Barnes is renowned for her elaborate mosaic art pieces, some of them displayed at Visionary Artware, a bright yellow bungalow on Broadway just east of Temple Avenue. She’s a self-taught artist who began working in mosaics in 1993.īarnes broke from the traditional technique of breaking tiles with a hammer and hand cut each piece of tile into a variety of shapes and sizes. Visiting Portugal without indulging in convent sweets would be sinful.“On any given day, the studio is filled with folks of all ages and experience – from beginner to advanced – talking, laughing, and creating together, while Mina dispenses advice, inspiration and frequent jokes,” Ward said.īarnes, a former marketing research analyst, had a career change and took an artistic trajectory in 1992. Both are light and delectable, however the name remains a mystery.Īll of the Portuguese sweets are good, but the egg yolk pastries originated so long ago by the nuns are special. Or it can be a baked meringue served with a caramel sauce. Made two ways, it may be a poached meringue in a pool of custard, as we would expect. A dessert called Molotov for reasons no one could explain to me is similar to Floating Island. Simple crisp meringues are called suspiros, or sighs, a perfect name. There are cookies and cakes and ice cream and even a few desserts using egg whites. Portuguese rice pudding topped with cinnamon in decorative patterns, even spelling out a word such as “Welcome,” to guests is wonderful. There are other sweets in Portugal, and you’ll find a pastry shop on nearly every street. The pastry is made with just five ingredients – flour, water, butter, sugar, and egg yolks - but with consummate skill and many years of practice. When they were baked, the ends formed little ruffles, the pastry was shatteringly crisp, and the filling was heavenly. She quickly rolled it into a rectangle, folded the ends up, and placed it on a baking sheet along with dozens of others. Next, she spooned a line of the egg yolk and sugar filling onto the pastry. She then dipped a feather into clarified butter and ever so delicately sprinkled a little of the melted butter onto the pastry. Then she cut it into small shapes, layered a few, and added some pastry scraps in the center for extra strength. By the time she was through, the dough was thin enough to read through. At O Afonso, a local pastry shop, friends and I watched as a baker took an eight-pound lump of dough made from flour and water and stretched and flipped it until it covered an area of probably 12 by 15 feet. The tiny town of Tentúgal is known for its special past é is du Tent ú gal, an oblong pastry filled with ovos moles. The tops of the famed past é is de Nata are nearly charred, the pastry crisp, the custard filling creamy and sweet. In Belem, people line up outside a bakery for past é is de Belem, small tarts with a custard filling that’s still warm from the oven. Some past é is, or pastries, include additions such as cocoanut or almonds or even white beans in their filling. They used the leftover yolks to create their sublime pastries. The nuns had so many egg yolks because egg whites were used to clarify wine, to apply gold and silver leaf to church altars, and to starch nun’s wimples. The filling might be a typical custard or simply ovos moles (translated as soft eggs), which is nothing more than egg yolks and sugar cooked together to create sweet spreadable gold. Most consist of a flaky crust and a rich eggy filling, but each convent and, now, each town or even pastry shop has its own special take on the tarts. The pastries are still known as doces conventuais in Portuguese convent sweets in English. Today, the pastries are served around the world, from Montreal to Mozambique to Macao, but nowhere are they better than in Portugal. The convents were dissolved early in the 19 th century, but the pastries continue to be made, often from the same recipes, and attributed to those long-departed nuns. Portuguese sweets are divine, which may be because they originated in convents.īack in the 16 th century, the country’s Roman Catholic nuns drew on a heritage of Islamic confectionery and an abundance of egg yolks to create unique, delectable pastries.
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