CHURROS…GOING SPANISH ON DOUGHNUTS & A BOOK REVIEW.

I met Gloria Chadwick through Val’s blog & it was a matter of time before we hit it off. We had San Antonio in common…she lives there, & we visited it on vacation some time back. We got talking food (what else) & I discovered she’s a food book writer, & has published a number of books. Inspirational enough for me, because I dream of publishing a book one day. Was delighted when she asked me if I would like to review her latest book Foods and Flavors of San Antonio. Yes of course, I’d love to! Mexican cuisine is very popular here, & the flavours are very close to the ones we use in Indian cuisine, spicy & delicious! The good thing is that most ingredients aren’t alien to our culture & are easily available here. Her book is on a foodie blog tour sponsored by Pelican Publishing, & I joined it to do a virtual interview, & try a recipe from the colourful pages!

Let’s get talking first, shall we? The interview to begin with…then we’ll take a look at this delicious recipe from the section in her book called “Sweets & Treats”.1. When did you first develop an interest in food?
My interest in food began when I was 18, and I moved out and got my first apartment. I had to learn to cook or else I would starve. The first thing I made was curried chicken and it turned out delicious, so I tried experimenting with different recipes and discovered that I really love to cook.
2. What made you want to write cookbooks, & also, interestingly, a book on how to write & publish a cookbook?
I was looking through some cookbooks wondering what to make for dinner and I couldn’t find a recipe that appealed to me, so I thought it would be really fun to write a cookbook with my favorite recipes. I had absolutely no idea what I was getting myself into, but once I started, I was hooked on cookbook writing.
My first cookbook, Really Good Recipes, was a self-published compilation of recipes I’d made and enjoyed, and wanted to share. I also wrote it because my daughters had moved away from home and kept calling me for my recipes.
Then I thought it would be fun to learn how to cook professionally, so I enrolled in a culinary arts college. While I was there, I wrote and self-published three more cookbooks: Food Feasts, Best of the Barbecues, and The Cheapie Chicken Cookbook, and learned a lot—not just how to cook, but how to write, publish, market, and promote my cookbooks. This led me to write a how-to guide for other cookbook writers: Recipe for a Cookbook: How to Write, Publish, and Promote Your Cookbook.

3. Where do you get your inspiration from?
I love to putz around in the kitchen and just make up recipes from scratch. It’s so fun to create something delicious from ideas in my mind.
4. What is your favourite cuisine?
I have two favorite cuisines: Italian and Mexican.
5. Which is your favourite cookbook in your collection?
I have over 500 cookbooks, and I love them all, so it’s really difficult to choose a favorite, but I’d have to say that my favorite cookbook is my newest cookbook, Foods and Flavors of San Antonio
6. Is there an indispensable gadget in your kitchen that you can’t live without?
I have a mini food processor that I totally love. It chops my onions for me. It grinds my spices for me. It makes bread crumbs for me. It grates carrots for me. It does everything but put itself in the dishwasher.
7. Any culinary disaster that you can now look back & laugh about?
A few months after I started cooking for myself, I decided I would make a Thanksgiving dinner – a lavish feast — for my family in my first apartment. Everything went fine except for the gravy. I love gravy and I didn’t know that you were supposed to pour off the fat. I thought I’d be pouring gravy down the drain, so I served the drippings as gravy. It was more like gravy grease, and I had to feed my family Alka-Seltzer for dessert instead of pumpkin pie. LOL.
8. What is your idea of a perfect, simple meal?
Something that can be cooked in one pan, that requires minimal prep, and tastes absolutely delicious, like you slaved over the stove for hours when you really only spent 15 minutes in the kitchen. Having said that, let me also say that my idea of a perfect, simple meal would be spaghetti and a salad, or tacos and guacamole, or—and this is my favorite: A hot, steaming bowl of chili topped with cheese.
9. And what might be your greatest culinary indulgence?
Learning how to make turkey gravy properly.
10. A new year resolution, if any?
I don’t make New Year’s resolutions, but I plan to write more cookbooks and promote my newest cookbook, Foods and Flavors of San Antonio.

A churro is Spain’s answer to the donut, a crunchy, deep-fried sweet snack that resembles the horns of the churro sheep. They are popular not only in Spain, where they are often served at breakfast, but also in Mexico, and several other Latin American countries. North Americans are not strangers to churros, which are often found in amusement parks and at county fairs. Churros are usually made of a batter which is piped into extremely hot oil. They are certainly not a low-fat snack because of the frying process. Once the churro is fried it is traditionally rolled in hot cinnamon sugar. The ideal churro has a distinct crunch when one bites into it, but the interior should have a slight softness at the center.

CHURROS
Recipe from Gloria Chadwick’s latest book Food and Flavours of San Antonio
My review & notes are at the bottom.
Churros are often referred to as Spanish doughnuts.
1 cup water
3 tbsp. butter, diced
2 tbsp. brown sugar
Pinch of salt
1 1/8 cups all-purpose flour
1 tsp. ground cinnamon, plus more for dusting
1 tsp. vanilla extract
2 medium eggs
Vegetable oil, for frying
Confectioners’ or superfine sugar, for dusting -Heat the water, butter, brown sugar, and salt in a saucepan over medium heat until the butter has melted.
-Add the flour all at once, cinnamon, and vanilla extract. Remove the pan from the heat and beat rapidly until the mixture pulls away from the side of the pan.
-Let cool slightly, then beat in the eggs, one at a time, beating well after each addition, until the mixture is thick and smooth. Spoon the mixture into a pastry bag fitted with a wide star tip.
-Heat the oil in a deep frying pan. Pipe 5″ lengths of the dough into the oil. Deep fry for 2 minutes on each side or until golden brown. Remove with a slotted spoon and drain on paper towels.
-Dust the churros with confectioners’ sugar and a light topping of cinnamon.
-Serves 12My review of the recipe:

• First things first, the churros were excellent! They tasted great!!
• The recipe is fairly straightforward, but you need strong forearms to beat the batter rapidly as it becomes a thick glob after you put in the flour. Reminded me of choux pastry dough, which we used to make eclairs out of for the Pierre Herme’s Daring Bakers challenge; quite similar.
• It was a bit tedious to beat in the eggs too, but once done it was a breeze.
• A point worth adding might is to keep a knife handy to slice the dough free from the nozzle after piping it out into the oil.
• I made a mixture of ground cinnamon & powdered sugar, & sifted it over the churros rather than doing them separately.
• The churros weren’t very sweet, so this hot chocolate sauce paired beautifully with them. The recipe made about 18-20 5″ long churros, & served about 8.
• These are best eaten fresh. However, they’re quite delicious warmed in a moderate oven for 10-15 minutes to crispen them again. Don’t microwave them because they lose their beautiful crsip texture!