Highland Curd Tartlets
Also known as: Serra Curd Tartlets · Serra da Estrela Curd Cheese Tartlets
The best of the mountain's whey, turned into a Christmas sweet.
- Origin
- Serra da Estrela · mountain pastry-making tied to the production of Serra da Estrela DOP cheese and curd
- Region
- Serra da Estrela
- Season
- Winter · Christmas season
Queijadinhas serranas are small Serra da Estrela curd-cheese tartlets, gilded in the oven until the surface develops a lacy skin and the scent of cinnamon fills the kitchen. They sit on a thin, brittle pastry shell, filled with a pale cream of requeijão, eggs and sugar, scented with lemon zest and cinnamon.
They are eaten in a single bite, still warm, with the creamy interior contrasting with the crisp edge. They are above all a winter sweet: they appear on mountain tables at Christmas, when cheese-making is at its height and the requeijão comes fresh from the dairies.
They are served plain, dusted with cinnamon, or accompanied by mountain honey. Small and unpretentious, they are one of those sweets that taste of the mountain, of cold outside and a fire within.
- Serra da Estrela curd cheese (requeijão)
- Eggs
- Sugar
- Lemon zest
- Cinnamon
- Wheat flour
- Butter
- Salt
Soft and creamy, the rounded sweetness of the sugar balancing the milky, faintly tart flavour of the curd. Cinnamon and lemon lend brightness, while the thin pastry adds a brittle contrast.
Some prefer the crustless version baked in little moulds; others lean harder into the cinnamon or finish them with a thread of mountain honey. The recipe shades into the curd tartlets found across the wider Beira, varying in pastry thickness and number of eggs.
Look for them in the bakeries and dairies of the Serra da Estrela — Seia, Gouveia, Manteigas, Celorico da Beira — especially in winter and around Christmas, when fresh DOP curd is at its most plentiful. The region's cheese fairs are a good place to track them down.
A strong coffee or a fortified Beira wine such as moscatel or port; at the Christmas table they sit happily beside a mountain digestif.
The confectionery of requeijão is born from the very process of making Serra da Estrela DOP cheese: requeijão is obtained by heat-coagulating the proteins remaining in the whey after the cheese is made, putting to good use what would otherwise be lost. In a region where the Bordaleira sheep and the thistle were the basis of the economy, nothing was wasted, and whey was turned into requeijão and thence into festive sweets.
Requeijão tartlets belong to an old family of Portuguese confectionery — cousin to the queijadas de Sintra and other conventual and regional recipes that pair fresh cheese or requeijão with eggs and sugar. In the Serra da Estrela, they became associated with the Christmas period, when dairy production and the tradition of sharing at table coincide.
Sources: pt.wikipedia.org · tradicional.dgadr.gov.pt · pt.wikipedia.org · tradicional.dgadr.gov.pt
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