BUÑUELOS DE VIENTO
/ Serves 6
My good friend and chef Omar Allibhoy, owner of Tapas Revolution in London, took me on a gastronomic guide of his home city of Madrid. We visited the oldest patisserie, called El Riojano, where I tried lots of pastries and biscuits. I particularly enjoyed the buñuelos de viento, which translates to ‘puffs of wind’. They are very light pastry puffs, or dough balls, made to celebrate All Saints’ Day in Spain, and are often filled with milk, cream or chocolate. Omar has kindly shared his recipe for them below.
- Place the water, butter and salt in a pan and bring to the boil. Add the flour and mix with a wooden spoon for about 1 minute until well combined. The mixture should become a ball that separates from the walls of the pan. Remove from the heat.
- Add the eggs, one at a time, mixing each one into the dough using a wooden spoon until completely integrated before adding the next. The mixture should have the consistency of thick yoghurt.
- Pour enough oil into a deep pan to give you two fingers’ depth of it. Heat until a cube of day-old bread dropped in the oil turns golden in about 30 seconds. Alternatively, heat a deep-fat fryer to 180°C.
- Use a couple of spoons to shape pieces of the dough into rounds the size of a walnut. Drop them carefully into the hot oil. The dough should start frying and puff up immediately; after a few seconds they will turn over by themselves. Leave them in the oil for about 5 minutes until they turn golden brown. Scoop out with a slotted spoon and drain on kitchen paper. They should have a delicate crispness on the outside and be pretty much all air on the inside.
- Dust with caster or icing sugar whilst still warm. If you want to fill with whipped cream, make a little cut on the side of each of them and use a piping bag to fill.
- You could also try filling these with chocolate ganache (see here) or crème pâtissière (see here).