Pastéis de Nata

How fitting would it be, to have a Portuguese pastry that is traditionally served in Portugal for Christmas (a.k.a., J.C.'s birthday), when you have just become parents of the greatest baby, while working for a Portuguese company?

Very fitting, I would say!

Pastéis de Nata are a type of pastry that consists of a base of flaky pastry (almost puff pastry like), with a very tasty, rich cream filling. It may be compared to the spanish crema catalana or french crème brûlée in consistency. It is usually served, sprinkled with cinnamon. In the Belém area of the city of Lisbon, Portugal, these pastries are called "Pastéis de Bélem". As with any traditional, famous type of food, people from this area claim to have invented the pastry. There is even a café which supposedly serves the original ones. The recipe is kept a secret. That kind of food.

During holidays in Lisbon last year, I got to sample a lot of these pastries. In fact, at the final day of our holidays, when each of us would do something they liked best, guess where Kurger Bing went?

That's right, straight to the Pastéis café, to try and get as many of these marvelous pastries to export them back home.

So, after relentlessly asking one of my colleagues to please-please-please bring some of these back from one of her flights to and from Portugal, she finally gave in after half a year. So, thank you, C!

On a different note, as mentioned before, N gave birth last week (January 30th) to our wonderful daughter, T! Welcome into this (quite chilly) world, T! Let's just hope this blog won't be too embarrassing for you when you've grown up. And let's also hope, you will inherit as much of your daddy's love of food :)

Dinner at E's

I wouldn't want this to become a new blogging-habit, but this post will be another one without a picture. Again, because I didn't take one.

I had dinner at E's. He prepared a nice spinach quiche for L and me. It was great, (because) it had a lot of garlic in it too. He feared my food-criticism wouldn't make his quiche stand my tastebud-test, and that I would comment about it on this blog. I assured him that I don't blog about bad food usually (well, except for that quinoa).

Not blogging about it would make it seem like I didn't like the quiche however. So, I wrote a post about it. That's also the reason there aren't any pictures. You see? It all makes sense once I start explaining things.

So, thank you, E, for the nice quiche!

Pigs in the blanket

Recently, I found out about Serious Eats, or more specifically their Photograzing section. It's a great way to spend your pastime with food related items.

One of these photo's linked to My Kitchen Snippets' Pig In The Blanket recipe. They looked great, so I wanted to make them too, having recently bought some frozen hotdogs at Ikea. Not wanting to spend that much time on making dough (I tend to hate making dough in general anyway) I decided to use some ready-made puff pastry from the freezer.


I thawed the hotdogs in the microwave, and let the puff pastry thaw by themselves (it usually takes a mere 5 minutes).

I put one hotdog diagonally on a square puff pastry sheet and cut off two of its angles. I attached these cutoffs to the diagonal sides.

Next, I made 5 cuts on each side.

Then, I braided them.

I brushed them with egg wash and baked them for 25 minutes in a preheated oven at 225^oC (473^oF). They came out not as nice as the ones from My Kitchen Snippets, but N liked them very much.