Chupaqueso.com

While I was in the local Hy-Vee grocery store today buying the usual stuff, I noticed a display case full of eye-catching boxes: Van Harden’s Cheese Crust Pizza. Naturally, I had to try one.

The crust is made with cheese and starch, and bakes up to a more-or-less crusty consistency - or would, at least, if I’d followed the directions a bit more exactly. (They call for 10-12 minutes at 450 degrees F, or until the cheese melts; the cheese had melted on mine at 8 minutes, but I let it run till 10 anyway.) It is very important to let it cool for 5 minutes to let the crust set. (I did that.)

The results weren’t bad, though it wasn’t the nice crispy crust I expected. The tomato sauce was quite good, and there was enough cheese and sausage on mine to satisfy me. I’m definitely going to try again, this time following the directions a bit more exactly.

If you live in a place with a Hy-Vee store, you should be able to find it in the frozen food section. If you don’t, and are feeling adventurous, you can also order online; they’ll ship overnight, in an insulated box with dry ice to keep it frozen.

I got the following email this morning:

Hi Howard,

I just wanted to write to you to say thank you for the chupaqueso recipe and tell you that it worked amazingly well!!

It’s my sister’s birthday today, so I decided to treat her and cook her a chupaqueso for lunch (that and I was desperate to try it out). I used cheddar cheese for the shell and mozzerella with bacon and tomato sauce for the inside. Before I started, I honestly didn’t think it would work! I was really surprised that the cheese DID turn into a crunchy shell. Not that I doubted you and your recipe, but still, I had reservations. Especially as I’m not a great lover of melted cheese myself.

Anyway, as I said, it went spot on, and was cooked to perfection. Not a burnt strand of cheese in sight! My sister enjoyed it so much, I used the leftover cheese to make her another of the same.

Of course, this might just lead into a curious obsession, as I experiment and try to make different varieties. Naturally, my family will be the guinea pigs (but I don’t think they’ll be too unhappy about that).

So, thanks again, Howard, my sister loved her birthday present. If you want to have a look, I have attached a small picture of the first one. It’s not amazingly good, as I only had the camera on my phone available at the time.

Looking forward to the next Schlock book!

Best wishes,
J.

I’m always pleased when chupaquesos make people happy. I’m doubly-pleased in this case, because the happiness was shared.

then how about a video? The folks at See Us Eat have put up a video demonstration of how to make a chupaqueso. Check it out.

The woman accused of hiring a hit-man to help her steal what she THOUGHT was cocaine just pleaded guilty to charges of attempted murder. The 18-year-old was sentenced to 15 years in prison. The odds are good that she’ll be paroled, but not on her first request, which means this stupid, greedy, evil little girl will be off the streets for about six years.

I hope that while she’s in prison they make her eat some cheese, but somehow I doubt prison food includes cheese worth eating.

I got the variety pack of cheese in from the WSU creamery yesterday. So far, I’ve only opened the Cougar Gold and the Crimson Fire, but both are quite yummy.

Cougar Gold is a hard, somewhat crumbly, cheese that tastes like one of the English cheeses whose name I can’t remember (mainly since it’s been a year or more since I last had some). (Update: upon reading the description at the Cheese Encyclopedia, I think it’s Cheshire.) It’s quite good, and I’ll probably be getting a can of it when this box runs out. I might even try it as chupaqueso filling with a bit of bacon, just to see how it holds up.

Crimson Fire is a softer cheese that’s full of pepper. This ain’t no namby-pamby Pepper Jack, either: while it won’t send diehard Dave’s Insanity Sauce fans running for the chocolate dish, the average person will be left with no doubt he’s gotten hold of something fiery. All of that does a very good job of hiding the fact that the cheese around the peppers is low-fat.

When I get through these two, I’ll break out the American Cheddar and Dill Garlic varieties. I expect they’ll be pretty good, too.

Technically, a “monger” is “a dealer in a specific commodity.” Since I don’t SELL cheese, I guess I can’t be a true cheesemonger. But I do deal it out to myself, and I’ve gotten pretty good at it.

My secret: ziploc bags, cling wrap, and a cold windowsill.

Big pieces of cheese get cling-wrapped and ziploc’d, and put into the fridge.

Medium-sized pieces of cheese get cut from the big pieces, cling-wrapped separately, and then set upon our North-facing kitchen window sill.

Small pieces of cheese (one snack’s worth) get cut from the medium-sized bits and eaten, but only AFTER the medium-sized bits have been on the sill for a couple of hours. Good cheese is best consumed at room temperature.

I’m pretty sure that temperatures on that sill never exceed 65 F in the winter. I’ve had medium-sized chunks sit there for two or three days, and they were just fine for cutting into and eating. In fact, they were PERFECT. I now try to only deal myself cheese after it’s been out for a day.

In this way I’m still making my way through the last 3/8ths of a wheel of Shitake-Leek Appalachian. There’s a quarter-wheel in cling-and-zip with the rind still on it, and 1/8th wheel, trimmed, in cling wrap on the sill.

I just got two cans of Washington State University “Cougar” cheese from a reader, and some of that is on the sill right now, too. I’ll write more about that stuff in another post. It’s taaaaasty.

I just got this email from a reader:

Hello Mr. Tayler,
I just wanted to share with you the results of a recent culinary experiment.
Starting out like a chupaqueso, but with a 12 inch cast iron skillet with mozzarella out to the edge. Toast it and flip it over as usual then after re-flipping, transfer to a round foil pie pan. Add tomato sauce and your favorite pizza toppings (including cheeeeeeese of course) then pop into the toaster oven for 10 minutes or so. Presto! Low-carb pizza! It came out quite well and of course was quesoliscious, or is that chupaliscious? Hope you find this usefull. Keep on Schlockin’.
Sincerely,
Jay Scott Raymond, Schlock fan

Thanks for the tip, Jay! This sounds tasty, if a bit tricky. Still, if anybody out there has the chops to flip a conventional chupaqueso, making a pizza on top of the flat “cheese-crisp” part should be no trouble at all.

