Bean Tarts
The tradition of making sweets from legumes combined with the ubiquitous bitterness of almonds was already well established long before the arrival of beans into Portuguese kitchens from the Americas. Appearing in the Tratado de Cozinha e Copa [Treaty on Food and Wine] by Carlos Bento da Maia, rst published in 1904, bean tarts were described in a recipe very similar to that for which Torres Vedras is famous. In his gastronomic tour of Portugal in 1940, Albino Forjaz de Sampaio was very taken by the Torres Vedras bean tarts and marked the town on the map as the birthplace of this pastry that is so fundamental to Portuguese confectionery. In terms of its history, more important than its origin are its protagonists, who through their re ned expertise and great attention to detail, transformed the pastry into a sweet symbol of Torres Vedras. Maria Adelaide Rodrigues da Silva, loyal depositary of this long-standing family secret, invested in their production and with her mastery and penchant for quality turned them into a popular pastry. Later on, members of her family continued the tradition of a secret whose alchemy was characterised by the delicacy and precision in the mixture of ingredients. As always, it is the hands, steady in their movements as if they are performing a ritual, that add a touch of perfection to this pastry, which gets its consistency from beans and has a moist and generous lling of almonds and eggs. Creating a sharp and wonderful contrast between diverse ingredients, bean tarts are a hearty and opulent pastry. It is a pleasure to bite into them and discover their distinct sweet lling.
Sintra Pillows
We owe the excellence of travesseiros de Sintra to Constança Luísa dos Santos Cunha, heiress of the art of confectionary of the prestigious Casa das Queijadas de Sintra. In the 1940s, in spite of the di culties felt in Portugal due to the scarcity of many foods after the Second World War, Constança Luísa found consolation for the ills of the world in confectionery. Inspired by a desire for perfection, she read and reread the old confectionery recipe books where the art of making egg custard was combined with new pastry-making techniques, resulting in the delicious travesseiro de Sintra. The egg custard stands out for its lightness and aroma, deriving from untold ancient wisdom, a family secret forever kept under lock and key. It is fair to say that not just any pu pastry will do when it comes to making an exceptional sweet. The best ingredients must be chosen in order to ensure that the travesseiro is both crisp and melt in the mouth. If you think the pastry is good, o ered up almost indecently to your palate, you’re in for a treat when you get to the delicious lling inside. It’s not di cult to invent a new pastry, as long as you’re willing to read the vast collection of recipes available and experiment with ingredients, techniques and expertise. The di cult part is creating a pastry that makes history, a taste that will be handed down through generations, that makes the moment you rst taste it stick in your memory. This is the magic of cooking; when something you create lives forever in the memories of others. We are indebted to Constança Luísa and are grateful to her heirs for keeping this excellent tradition alive. In each travesseiro de Sintra you can taste something that has been passed down through time, from the very rst one that was ever made, right down to the one which has just been eaten. This longevity can only be achieved when the art of confectionery is much more than a way of life, it is a way of paying respect and honouring those people who came before us and gave us the best they had to o er; the magic of confectionery.
Vila Real Cockerel’s Combs
Known as bacon pasteles (Pastéis de Toucinho) at the time of the Clarissan nuns of the Convent of St. Clare in Vila Real, these pastries were later nicknamed Cockerel’s Combs (Cristas de Galo) due to their similarity in appearance with the eshy comb on the head of cockerels. These pastries were blessed with the expertise that abounded in Portuguese convents, which were like alchemical laboratories where treasures of Portuguese confectionary were born from improbable mixtures of ingredients. Without a doubt, the hands that brought Cristas de Galo into being were blessed. If at rst glance you suspect that the lling is yet another variation of sweet egg custard, you will be pleasantly surprised by the ingenious and unexpected mixture of sugar, eggs, almonds, bacon, cinnamon and apple. Bacon the avour that lingers on your palate, but you only discover the perfection of the mixture in the second bite. The sugar in its lling is what gives it its sweetness, but the pastry is also unique, in this case so much more than a recipient for the lling. The pastry, on its own, is a tribute to the women that made it, doing what they do best. With a lightness that gives it a certain delicacy, the crisp pastry leaves you wanting more, making it hard to decide which part is more delicious, the lling or the pastry. Cristas de Galo are still made today by the mastery of the people of Vila Real, in honour of the history of the defunct Convent of St. Clare in Vila Real, devoted to Nossa Senhora do Amparo (Our Lady of Refuge). They are a gift from a happy time where perfection was not just about the sweetness of sugar, but also the perfect combination of pastry and lling and such varied ingredients as sugar and bacon. It almost seems as though, in the absence of words, due to their vow of perpetual silence, the nuns used these bacon pasteles to describe the moments of happiness that they would have liked to enjoy. It is a comfort to know that the world these nuns did not experience; the lands they abandoned early on, never to return; the lands they never had the chance to know, would come to experience the perfection of a moment of happiness through these pastries. How grateful we are to be able to taste them!
Évora Cheese Tarts
The Alentejo is a kind of sanctuary of traditional confectionary, and it is the home of one of the most famous recipes for Portuguese cheese tarts, the Queijadas de Évora. The distinct taste of cheese, which in the planes of the Alentejo usually comes from sheep’s milk, derives from the (dis)proportionate ratio of cheese to sugar, where the balance tips in favour of the former. It is perhaps for this reason, because they only have a delicate hint of sugar in them, that these cheese tarts make one forget one’s gluttony when eating them. Their subtle sweetness, which results from the small quantity of sugar involved, but more predominantly from the amount of full- fat sheep’s cheese, tricks our palate to think it less of a sin. The sheep’s cheese is well strained to ensure a smooth mixture with the egg yolks, sugar, and a little our, and its strong avour makes the pastry live up to its name. The need to preserve foods in order for them to keep longer, especially in the case of milk with its limited shelf life, led to the discovery of cheese and its transformation into a delicacy. We owe the cheese tarts to this need for preservation and the type and abundance of milk available, ready to be transformed into cheese. It is not surprising that the recipe book that Princess Maria, granddaughter of King Manuel I, had in her trousseau on her marriage to the 3rd Duke of Parma, Alexander Farnese, included a recipe for alvojávenas de Dona Isabel de Vilhena for which the mixture and quantities of ingredients were very similar to the Évora cheese tarts. Furthermore, a recipe book compiled by Friar Manuel de Santa Teresa (from the 18th century) included various recipes for cheese tarts with mouth-watering references to the techniques and expertise used in their confection and the re nement and care taken by those in charge of confectionery. In the midst of the planes of the Alentejo, our eyes are dazzled by the hot sun and we cast them over the open horizon, awakening dreams of far-away places. On this journey, we come across the subtle sweetness of an Évora cheese tart which reminds us that we are at our best and happiest when dreams appear in the form of sweets on our palate.
