Plant-based Pestiños // traditional food
🌱🐣🐰 Happy Easter Monday! It means time to eat delicious holiday plant-based treats. Discover crispy “Pestiños”, a traditional Spanish Easter dessert, naturally vegan, for Holy Week (Semana Santa).
😋🍯 “Pestiños” are sweet fried pastries, made with a handful of simple, yet flavorful ingredients. There is no standard recipe, its form and composition vary from region to region in Andalucía, Castilla-LaMancha, and other parts of Spain.
- INGREDIENTS
250 gr all-purpose flour
75 ml extra virgin olive oil
125ml white wine
1 teaspoon baking powder
Orange zest, half orange (optional)
A pinch of salt
Sunflower oil, or any other neutral veggie oil that’s safe for deep frying
Unrefined cane sugar,
Cinnamon powder (optional)
- METHOD
1. Infuse the olive oil by placing it in a small pot with the orange zest and warming it over low heat for 10 minutes.
2. Remove orange zest from heat, and let cool to room temperature.
3. In a mixing bowl, combine the flour, and salt. Add the strained oil and the sweet wine, and knead to form a dough.
4. Continue kneading for 15 minutes, form dough into a ball, and cover with a damp cloth.
5. Then let the dough rest for approx. an hour.
6. Make small portions, take a teaspoon of dough, and roll it thin into a long shape. Fold in the two long sides and stick them together to make an envelope-like shape.
7. Pour the sunflower oil into a deep-frying pan and heat over medium-high heat.
8. Fry 3-4 pestiños each time until they’re golden, about 2-3 minutes.
9. Remove and place them onto kitchen paper to drain the excess oil.
10. Toss the pestiños in cinnamon sugar and put them on a plate. Bon appetite!
👵💚 Grandma Sita’s tips:
*Fry 3-4 pestiños at a time to avoid overcrowding the pan and cooling down the oil too much. The oil for deep frying the pestiños should be at a constant temperature.
*There are two ways to finish off pestiños: toss them in cinnamon sugar or soak them in a honey glaze.
*Pestiños can be kept perfectly fresh and crispy in an airtight tin if tightly closed.
😆Fun fact, “Pestiños” are also called “borrachos” or “borrachuelos”, the second one specifically in the Málaga area, which means drunk people.
📗 The “Pestiño” dates back to the 16th century, mentioned in the book “La Lozana Andaluza” written in 1528. “Pestiños” shares many similarities to “chebakia”, a Maghrebi pastry made of strips of dough rolled to resemble a rose, deep-fried until golden, then coated with a syrup made of honey and orange blossom water and sprinkled with sesame.
♻️🌎 It is becoming more popular to incorporate plant-based meals into festive celebrations worldwide. Make a difference for your health and the planet by starting with this Monday. Join the simple plant-based hashtagchallenge with Meat Free Monday and/or Meatless Monday Official. hashtagHappy holidays everyone!