What a tart

  It's only my second attempt and already I'm pretty close, but the closer I get, the smaller the changes become until the effect is almost imperceptible. Almost, but worth it. There are only two elements, the pastry and the filling, and each needed a little fiddle. Let's start with the pastry. I love the challenge of nata because the pastry is very specific. To be honest, I was slightly intimidated but fortunately the first recipe I followed was very detailed and supplemented with a little look at other pictures I'd seen online so I could visualise where I was going.

  You may have seen puff pastry being made, (or even rough puff, which is slightly closer to nata pastry). It involves rolling out the pastry into a big sheet, covering it with butter, folding it up, rolling out out again and repeating the process until you end up with many layers of pastry interleaved with butter. When this bakes, the water in the pastry turns to steam and expands, causing the layers to puff up.

  Nata pastry goes one step further because the flat sheet of pastry/butter layers are rolled up like a Swiss roll and cut into disks that get flattened and put into the moulds. This is a picture of the bottom of a nata so you can see what I'm talking about. This gives the nata a more crumbly, melty bite than regular puff and is a good marker of whether or not you're eating the genuine article.

  I'm still adjusting the amount of water in the pastry because I thought it was too wet when I first made it, but I had over compensated this time so the next time... Well, you get the picture.

  Now the custard. It's a bit less refined than the French as it uses plain flour as a thickener instead of cornflour. I might try cornflour to see the difference it makes another time, for now though, I'll stick with wheat. The first recipe was teeth-curlingly sweet so I pulled it back from three hundred and fifty grams to two seventy five. That's a reduction of over twenty five fucking percent!!! which gives you an idea of how much sugar some folk find normal. 

  As well as reducing the sugar, I also added lemon. Just a bit but enough to add a gentle floral note without any acidity. I'm very happy with the custard but will no doubt have a little tweak in the next batch. I was also happy that I managed to get the authentic looking caramelisation on the custard that wasn't there in the first batch. Very important, don't you know.

  To avoid turning into a blimp I've been giving them away to my happy neighbours and the feedback has been great. Once this batch has been eaten I'll be making preparations for the next. Let me know when you're popping over for a cuppa and I'll see what I can do.

Kirk out

RevoltingFood.com