Saturday, October 25, 2008

Fig & sweet soy ... custard pastry

For the title, please do help me to fill in the blank.

The custard is made from soy milk, but I really dislike its called "milk" since it isn't a dairy product, and it doesn't taste like one either. I don't see people call banana smoothie banana milk, or yogurt drink yogurt milk. Soy milk is such a bad translation. I hope that you guys don't try to compare soy drink with cow milk.

Soy drink has a strong nutty flavor, but it only tastes good when it is sweetened. I practically drank half a liter of soy drink a day when I was a kid; my mom made it for living. But if you don't like soy drink, you can always use regular custard in this recipe.

I aim for a very smooth texture in this pastry, so have selected puffy pastry, custard and fresh fig. Soy custard just adds sophistication in taste.

The soy drink (or soy milk) I bought in Barcelona, it tastes as good as home-made. I picked the unsweetened one so that I can totally control the taste during cooking. If you can, always choose the one without any additive but with a higher percentage of soy (mine is 14%).

Recipe of sweet soy ...... custard

(enough to fill more than 6 tarts)

  • 200 ml unsweeten soy drink
  • 80 g white sugar (I have sweet tooth)
  • a very tiny pinch of salt
  • 1 egg yolk
  • 15 g flour
  • 1 tablespoon cornstarch
  • 1 teaspoon butter
  • a dash of vanilla essense

How-to

  1. In a small port, mix the soy drink, sugar, salt and flour. Bring the liquid to boil very slowly, and must keep stirring. Once it starts bubbling, let it simmering over very low heat for about three minutes.
  2. During simmering, keep an eye on its consistency. If it isn't thick enough, disolve the cornstarch with spoonful of soy drink, then add this cornstarch liquid into your pot and continue cooking. Or, if it is too thick, you can always add soy drink.
  3. Place the egg yolk in a mixing bowl. When the custard is almost done, scoop up a couple spoonfuls of it into the yolk, whisk the yolk mixture quickly. Then return the yolk mixture back to the pot, continue to stir the custard. This step is called temepering, is to avoid the yolk being cooked through prior being combined with the custard.
  4. After the yolk mixture back to the pot, drop in butter and vanilla essense. Once the custard well combined, turn off the heat, spoon the custard in a bowl and let cool.

To assemble the pastries. Please follow the direction on the package of puff pastry to prepare your dough. Cut it to size and place into tart shells, fill each tart with beans half way up. Bake them in a pre-heat oven 200C (my oven needs higher, or you follow the manufacturer's suggestion) until they are gold brown. I prefer my pastry shells more dry... so once they turn golden, I take them out from the oven, discard the beans (but the pastry still in tart shells), return them to oven, and bake a few minutes more (lower the heat a bit if necessary). Once the pastry shells are done and cool, fill them with custard, top with fresh fig.
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26 comments:

Rosa's Yummy Yums said...

Those pastries look wonderful! I bet they taste heavenly too! Nice pictures, as always...

Cheers,

Rosa

indosungod said...

Beautiful, Gattina. Those figs are thing of joy.

Meeta K. Wolff said...

i love figs and this really sounds great.

MyKitchenInHalfCups said...

The first and second photos are beautiful and lovely little bites - I'm drooling really.
But that last is a real work of art!
I really think I'd just take out the blank, it's soy custard. Milk is milk. Soy is soy. I like soy.

Callipygia said...

sweet soy extraction??? haha, I think "soy (mylk) custard" sounds best. I too like the slight beany/nutty taste of soy. And wow do those figs look good.

Anh said...

Hm, however you call it, this is great!!! I can never let go of cow milk & yoghurt, but ya, soy drink brings a lot of nice childhood memories :)

Lydia (The Perfect Pantry) said...

Your photos make me drool, as always. Each one is a gem.

Patricia Scarpin said...

I have never tried anything with soy milk, sweetie, so I won't be of much help. I have to say these look beautiful!

cakewardrobe said...

I love fresh soybean drink, heated and sugared up! This looks wonderful!

The Culinary Chase said...

Gattina, simply beautiful! You ALWAYS have such lovely photos & your food always look so delicious! Cheers!

Anonymous said...

That sounds delish! Fantastic photography!!

ChichaJo said...

The pastries look so pretty! I love both figs and soy milk but have never though of pairing them...I'm sure this is delicious!

Edith said...

Can't tahan each time I visit. Also making me crave for your goodies.

Dewi said...

Your pastry look incredibly beautiful. I am very sure they taste great.

Chocolate Shavings said...

That looks absolutely gorgeous. I'm not sure i'd be able to eat it, its so pretty... actually I take that back. It sounds too good not to eat!

Leonor de Sousa Bastos said...

These pastries are beautiful!
They look divine!!

I'm curious about the soy custard...

Ginny said...

Gorgeous!!! Delicious and a beautiful presentation! I love it! :)

Big Boys Oven said...

those pastries look so elegantly done . . . beautiful . . . . artistic . . . amazed my eyes and thoughts . . .

Food For Tots said...

Nice presentation and luvly pastries! A piece of fine art to me!

Anonymous said...

Looks fantastic, Can't wait to try it.

Anonymous said...

Oh, wow! This looks like a real treat! Yum!

Paz

Cynthia said...

I have a request. Can you pics with accompanying recipes into a little book and send me as my christmas gift? :)

Gorgeous stuff!

Anonymous said...

They look amazing! Those figs are ripe to perfection.

Anonymous said...

These are so pretty :).

Anonymous said...

love love love the fig rose, Gattina, so pretty!

I say soy milk (when I order my morning coffees), even though I agree that it shouldn't be compared to cow milk: but "milk" is also used for other liquids, not just lactation - eg, sap milk from trees, right?? we should be encouraging cow milk drinkers to have to specify that they want cows milk, and stop their global monopoly of the word milk! :D

('milk' starts to look funny on the screen. *goes off to meditate on a glass of soy extraction* blink blink blink)

Anonymous said...

Just a quick comment on how soy milk only tastes good when it is sweetened. Cow's milk also has an appealing flavour due to a high content of sugar(also quite a bit of salt), in the form of lactose, the fact that it hasn't been added to the milk does not make it less of a sugar. If we took sugar and salt out of dairy products most of the people wouldn't find the taste so appealing,cheese would probably taste like pure fat.

No need to point that I am a regular "vegetable milk" consumer, and I also agree it is odd to label these drinks as "milk".