Fão Clarinhas
Also known as: Clarinhas · Pastéis de Lili · Gila pastries
The golden half-moon that made Fão a byword for sweetness.
- Origin
- 19th century · of conventual roots, linked to the Convent of Santa Clara
- Region
- Fão
- Season
- Year-round
Clarinhas de Fão are small thin-pastry turnovers, folded into half-moons and crimped with a pastry wheel, concealing a thick filling of gila-pumpkin preserve bound with egg yolks. They are fried in olive oil until the pastry turns a crisp golden colour, then served dusted with icing sugar that floats off with every bite.
At first glance they are modest — a few fingers of pastry puffy from the oil, with crimped edges left by the serrated wheel. But in the mouth they reveal the contrast that made them celebrated: the light, warm shell yields to a soft interior fragrant with lemon and cinnamon, sweet without being cloying.
They are eaten at room temperature or still warm, at the end of a meal or mid-afternoon, and form part of the sweet imagination of everyone who passes through Esposende and the village of Fão.
- Flour
- Eggs (yolks)
- Gila pumpkin preserve
- Sugar
- Lemon zest
- Cinnamon
- Olive oil (for frying)
- Icing sugar (for dusting)
The pastry turns light and crisp from frying, set against a soft, threaded gila-and-yolk filling that is sweet and scented with lemon and cinnamon. The dusting of icing sugar rounds it off without weighing it down.
Some shape them as half-moons, others prefer a rectangular form. Descendant confectioners offer versions with their own names and proportions — hence the nicknames pastéis de Lili or gila pastries — varying the amount of yolk, the depth of cinnamon, or the thinness of the pastry.
They are found above all in the bakeries and confectioners of the village of Fão and the wider Esposende area, on the Minho coast, where they are still made by hand. They make an almost obligatory souvenir for anyone visiting the mouth of the Cávado.
They call for a strong coffee or a cup of tea, yet pair beautifully with a Port or a Moscatel, whose liqueur-like sweetness echoes the gila and cinnamon.
The origins of the clarinhas lie somewhere between legend and record. Their invention is attributed to convent confectionery, in particular the Monastery of Santa Clara, from which their name is said to derive; other versions have them arriving in Fão from confectioners in the Barcelos area in the nineteenth century. What is certain is that it was in the village of Fão, in the municipality of Esposende, that they acquired fame and a name of their own.
From the early twentieth century they were sold around Esposende, and there became famous the figure of a woman called Clara — to whom the sweet probably owes its diminutive name — who traded in them. In 1915 the newspaper O Espozendense even announced their merits. The recipe passed from generation to generation among the local confectionery families, and it remains a calling card of the Minho's pastry tradition.
Sources: pt.wikipedia.org · tradicoesdoces.com · bloguedominho.blogs.sapo.pt · revistadevinhos.pt
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