crispy layers that are the hallmark of a good pastel de nata After mixing the flour and water, knead until you have a smooth dough (although a certain amount of gluten is needed to hold the leaves together, overworking the dough will make it hard) and let this dough rest. base, it's time to introduce the butter. f pastry chef Nicola Lamb in her incredibly detailed exploration of the subject on her sub-stack, Kitchen Projects (which should be required reading for nata nerds), "There are two sides when it comes to putting your butter in the dough. On one side, you have the "spread" camp, a traditional method...
Calling pastel de nata a Portuguese custard pie is a bit like calling a pâté a Cornish calzone - similar in principle, but a very beast different in reality. Instead of a short, crumbly dough, pastel de nata has a crisp, lightly salted, layered crust; and, rather than the firm, egg-rich fillings of classic British or French custard tart, the filling is almost melted and spiced with cinnamon and lemon zest, unlike our peppery nutmeg or vanilla sweet.
As chef Nuno Mendes explains in his love letter to his hometown, Lisboeta, they were originally sold at Mosteiro dos Jerónimos in Belém . When the monastery was briefly closed in the early 19th century, the recipe ended up in the hands of an enterprising local businessman, and his shop now sells around 20,000 a day. I won't claim that my recipe below is as good as a visit there, but I like to think these pies are a pretty delicious tribute.
PastryBad news here, I'm afraid. I try Mendes' recipe using ready-made puff pastry, and it just doesn't have the same crispy effect as the real deal, which is somewhere between puff and filo. If you really must have pastéis de nata and can't be bothered with the effort of making your own pastry, be sure to get the kind of all-butter puff pastry and roll it as thinly as you can before making it. shape as below, or layer sheets of filo spread with soft butter instead.
The pastries I make all have the same basic ingredients: flour, salt, butter and just enough water to bind everything together. (Lard or shortening, with their lower moisture content, may give a crispier result, but they don't taste as good, and I can't find any recipes suggesting them, although Mendes tells me that "a little pork fat in the pans is nice”.) Where they differ widely is in how much butter they use and how they introduce it into the dough.
Unlike shortcrust pastry, it is a puff pastry in which the fat acts as a sandwich filling between the sheets of pastry, separating them into the incredibly crispy layers that are the hallmark of a good pastel de nata After mixing the flour and water, knead until you have a smooth dough (although a certain amount of gluten is needed to hold the leaves together, overworking the dough will make it hard) and let this dough rest. base, it's time to introduce the butter. f pastry chef Nicola Lamb in her incredibly detailed exploration of the subject on her sub-stack, Kitchen Projects (which should be required reading for nata nerds), "There are two sides when it comes to putting your butter in the dough. On one side, you have the "spread" camp, a traditional method...
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