The word quesadillas today is subjected to the popularity of Mexican food and tex mex Worldwide. The typical tortilla or thin dough filled with various salty ingredients, with or even without cheese, however, has an idiomatic rival in Spain that, in our humble opinion, is much more worth claiming. Unless you don’t have a sweet tooth, because the herrena quesadillas in question, without being cloying, are sweets. And delicious.
At a time when the fashion for La Viña-style cheesecakes seems to saturate the market, many of those who know the El Hierro delicacy defend the quesadilla as the true cheesecake genuine national to defend. But defining this traditional sweet is complicated, as it is nothing like an ordinary cheesecake, or at least, it is completely away from those honeyed, creamy and even liquid textures of the cake.
With more than a century of history, the El Hierro quesadilla is more of a kind of cake, a creamy and dense cake, which you can eat in bites like a cupcake or, if the craving doesn’t prevent you, more slowly, piercing pieces with a dessert fork or a spoon. Looking for better known relatives in our country, we could compare it to the quesada pasiega or, even better, to the Ibizan flaó, where the local island cheese also marks the texture.
A sweet of uncertain origin rooted in the earth
El Hierro is the most western, the most southern and the smaller of all the islands of the Canary archipelago. The limited terrain does not prevent it from keeping a landscape without equal, of which it is said that it has a little piece of all its sister islands, where the volcanic black soilthe intricate paths, the rocky cliffsits wild green forests and natural pools blend together offering a unique singularity.
Although today well connected with the larger islands, that constrained isolation It deeply marks the life of the place, with a very low population density and practically concentrated between Valverde, the capital, Frontera and El Pilar. Gastronomy is also fed by what life offers on the island, revolving around livestock, agriculture and fishing.
As in all the Canary Islands, the local cheese it plays a crucial role in your savory and sweet cooking. The cheese from El Hierro, made with a mixture of goat, sheep and cowreflects the unique characteristics of a grazing of mixed herds and the peculiar flavor provided by the food and the climate where the animals grow.
It is precisely believed that the quesadilla was born from the need to take advantage of the surplus of cheese crafts, since this sweet is prepared with freshly curdled fresh cheese, usually from goat milk or blendof enzymatic coagulation and with ferments, without salt. It is not known for sure when or how the cake began to be made, although there are historians who point to Cantabrian or Spanish influences. islamic candy store mediterranean.
In any case, the simplicity of its ingredients, together with that ancient tradition of making cheese in families, show a home originlike so many examples that the dairy culture has left in traditional Spanish confectionery throughout the country, and not only on peninsular soil.
The recipe that has been passed down from generation to generation
The first historical sources that testify to the elaboration of the quesadilla from El Hierro date back to late nineteenth century or early 20th century, although it is likely that its most primitive preparation began even earlier.
Nowadays they keep making this sweet five workshops on the island, with the pioneering family business Adrian Gutierrez and Daughtersthe most successful and with the greatest production whose history begins in the same year 1900. Thus, the artisan preparation in the houses has been lost, when it was even necessary to go to the bakers’ ovens to bake them, since the homes lacked them.
The exact recipe that they keep unchanged in the aforementioned centenary workshop is secret, but they share the same original ingredients and that are repeated by their professional colleagues. Everyone agrees that El Hierro cheese is the cornerstone, with more than 85% weight in the final product, and its quality and freshness daily depends on the flavor and texture of the quesadilla.
So the ingredients are few and simple: fresh unsalted El Hierro cheese -curdled daily-, sugar, flour, eggs, matalahúva -anise-, cinnamon and lemon zest. In addition, it can be baked on a very thin and crunchy base of a dough halfway between puff pastry and shortcrust pastry, without layers, which makes it easy to remove from the mold, although some bakeries already do without it.
Ground cheese, flower molds and stone oven
Although this white and tender El Hierro cheese is compared to other national cheeses such as cottage cheese, its texture is different and it has a very mild but marked flavor, and it does not crumble so easily. For this reason, in the past, the elaboration of the quesadilla implied a manual work of considerable effort, since everything begins with the correct cheese grindwhich had to be done on a table in large basins.
Thanks to the mechanization it was possible to switch to a faster and more efficient grinding of the cheese, thus accelerating production to professionalize the sector. But all the elaboration continues to be handmade, faithful to the original recipe of which only honey was changedthe most widely used sweetener in the past when sugar was a hard-to-access luxury good.
With or without a base, the raw dough is poured into the traditional metal molds of flower shaped tart, of those that are prepared in a small or family version, the 150 or 170 g size being the most common today, and the most exportable from a commercial point of view. cooking in wood ovens is the last and fundamental step of the recipe, which gives the final unique character to this sweet, reaching great temperatures to brown the cake well. Nothing else is added or decorated.
A family tradition for generations
The workshops that have revived this humble sweet making it easy to enjoy on all the islands, even exporting it to the mainland, are all of local, family tradition and origin. But it is the company Adrián Gutiérrez e Hijas that has become a whole El Hierro institutionwhose quesadillas are considered the pioneers and most genuine.
With the Valverde workshop operating at full capacity all year round, some 2,500 quesadillas come out of its old stone oven every day, both standard and family size, more destined for orders and special occasions. They are on their way to completing 123 years of history with the Fourth generation that grandfather tore from Marisol Gutierrez, still active, representative of the third. His nieces have now taken over.
It is their quesadillas that the traveler will probably find most easily, present in local shops and businesses, on other islands of the archipelago and also in bars, cafeterias, hotels and boats. They prepare them with their thin and crispy dough base, almost like baking paper that helps to unwrap, cut and eat the sweet bite. The visit to the factory has also become something unavoidable for the tourist, and the neighbors go to buy directly there.
La Herrena, The grandmother, Guarazoca and the brothers towers are other well-known names in El Hierro from whose workshops come out, in addition to quesadillas, other sweets typical of pure artisan tradition, and which also supply supermarkets and offer sale on-line. Very similar in appearance, with the same ingredients, each oven offers, however, a quesadilla of own recipe with its particular touch, differentiated essentially in the cheese.
If you go to El Hierro, you have to buy quesadillas
just as it is mortal sin Returning from Cantabria without sobaos, from La Roda without Miguelitos or from Mallorca without ensaimadas, you cannot return from El Hierro without a load of quesadillas in your suitcase.
It is a cheese cake, but it has little to do with the aforementioned cakes at the beginning. It also almost reminds us of the Santiago cake, but with a much more smooth and cool by replacing the dry fruit with El Hierro cheese, which gives it its sweetness and flavor without saturating it. Although it is convenient to enjoy the quesadilla moderately, because it is satiating, not cloying at all It is not very heavy, and it is appetizing both for breakfast and for dessert or as a snack.
If the magnificent Movistar series managed to put the magical island of The iron on the map, their quesadillas now deserve to be claimed Faced with the saturation of other imported desserts and fashions without any personality. Long live artisan confectionery.
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Photos | Adrián Gutiérrez and Daughters – La Herreña – Turismo El Hierro
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