Ah, syrup-food. Breakfast treats with sweet, mushy innards and mapley goodness drizzled over the top. They’re oh-so-strictly verboten under my current diet.

So I make do with this recipe:

Ingredients
1/4 cup “quark” (yogurt cheese) or cream cheese
1 egg
1 tbsp milk
1 tbsp butter
maple flavoring
banana flavoring
2 packets of Splenda

To begin: soften the butter, add a packet of splenda and a couple of drops of maple flavoring. Mix well. This is the topping.

Beat the egg and add the milk. Add just a sprinkle of Splenda.

Add a drop or two of banana flavoring and the rest of packet #2 of Splenda to the quark (yogurt cheese, which must be made with UNSWEETENED yogurt, or you’re getting sugar in your low-carb meal). Cream cheese will work too, but quark (pronounced “kvark”) is better.

Now… heat your griddle or large skillet, and pour the egg into a thin layer. When it has cooked mostly through, gently spread (or “carefully glop”) the artificially-sweetened, artificially flavored qvark onto it in a line near one edge. Roll it up, let it heat just a little more, and then slide it off onto a plate.

Drizzle the maple-splenda butter over the top, and eat it right now, because it is best served hot.

Carb content is about 5g - 1g/oz in the quark, 1g per packet of Splenda, and 1g per tablespoon of milk.

One problem with low-carb diets, for me anyway, is that I get really tired of eggs every morning. I don’t mind eating salads, I like grilled chicken, fish is fine, and we’ve already established that I really like cheese.

I do like eggs, but defaulting to an omelette every morning wears on me.

This morning I had tomatoes and fried cheese, drizzled with olive oil and balsamic vinegar. There are a few grams of carbs in there, but not enough to cause a problem.

You’ll need:
1) A bottled Roma tomato (or a fresh one, but it’s January, and my garden is empty), sliced or chunked so the bits are bite-sized.
2) some thick slices of mozzarella
3) two tbsp of extra-virgin olive oil
4) two tsp of balsamic vinegar

The hardest part about all of this (assuming you can find a good tomato) is frying the mozzarella. The griddle or skillet needs to be a little hotter than pancake temperature — I’d say between 300 and 400 degrees F, but I’m guessing. Lay the cheese on the nonstick (or oiled) surface, and have your spatula ready. When the cheese has a bubbling layer around the edge, it’s probably ready to flip. Be quick, and press down on the spatula so you don’t smash the fried part of the cheese out of the way and end up with a spatula full of goo. Flip.

(Note: If you’ve made a chupaqueso or two successfully, you’ll be able to figure out frying a thick slice of mozzarella.)

Flip the cheese again in about 30 seconds. Remove it from the griddle, and slap it down on the plate next to the tomato slices. Drizzle with olive oil and vinegar. Eat.

Sandra and I bottle our own tomatos (read that “Sandra bottles tomatos and I help eat them”) so we’ve got plenty of tasty romas on hand. You can bet I’ll be doing this again.

The Chocolate Chupaqueso had its origins at Linucon 2.0 in Austin, Texas. Jay Maynard and I were running the Chupaqueso panel in the Con Suite, and Steve Jackson was one of the notables present.

A little back-story: Steve Jackson is one of the biggest names in tabletop games. Steve Jackson Games continues to produce new stuff, and they handle the merchandising for Schlock Mercenary. I was down in Austin a day before the convention in order to meet with Steve, and that Thursday evening I got to play-test the new Illuminati expansion deck.

To make a long story short, during the course of game play I ended up creating a new card for the game — one that mirrored the “Microstuff” card, and paid homage to Open Source computing. It was a real thrill for me to watch Steve noodle around on the computer looking for cards he could remove from the deck to make room for mine.

Well, fast-forward two days to the chupaqueso panel… somebody (I don’t recall who) asked what would happen if we used Cheez-whiz as a filling. Jay and I both figured the answer was “neither of us will eat it,” but this gal ran out and grabbed a can of cheez-whiz from somewhere, and we made a Cheez-Whiz Chupaqueso. It was as nasty as I expected it to be.

But the door had been opened, and anywhere there’s an open door, folks like Steve Jackson won’t just walk through and look around — they’ll widen the door frame. Steve located a bag of chocolate chips, and suggested that we try a chocolate chupaqueso.

Now before you cry “foul,” bear in mind that chocolate fondue often has cheese for dipping. Chocolate and cheese have a long history together. They’re not quite as tight as wine and cheese, or cheese and crackers, but they’ve been flirting with one another for years, and I’m led to understand that there have been trysts enough to make both the crackers and the wine quite jealous.

So we made one. Cheddar shell, as usual, and then a handful of chocolate chips.

Reactions were varied. They varied between “this is sticky” and “make another one.” Oh, and there were a couple of 14-year-old girls in the con suite who really did NOT need more sugar, and who thought the chocolate chupaqueso was the best thing going. This is probably because their hyper-thin, hyperactive bodies reacted positively to the presence of actual protein molecules, and therefore subconsciously the girls preferred the chocolate chupaqueso to straight chocolate chips.

Anyway, I figured that since Steve was including “Open Gnoonix” in his Illuminati deck, it was only right that I include the Chocolate Chupaqueso in my blog. It’s probably a bigger honor to design a card for a Steve Jackson Game than to design a snack for this site, but look at it this way — you folks can try out Steve’s snack today (depending on what you already have in your kitchen) while if you want to try out my Illuminati card you have to wait until it ships.