Thank you.
INTERVIEW #8
Why pastry? Juliana Penteado on technique, tradition, flavour, her Rota Amorela journey through Portugal, and the magic behind pastry.
Thank you, Juliana, for having me here at this very cozy place.
So, I mean, just a brief conversation. We’re like in this Alice in Wonderland world, you know? It’s a magic world that you have created. And congratulations on La Liste. I think it’s super well deserved.
Thank you so much.
Why pastry? Why did you actually choose pastry? Because I was reading a little bit about your professional journey. You studied at Le Cordon Bleu in London, so you could have chosen to be a savory food chef, right? But you chose pastry.
Yeah, actually, when I was working in Brazil, I was a head chef of a catering service, and I was working with cuisine. So I decided to move to pastry when I moved to Paris, eight and a half years ago.
I think that pastry is more delicate, so it’s a bit different. I love cuisine. I love savory food. I just think that it’s completely different when you work in pastry.
I think that we have more time, you know, to have this relationship with the food. So you can see the food in a different way than we usually see it in cuisine.
Yeah, I don’t know. I really love both, but I think that pastry has this magical thing.
TALKS: Juliana Penteado, pastry Chef
"Rota Amorela was very important for my connection with Portugal."
Yeah. It’s like, you know, in the world of clothes, maybe it’s like jewelry.
Yeah, that’s true. That’s true.
You did this project — sorry if I’m not pronouncing it correctly — Rota Amorela?
Yes
So why did you decide to do that?
Actually, I think that Rota Amorela was very important to have this connection with Portugal.
At that time, I was trying to move to Portugal, to stay here instead of Brazil. So to create this relationship with Portugal, the best way was to travel around the whole country and understand a bit more, especially about the pastries, the traditional ones.
To hear all these stories from them, to see it in their eyes when they were telling me all these stories, all the connections.
Yeah, I think that was basically it. So it was really, really nice and very important for myself, you know.
Sounds good. And if we talk about desserts in general now, are there any groups of desserts — like the monk desserts, French desserts, or whatever — or not really?
Like Portuguese ones?
No, I mean in general, internationally. Do you actually group desserts, or is it a mix of all the recipes — international, local?
Yeah, I think that we have the techniques. Usually, the techniques that we use here are French techniques. I went to a French school, so they’re the ones that I really love and I try to work with, but of course we have different ones.
I can tell you about the ones that we do here. I think that you can play a bit more with, for example, pastry cream. That is something that we usually have a lot in different cultures.
But you can play a lot with these basic things, you know. You can put flavors, you can put juice, you can put essential oils, you can put chocolate, you can put caramel. You can create your own recipe.
But you have the base, you know.
So it’s more about technique?
Yeah, it’s more about technique. Exactly.
Got it. And since you’ve lived in all those different cities — Paris and London, right, and Lisbon — do the preferences, the tastes of people, actually differ?
They do. A lot. Yeah, a lot.
Especially because I’m Brazilian, so I can see this difference, you know, also with Portuguese people. Because we don’t do traditional Portuguese desserts here.
Of course, we can see all these things. Here we have the concept of using essential oils in pastries, so it’s also something different, you know. It’s not a French thing, but with the French techniques we can play with them.
So actually, I usually do this combination with all these bases.
We also don’t do Brazilian desserts. The only dessert that we do that is one of our traditional ones is the quindim, but it’s actually a combination, a mixture between Portuguese and Brazilian pastries.
So it’s egg yolk, sugar, coconut, and here we use passion fruit and lemongrass to help reduce the sweetness. And the lemongrass also gives you a nice flavor, a perfume. It’s very interesting.
What’s your favorite dessert? And what’s the most difficult dessert to actually make, technique-wise?
I think puff pastry. Yeah, it’s very hard.
You need to have a proper kitchen with the right temperature. You need to respect the timings. Yeah, it’s very, very hard.
And also, it’s good to have a proper machine to do the lamination, a perfect lamination.
So probably puff pastry is the hardest one.
Cream or butter — your preference, if there is one?
Butter. But not for pastries.
For pastries, I would say mascarpone, maybe, and cream.
For example, we don’t use buttercream here. We use a rich cream with mascarpone and a glaze base. So yeah, we don’t do buttercream.
So for pastries, maybe I’d go for cream instead of butter.
Coffee or tea to go with a dessert?
Depends. I love tea. Probably I would say tea, but it depends on the pastry.
If you use, for example, chocolate, I think that coffee is good. I think that the combination is nice, and you can play a bit more, you know. Caramel also.
But if you go for fruits, I would say tea.
Thank you so much.
Thank you, Olga. Thank you so much.
