Spanish · Dessert
Pestiños de Semana Santa
- Intermediate
- 45 min
- roughly 2 of 4 for cost
- Vegetarian
Leads with a sweet edge rounding the corners, a briny, maritime salinity, closing toasted and warm.
Ingredients
- 400 g plain flour
- 150 ml extra virgin olive oil
- 1 wide strip orange peel
- 8 g aniseed
- 150 ml dry white wine
- 15 g sesame seeds
- 5 g fine salt
- 4 g ground cinnamon
- 600 ml olive oil, for frying
- 300 g runny honey
- 80 ml water
The skills inside
Deep fryingDry-pan toasting: spices, seeds and nutsDraining fried food: a rack, never paper
Allergen screen
Found: gluten · sesame · alcohol
Screened for: gluten, dairy, egg, nuts, peanuts, fish, shellfish, molluscs, soy, sesame, celery, mustard, lupin, alcohol. Not screened: sulphites.
Screened by keyword from the ingredient list, not reviewed by a person; check every label for what the list cannot show.
Method
- Heat the 150 ml oil with the orange peel and aniseed until the peel darkens at the edges, then strain it and cool the oil to blood heat.
- Toast the sesame seeds dry, then mix the flour, salt, cinnamon, seeds, warm oil and wine to a soft dough, knead 3 minutes until supple and rest it 30 minutes. 3 min
- Roll to 2 mm, cut 8 cm squares, and pinch two opposite corners together over your finger so each square folds into a loose loop.
- Fry at 180C (350F) in small batches for about 90 seconds, turning once, until blistered and biscuit gold, then drain on a rack.
- Warm the honey with the water to a thin syrup at 100C (212F), dip each pestiño for a few seconds and drain on the rack until the coat turns tacky.
How to tell it is going right
This dish has no standard of its own yet. It is judged on the techniques it exercises: checked at the pan, while there is still something to be done about it.
Dry-pan toasting: spices, seeds and nuts 70 recipes
- A single layer on dry metal with nothing added: no fat, and nothing else sharing the pan or the tray and competing for the heat.
- It is kept moving: shaken, stirred, or turned. Anything left still scorches on the face touching the metal while the rest of it is barely warm.
- It is judged by smell before sight: once it is fragrant there are seconds left, not minutes, and the nose reaches that point well before the colour does.
- It leaves the pan the instant it is done, onto a cold surface. A hot pan keeps toasting whatever stays in it, and carryover here is the difference between done and ruined.
- The colour is even and light rather than patchy, with nothing black at the edges: one scorched piece taints the whole quantity it is ground into.
Where it goes wrong It was left alone for a moment while something else was attended to. Dry heat has no margin: the pieces against the metal go from fragrant to acrid inside a minute, and the bitterness cannot be picked back out of a ground mixture.
Draining fried food: a rack, never paper 77 recipes
- The rack was in place before the first thing went into the oil, not fetched afterwards while food waited in a spider over the pot.
- It lands on a rack with air moving underneath it. Anything set down on paper or a flat plate traps its own steam against its base.
- Salted within seconds of landing, while it is still hot enough to take seasoning.
- A minute later the underside is still as crisp as the top: no soft flat patch where it has been sitting.
- Nothing is stacked or piled while hot, however tempting it is to keep it together. A pile steams itself soft from the inside out.
Where it goes wrong It was drained on paper, or piled up to keep warm. Steam leaving the food has nowhere to go but back into the crust, so the underside softens within a minute: the crispness the frying just bought is gone before the plate reaches the table.
At the Table
- The Pour
- Sauternes
- Also Right
- Demi-sec Champagne
- From the Taps
- Belgian tripel
- Zero-Proof
- Jasmine tea
The sweetness rule is absolute: the pour must be sweeter than the plate, and acid keeps it from cloying.
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