Sunday, July 19, 2009

Pastel

Three years on from wondering at the number of Brazilians on Colliers Wood, we have Brazilian friends. And so it came to pass that we met up with them yesterday in Abbey Mills at the stall selling pastels and guarana juice.

According to the vendors, the crisp rectangular fried pastry that is Brazil's pastel was introduced by Japanese immigrants and evolved into its present form when that tradition collided with Italian fillings and flavours.

I love all this cosmopolitan mingling. As I noted before, "the first esoteric fact that I ever learned on the World Wide Web was that tempura came from the Portuguese influence on Japanese food ."

The Bomber's pastel with pizza filling was educational.

2 comments:

KaliAmanda said...

I love pastels! My favorites are the meat ones, but the fruit and cheese pasteis are even better. I love that you can buy the pastry crust (i hate making from scratch) and that you can bake them instead of deep frying.

Nick Browne said...

Nation shall speak unto nation in the kitchen. Amen to that as an ethical foreign policy.