Lebaran (religious holiday that marks the end of Ramadan) is
time to fully charge your sweet tooth, isn’t it? One of the most popular cookies
during Lebaran is Nastar (ananas tart), an Indonesian pineapple tart.
Making good pineapple tarts can’t be done in a flash. It
takes time, a very long one (this is the reason why the nastar price is
expensive). Unless you buy a readymade pineapple jam which – I won’t do that
anyway because it contains preservatives. After – at least 2 hours – cooking
mashed pineapples to make pineapple jam, it does however still takes time to
rest them till cool, shape them into little balls and leave into firm. But the
journey isn’t finished yet, you still have to make the pastry, divide them into
little balls, flatten and place the jam balls in the middle of the dough and
roll into a bigger balls now filled with jam. While the last step which takes
time also is bake them. And guess what, with the more than 4 hours process, I
believe the nastar will be gone in not more than an hour!
A quite long journey, huh?
I actually not that patient to follow all the steps, but lately
I am craving for nastar. So I cheat a little by making the nastar into pie.
Yes, into a pineapple jam filled pie or Ananas Pie. It saves much time and
energy, but the best part is, the taste is the same!
You could use any nastar recipe you want, but here I use pie
recipe for the pastry which is will be more crumbly and hard to shape as balls
if you make it as traditional nastar. While for the pineapple jam, because it takes hours to cook, so I make a big batch which will be enough to make 4 pie filling.
Pineapple Jam
Ingredients:
3 pineapple or about 1,2 kg peeled pineapple (don’t forget
to remove the eyes), blend until smooth
5 cm cinnamon stick
3 cloves
300 gr sugar
Pinch of salt
Pastry ingredients (from Gourmet Travelers)
250 gr plain flour
60 gr icing sugar
160 gr cold unsalted butter, coarsely chopped
2 egg yolks
Directions:
Pineapple jam: put all the ingredients except sugar in a
wok. Cook until almost dry, add sugar, stirring occasionally till light brown
and thick. Rest to cool.
For pastry: process flour and sugar in food processor to
combine, add butter and pulse until mixture resembles fine crumbs. Add yolks
and process until mixture comes together. Turn out onto a work surface, bring
together with the heel of your hand, form into a disc. Wrap in a plastic wrap
and refrigerate to rest (30 minutes).
Pre heat oven to 170 C.
Roll out pastry on a lightly floured surface to 2 mm thick,
line base and sides of 4 cm deep, 20 cm diameter tart tin, trim edges. Spread
the jam 4 mm thick (Keep in jar the remaining jam, refrigerate up to a month).
Roll out remaining pastry on a floured surface to 3 mm
thick, cut out assorted start with pastry cutters, offset on pastry. Brush lid
and starts with egg wash. Bake until golden and crisp (1 hour).
Dig in.
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