Portugal Leite Creme - Egg and Milk Custard
A traditional dessert for Christmas or any time of the year, served plain, or caramelized with a hot iron in the Minho region.
Ingredients
500 ml (2 c.) milk
7 egg yolks
2 tsp. flour
A pinch of salt
350 g fine granulated sugar (e.g., berry or caster sugar)
A few strips of lemon zest (optional)
1 cinnamon stick + powdered cinnamon
Directions
Mix the flour with a few spoonfuls of milk; set aside;
pour the remaining milk into a saucepan; add the lemon zest and cinnamon stick;
heat over a low flame, stirring with a wooden spoon; remove from the heat once the milk is very hot; let cool to lukewarm.
In a bowl, beat the egg yolks until light and frothy; add to the warm milk; return the saucepan to the heat and remove once the mixture is hot; add the flour-milk mixture; return to the heat and let thicken, stirring constantly; remove the lemon zest and cinnamon stick; pour into an oval baking dish; let cool until the custard forms a thin skin on top; sprinkle with 100 g (7 tbsp.) sugar;
Optional: heat the base of a cast-iron disk or flat iron over a high flame until white hot and apply it to the sugar for a few seconds to caramelize the sugar on the custard; or sprinkle with cinnamon in a geometric pattern. Serves 4.
Christmas In PORTUGAL
From the first week of December on, in the white villages crowned with red tiles which dot the winding road between Cabo da Roca, situated on the westernmost tip of Europe, and Sintra, little Sunday markets come to life on the roadsides. Amongst the cabbages, turnips and onions are great bundles of fresh holly cut at dawn, over two metres long and decorated with red berries, waiting to be woven into wreaths. At Açores, work has been going on for months on embroidered placemats and drink mats in the form of poinsettias which will later be found in shops across Europe.
In homes, fir trees are decorated with blown-glass ornaments, or with old tarnished silver, while the table is set with candles and golden cherubs.
But Christmas here is above all a culinary ritual. Even though it is said here that there are 365 recipes for cod (one for each day of the year), the tradition for Christmas Eve is to serve simple boiled cod with steamed potatoes and green vegetables. The whole family comes together. In the kitchen, the pastry for massa de filhos is prepared, a traditional sweet which is left to rise in a large earthenware dish during the time it takes to go to the messa du gallo, literally the rooster's mass, or midnight mass. Upon returning home, while coffee is being made and aguardiente, brandy, is brought out, the dough is plunged into hot oil. Sprinkled with sugar and cinnamon, its delicious aroma fills this holiest of nights when Baby Jesus was born. In the poor regions of the interior, the dough is simple - flavoured with orange - but try this pastry made with pumpkin: a real treat! These days, especially in the city, massa de filhos is eaten as a dessert, right after the cod. The tradition lives on, only at a faster pace!
Christmas Day gives way to meat: roast kid, and turkey, that farmyard bird which is often passed over in this coastal country, but which is reclaiming its traditional symbolic place. It was not so long ago that producers could be seen on foot in the streets of Lisbon with a flock of turkeys, gobbling across the cold paving stones. Everyone brought a turkey home, took hold of it with their bare hands and forced a litre of good eau-de-vie down its throat, upon which the turkey would fall down dead-drunk. Killed, plucked and cleaned, it was soaked for twelve hours in a brine of water, salt, lemon and bay leaves. After being hung overnight, it was then ready to be stuffed with a mixture of chestnuts, walnuts and meat. The lady of the house watched the clock carefully to establish the exact time it should go into the oven.
Dinner ends with rice pudding, roz doce, sprinkled with cinnamon; a milk custard which in the Minho region is caramelized with a red hot iron; and rabanadas fried in olive oil.
There is also a table full of sobremesas, traditional Christmas pastries, alternating with trays of dried fruits, plain or candied, with an almond in the centre. They will remain on the table until Epiphany Sunday, so that friends and family will always be able to find a few sweets when they come to exchange Christmas and New Year greetings. The centrepiece is the bolo rei, the crown of the kings, eaten between December 15 and January 15. It is a buttery brioche-style pastry studded and garnished with large slices of candied fruit and sugar and which marks the winter solstice holidays in every home, a throwback to long-ago pagan feasts.
Formerly gifts were exchanged on Epiphany Sunday, for it was on that day that the Three Kings brought gold, frankincense and myrrh to the Baby Jesus. The custom still survives in some families and regions.
