Tequeños

Ingredients

• 400 g plain flour
• 100 g cold unsalted butter, cubed
• 1 large egg
• 1 tsp fine salt
• 1 tbsp caster sugar
• 130 to 150 ml ice-cold water
• 450 g queso blanco duro, halloumi or low-moisture mozzarella
• 1 litre sunflower oil, for frying

Before you cook

• Cut the cold butter into small cubes and keep it in the fridge until needed.
• Cut the cheese into batons roughly one and a half centimetres square and seven centimetres long.
• Pat the cheese batons dry with kitchen paper and spread them on a tray.
• Beat the egg lightly in a small bowl.
• Measure the ice-cold water into a jug.

Steps

1. Put the flour, salt and sugar into a large bowl and stir them together.
2. Rub the cold butter into the flour with your fingertips for three minutes, until the mixture looks like coarse breadcrumbs.
3. Add the beaten egg and 130 ml of the cold water, then bring the dough together with a knife.
4. Add the last of the water only if there are dry patches left in the bowl.
5. Tip the dough onto the worktop and knead it for five minutes until smooth and elastic.
6. Wrap the dough and rest it in the fridge for thirty minutes.
7. Roll the rested dough out on a floured surface to a rectangle about two millimetres thick.
8. Cut the sheet into long strips two centimetres wide with a knife or pizza wheel.
9. Take one cheese baton and press a dough strip onto one end.
10. Wind the strip around the cheese in a tight spiral, overlapping each turn by about a third so no cheese shows.
11. Pinch the two ends firmly closed, because any gap will leak in the oil.
12. Repeat until every baton is wrapped, then chill the tequeños for fifteen minutes to firm the dough.
13. Heat the sunflower oil in a deep pan to 170C.
14. Fry six tequeños at a time for three to four minutes, turning once, until evenly golden.
15. Lift them onto a rack rather than kitchen paper so the pastry stays crisp.
16. Let the oil come back up to temperature before frying the next batch.
17. Serve hot with guasacaca or a garlic dipping sauce.