My First Time Making Tequenos
I came across a post by the lovely @larka yesterday where she showed how she made some delicious looking Tequenos, a Venezuelan snack that is popular at parties! She speaks about its intriguing history and gives the recipe and instructions to make the dish here:
https://peakd.com/hive-148441/@larka/tequenos#@larka/qb3ra1
I decided to make it myself to try out this scrumptious looking pastry and document the process and you know I love cooking and food photography! I could not find "creole" cheese as the recipe calls for so I just used mozzarella I had lying around instead. This was my first time trying this out as well as tasting it so go easy on me if I did anything wrong!
The Method
As per instructions from @larka, I cut my cheese sticks accordingly, ensuring that they were as close in shape to each other as possible. I put them in the fridge in the meantime so they would be easier to work with when I was finished with the dough and ready for the wrapping process.
Some flour and the other dry ingredients (salt and sugar) was placed in the bowl according to the recipe. After mixing the egg and the melted butter, a hole was made in the middle of the flour and placed within it. A few tablespoons of water and the sugar was also added to the well. It really does look like a volcano!
I used my hands to then incorporate the ingredients together until it formed a sticky ball of dough. It was surprisingly one of the easiest doughs I had ever worked with and was easy to clean off of my fingers! It was kneaded until it was no longer sticky and homogenised.
Once the ball of dough was formed, it was left for thirty minutes to rest at room temperature after covering it in a large bowl. I literally took this time to hit up the blogs and see what people were writing about.
Once the ball of dough is rested for thirty minutes, I quickly rolled it out with a rolling pin into a flat rectangular shape. It was surprisingly non sticky and extremely easy to work with and I hardly had to add flour to prevent any accidents. A knife was then used to cut the flattened sheet into strips suitable to wrap my cheese sticks.
Wrap and Fry!
Now for the fun part! I realise now, looking back that I have wrapped the sticks in the wrong way but it was close enough, at least I shall know better next time. It did not take long at all to wrap up my cheese sticks and have them ready for frying!
The Tequenos were shallow fried on medium heat on each side until golden brown and beautiful. I had some accidents where some of the cheese popped out and I believe it could be because of two things; 1) I did not put the wrapped tequenos in the freezer first and 2) my wrapping technique was not up to par! No worries, I shall learn!
Time To Eat!
I can now understand what @larka was speaking about when she said that Venezuelans say that "Fiesta without tequeño is not a party"! I wouldn't mind having this for every occasion that comes around! It was delicious with a nice exterior that gives way to the ooey gooey cheese in the center. It reminded me of one of my other favourite pastries called the quesito but this was savoury not sweet. Maybe this is the savoury counterpart that I always wanted but never knew existed!
I just wanted to thank @larka for sharing this brilliant recipe on Hive so that we can try awesome Venezuelan dishes and culture like this without having to travel! Especially amidst the Covid-19 pandemic, it makes this even more of a cool thing. It makes me extremely grateful to be part of this community. Don't forget to check out larka's post and let her know what you thought about the dish if you tried it! Thanks a lot for reading, Cheers!
Ohhh yummm, these look super yummy.... I love anything cheese! 😋
Thank you! Yeah so do i!