TALKS: Juliana Penteado, pastry Chef
"Rota Amorela was very important for my connection with Portugal."
INTERVIEW #8
Why pastry? Juliana Penteado on technique, tradition, flavour, her Rota Amorela journey through Portugal, and the magic behind pastry.
Thank you, Juliana, for having me here at this very cozy place.
Thank you.
So, I mean, just a brief conversation. We’re like in this Alice in Wonderland world, you know? It’s a magic world that you have created. And congratulations on La Liste. I think it’s super well deserved.
Thank you so much.
Why pastry? Why did you actually choose pastry? Because I was reading a little bit about your professional journey. You studied at Le Cordon Bleu in London, so you could have chosen to be a savory food chef, right? But you chose pastry.
Yeah, actually, when I was working in Brazil, I was a head chef of a catering service, and I was working with cuisine. So I decided to move to pastry when I moved to Paris, eight and a half years ago.
I think that pastry is more delicate, so it’s a bit different. I love cuisine. I love savory food. I just think that it’s completely different when you work in pastry.
I think that we have more time, you know, to have this relationship with the food. So you can see the food in a different way than we usually see it in cuisine.
Yeah, I don’t know. I really love both, but I think that pastry has this magical thing.
Yeah. It’s like, you know, in the world of clothes, maybe it’s like jewelry.
Yeah, that’s true. That’s true.
You did this project — sorry if I’m not pronouncing it correctly — Rota Amorela?
Yes
So why did you decide to do that?
Actually, I think that Rota Amorela was very important to have this connection with Portugal.
At that time, I was trying to move to Portugal, to stay here instead of Brazil. So to create this relationship with Portugal, the best way was to travel around the whole country and understand a bit more, especially about the pastries, the traditional ones.
To hear all these stories from them, to see it in their eyes when they were telling me all these stories, all the connections.
Yeah, I think that was basically it. So it was really, really nice and very important for myself, you know.
Sounds good. And if we talk about desserts in general now, are there any groups of desserts — like the monk desserts, French desserts, or whatever — or not really?
Like Portuguese ones?
No, I mean in general, internationally. Do you actually group desserts, or is it a mix of all the recipes — international, local?
Yeah, I think that we have the techniques. Usually, the techniques that we use here are French techniques. I went to a French school, so they’re the ones that I really love and I try to work with, but of course we have different ones.
I can tell you about the ones that we do here. I think that you can play a bit more with, for example, pastry cream. That is something that we usually have a lot in different cultures.
But you can play a lot with these basic things, you know. You can put flavors, you can put juice, you can put essential oils, you can put chocolate, you can put caramel. You can create your own recipe.
But you have the base, you know.
So it’s more about technique?
Yeah, it’s more about technique. Exactly.
Got it. And since you’ve lived in all those different cities — Paris and London, right, and Lisbon — do the preferences, the tastes of people, actually differ?
They do. A lot. Yeah, a lot.
Especially because I’m Brazilian, so I can see this difference, you know, also with Portuguese people. Because we don’t do traditional Portuguese desserts here.
Of course, we can see all these things. Here we have the concept of using essential oils in pastries, so it’s also something different, you know. It’s not a French thing, but with the French techniques we can play with them.
So actually, I usually do this combination with all these bases.
We also don’t do Brazilian desserts. The only dessert that we do that is one of our traditional ones is the quindim, but it’s actually a combination, a mixture between Portuguese and Brazilian pastries.
So it’s egg yolk, sugar, coconut, and here we use passion fruit and lemongrass to help reduce the sweetness. And the lemongrass also gives you a nice flavor, a perfume. It’s very interesting.
What’s your favorite dessert? And what’s the most difficult dessert to actually make, technique-wise?
I think puff pastry. Yeah, it’s very hard.
You need to have a proper kitchen with the right temperature. You need to respect the timings. Yeah, it’s very, very hard.
And also, it’s good to have a proper machine to do the lamination, a perfect lamination.
So probably puff pastry is the hardest one.
Cream or butter — your preference, if there is one?
Butter. But not for pastries.
For pastries, I would say mascarpone, maybe, and cream.
For example, we don’t use buttercream here. We use a rich cream with mascarpone and a glaze base. So yeah, we don’t do buttercream.
So for pastries, maybe I’d go for cream instead of butter.
Coffee or tea to go with a dessert?
Depends. I love tea. Probably I would say tea, but it depends on the pastry.
If you use, for example, chocolate, I think that coffee is good. I think that the combination is nice, and you can play a bit more, you know. Caramel also.
But if you go for fruits, I would say tea.
Thank you so much.
Thank you, Olga. Thank you so much.
