My new blogger friend Casey @ Eating, Gardening & Living in Bulgaria is hosting a celebration of Portugal Day on June 10th. In honor of this celebration, I made a Portuguese sweet treat, Aletria.
Aletria is similar to arroz doce, the popular rice pudding, but it is made with vermicelli. It is especially delicious served chilled with berries. I adapted the recipe from Portuguese-Recipes.com to make a smaller and lighter version using skim milk. I also used a whole vanilla bean from MarxFoods that intensified the wonderful vanilla flavor.
Ingredients:
4 cups of skim milk
3 eggs
1 cup sugar
1/2 tsp. of salt
1 whole vanilla bean
1/2 ( 6 oz) package of fine egg noodles or angel hair pasta
Directions:
Split the vanilla bean in half and scrape all the seeds out.
Pour milk into a large pot. Add 1/2 cup of sugar, salt, and the remaining vanilla pod to the milk. Bring it to a boil, stirring constantly.
Beat the eggs with vanilla seeds, then add the rest of the sugar. Slowly blend some heated milk into the eggs to make them thin enough to pour easily.
Take the vanilla pods out of the milk. Break the noodles up and add them to the boiling milk. Stir constantly until the noodles are cooked. Remove from the heat. Slowly add egg mixture into the cooked noodles mixture. Pour onto a round platter to cool. Sprinkle with cinnamon in a decorative pattern.
