Linucon: Chupaqueso

Oct 11, 2005 19:31

"The experts prepare cheese in a fried cheese shell, with extra cheese. The audience gets to eat the results. A favorite of Schlock Mercenary fans."



Chupaqueso was invented by Howard Tayler, the author of the Schlock Mercenary web comic. I'm not sure if I correctly remember the convoluted story of Chupaqueso's birth, but... At first there was a word. Howard Tayler was looking for a made-up word to describe quintessential cheap, greasy, Mexican fast food, probably for his comic strip, and chupaqueso suggested itself. It's composed of Spanish words for "suck" and "cheese".

Then, while he was on a low carb diet, and cheese must have been a major staple in his kitchen, he was flipping through a cookbook and saw a cheese crisp. That was the prototype of the chupaqueso. Howard improved on it by adding cheese filling to it, IIRC.



You cook it by spreading shredded cheese in a circle on a griddle (a pan would do too, I suppose). It melts and forms a pancake which will become the chupaqueso shell. You flip it over. Then you put more shredded cheese -- the same or different kind -- in the middle of the shell. Then you fold the sides of the pancake over one another, and the result is a chupaqueso.

Howard and Jay Maynard (a.k.a The Tron Guy) gave a chupaqueso cooking demonstration in the Con Suite. I ate a piece, and, well, it tastes just as cheesy and greasy as one would expect. That's not to say it's bad!







A link to a video of the cooking demonstration. (MPEG, ~ 7MB)

A link to more pictures of the making of chupaqueso.

Towards the end they even cooked a chupaqueso with a chocolate filling. I had to try that too, and even made a video of that, but must have accidentally deleted it. Or maybe my unconscious mind could not tolerate this level of disgust and made me hit the button. :-) It suffices to say chocolate didn't do much to improve the classic version.

And so there is a thread running through my life experiences this summer: proximity of chocolate and cheese. First, I ate chocolate with blue cheese filling in Lithuania. Then I ate fried cheese with chocolate filling at Linucon. My mother, who belongs to the "everything happens for a reason" and "the Universe is trying to teach you a lesson" school of quasi-religious beliefs, might be able to see some hidden meaning in this. :-)

linucon, howard tayler, chupaqueso, jay maynard, tron guy

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