Chupaqueso.com

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.

…is that you don’t have to put up with the most idiotic question in customer service: “How’s everything tasting?”

Anyone who knows about customer service will tell you that collecting customer feedback is essential both in satisfying the customer and in making sure they stay a customer. Table service at a restaurant is probably one of the best fields for customer feedback, since there are several customer-staff interactions in any transaction. A good service representative (for that’s what a waiter is) will do his best to collect as much feedback as he can as unobtrusively as he can.

“How’s everything tasting?” utterly fails in that regard. It’s narrowly drawn to only inquire about the food. Yes, that’s important, but it’s not all there is. There are lots of other factors that influence the customer’s satisfaction, ranging from the service itself to the restaurant environment. The customer can, and even sometimes does, tell the restaurant that there’s a problem that needs fixing. Who’s he gonna tell? That’s right, the waiter.

There’s another aspect to this that grates on me. That question was not invented by a waiter, especially not the airheaded 20-year-old woman who seems to be the type most likely to use it. It’s way, way too artificial. It smells strongly of consultant, with careful vetting by focus group before being mandated by management in a corporate office somewhere. It’s stilted and jarring.

I used to give the waiters and waitresses who use it a hard time. I don’t any more, because it’s counterproductive. As someone pointed out, hassling the person who handles your food is not a good idea.

I’d like to find the restaurant consultant who came up with “How’s it tasting?”, strap him to a chair, and send every waiter within 50 miles to ask him that question.

Until then, I’ll just avoid the places where it’s most endemic, and stay home and make chupaquesos, instead.

Here’s an older piece of chupaqueso fan-mail. I really need to clean my Inbox more often…

I’ve just tried my first chupaqueso, and I must say, my arteries curse you Howard! I think I’m going to develop an addiction, I want another!

My first attempt was a basic cheddar shell with a mozzarella and crispy bacon filling (a con tocino?). Unfortunately my pan is not ideal and I ended up with a burnt beef taste on the underside, so I’m going to have to buy a new pan just for making these.

Now I’ve read the site and noticed you’ve added chocolate as a filling - I’m gonna have to try that at some point too. Have you considered adding spices to the mix, either as the filling or possibly as part of the shell?

I think I’m gonna go make another.

Paul

I hope the new pan works out for you, Paul. Thanks for the note!

–Howard

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.

I got tired of moderating away comments posted by a rather persistent spammer flogging a diet pill. The site has always been set to hold for moderation any comments with too many links, and so the spam was never actually seen by anyone but me (and possibly Howard). Now, any comment with the name of that particular often-spammed diet pill will simply be refused.

And now, to forcibly drag this post on-topic…

Note that I spelled it “spam”, not “SPAM”. The latter is a registered trademark of Hormel Foods Corporation, which has been remarkably clueful as corporations go about its use on the net: basically, as long as you make sure not to use the capitalized form, they don’t have much problem with its use to describe the scourge of the Internet. I believe that those of us on the net should honor their wishes.

The canned meat product that’s the subject of the trademark is not one of my favorite foods, but I might get a can, chop it up into little bits, and try it on a chupaqueso.

There. How’s that for trying valiantly to stay close to the actual topic? Or should I give up and just post a picture of the latest chocolate and jalapeno creation?

Chalain and I joke about low-carb dieting all the time. See, we know it works for us, but both of us “fall off the wagon” from time to time.

I’m not sure of the origin of the “on the wagon” metaphor, but it’s very visual for us. See, when I stop low-carbing it’s usually because of stress, and I begin to crave comfort foods. That means chocolate, french toast, and big bowls of fried noodles. And from there things usually progress into a diet where I’m living off of “spaghetti toast” (toast with marinara sauce) and chocolate milk.

And Chalain and I describe it not as “falling off the wagon” but as “leaping from the wagon, stripping naked, and running off into the woods to play with the faerie folk.”

Low-carb dieting, for me anyway, is a discipline that helps me break my addiction to dancing naked with elfkin.

For the last three weeks I’ve been stressed, and I’ve made it further and further into the woods. The brownies and I had quite the mosh pit last week, and Saturday I realized that I was back up to needing two naps per day, and still not having any energy. So Sandra and I agreed it was time to get back on the wagon.

Firing up the low-carb diet is not easy, because I have two days of comfort food cravings. This can be offset with medication (mostly caffeine, ibuprofen, and chromium) and exercise, but the side-effect is 18 hours of being wiped out in weird ways. Chalain and I describe THAT not as “getting back on the wagon” but as “getting on the wagon by standing in front of it, letting it hit you, and then getting caught up in one of the wheels.”

So… today I’m back under the wagon. The theme-song? “The Wheels On The Bus Go Round And Round.”

For me, the perfect skillet is determined by three things:

1) non-stick surface.
2) Nine-inch diameter.
3) A lid that fits.

This is because when I’m not low-carbing, my favorite breakfast in the world is two basted eggs with two pieces of toast, buttered, for dipping in the yolks. Other sides may accompany it — orange juice, grits, and bacon complete the “hearty” variation — but basted eggs and toast are the key elements.

With the impending Teflocalypse (Teflogeddon? Teflognarok? Find me a word that says “the end of the world if the world depends on Teflon”) I need to find a skillet that will work as well as any one of the four 9-inch teflon pans I’ve had over the last sesquidecade.

See, a basted egg BEGINS just like a fried egg — you take a yolk-intact egg and drop it gently into a hot pan, preferably with some butter already sizzling in there. (Note: in terms of timing, this is also the point at which the plunger on the toaster must be depressed). The egg is allowed to fry for a moment, and then the steam-basting begins.

You take the lid for the pan, put about 2 tbsp of water in the lid, and then dump the water in next to the egg. Now pop the lid on and wait for the toast to come up.

Yes, that’s how I time it. So very scientific, I know. It’s more of a performance art.

Anyway, when the toast is done, the egg is done (assuming you like your toast done the way I like mine done, and your toaster works like mine does, and you have the heat set right… so many variables, so many assumed values) and you put both of them on your plate.

If, that is, you can get the egg off the pan. See, with a good teflon pan, the boiling water will lift the egg from the surface, and the whole mess slides right out, no trouble. With stainless steel it just plain WON’T WORK.

The question — will it work with cast iron? I’m not about to go buy a 9″ cast iron skillet to TEST with, because I’m short the disposable income. I hope it works, though, because within five years both of my 9″ skillets are going to be due for replacement, and by then the Fourth Angel will be Brandishing His Spatula and Cleansing the Griddle of the World with Fire and With Olive Oil. Or something like that.

I’m about to start upgrading the site to WordPress 2.0. Anything you post or comment between now and the time the upgrade is done may disappear. You Have Been Warned.

The site theme will also change, mainly to get rid of a layout bug that seems to mainly affect Safari. Since I use Safari, that bug obviously has to go.

Update: Upgrade complete. Have fun.

I finally got clear of my other stuff going on and added the words to go with the pretty pictures on the basic howto page. Hopefully, that page will demystify the process of making the chupaqueso and allow even the most inexperienced computer geek to successfully make the first one. Please comment here if there’s stuff that needs clarifying.

Ladies and gentlemen, brothers and sisters (and mufters, lest I leave anyone out), we here at chupaqueso.com have been fleened.

I think that’s the word. It’ll do until someone suggests a better one. Gary Tyrell at Fleen wrote a couple of paragraphs on chupaqueso.com and the possibility of a food-related trend in webcomics. I then wrote half a dozen anal paragraphs attacking his use of a helpless adverb.

So… which site has more readers? Did chupaqueso.com just get fleened, or did fleen.com just get… chupa’d?