Portuguese · Dessert
Pastéis de Nata
- Advanced
- 2 h 30 m
- roughly 2 of 4 for cost
- Vegetarian
Leads with richness that coats and comforts, warm spice humming through the middle, with a clean, bright snap.
Ingredients
- 1 sheet all-butter puff pastry (or laminate your own if the saints move you)
- Syrup: 200g sugar, 120ml water, cinnamon stick, lemon peel, boiled 2 min, cooled
- 30g flour + 250ml milk, whisked smooth, cooked to a thick white base
- 5 egg yolks
- Cinnamon and icing sugar for dusting; an espresso beside
The skills inside
LaminationStraining & passing through a sieve
Allergen screen
Found: gluten · dairy · egg
Screened for: gluten, dairy, egg, nuts, peanuts, fish, shellfish, molluscs, soy, sesame, celery, mustard, lupin, alcohol. Not screened: sulphites.
Screened by keyword from the ingredient list, not reviewed by a person; check every label for what the list cannot show.
Method
- Roll the pastry tight like a cigar; slice into 12 coins; press each into muffin tins with wet thumbs, spiraling the layers UP the sides thin.
- Whisk the syrup into the milk base, then the yolks; strain into a jug.
- Fill cups three-quarters; bake at your oven's absolute maximum, 270°C+, 10–12 min. 12 min
- The tops must scorch in leopard spots while the pastry shatters. Cool 10 min only; dust; eat warm. 10 min
How to tell it is going right
This dish has no standard of its own yet. It is judged on the technique it exercises: checked at the pan, while there is still something to be done about it.
Straining & passing through a sieve 148 recipes
- Nothing solid got through: a finger drawn through what came out finds no fibre, seed, skin, curd, or grit.
- Where the dish wants body it was worked through rather than left to drip, and the solids left in the mesh are spent and dry rather than still holding liquid worth having.
- It is judged on the tongue rather than by eye: smooth, with no residual grain left behind after the mouthful has gone.
- The mesh was fine enough for the job and held its shape, and nothing bypassed it by going over the rim.
- The yield is close to what went in less the spent solids: not half of it abandoned in the sieve because it stopped running and nobody pushed.
Where it goes wrong It was pushed through a mesh too coarse for it, or the sieve was overloaded and slopped at the rim, so the fibres it was meant to remove are in the finished sauce and it reads grainy on the tongue.
At the Table
- The Pour
- Moscato d’Asti
- Also Right
- Late-harvest Riesling
- From the Taps
- Witbier
- Zero-Proof
- Sparkling elderflower
Citrus desserts need a wine sweeter than they are, with acid enough to keep up: light, frothy, and low-proof wins.
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