Czech Grilled Cheese and Guava Bites

Just a couple simple but tasty dishes this week...

Guava Bites

Guava is a wonderful tropical fruit usually eaten fresh. But is also used, as a preserved paste in many Latino pastries. Sweet, but not too sweet, it can be thought of as the tropical equivalent of apricot jam as a filling. The paste is like a brick of fruit leather, easily sliced by a hot, wet, knife.

I made Guava Bites as dessert for a dinner-for-two cooking I did the other night as a charity for the Matlacha Hookers, woman's deepsea fishing club. I donate a dinner-for-two to their annual charity fishing tournament to raise money for the Pine Island elementary school.

This year the winners got Shrimp Stuffed Mushrooms as their appetizer, Brazilian Moqueca as their main dish, and the Guava Bites for the dessert course.

This is a super simple concept that you can keep around in the fridge for a quick dessert or decadent snack. All you need are “biscuits-in-a-tube”, soft cream cheese, and a package or can of guava paste which you can find in the ethnic section of your megamart.

For my bites I chose Crescent Roll dough because it's lighter than ordinary biscuit dough. The neat thing these days is you can find smaller (and cheaper) tubes of dough which only make 4 or 5 biscuits/rolls instead of 8 or 10. Keep a can in your fridge until its Use By date expires. Guava paste, even when opened, has the half life of Plutonium 239!  I've kept an opened block in a zip-top bag in the fridge for well over a year!

Make your Guava Bites just a bit more decadent by laying down a schmear of soft cream cheese before slicing the guava about 1/8” thick and placing on the dough.  

You don't have to stick with the roll-up form, either.  Make freeform shapes, or larger pastries using two entire crescent roll triangles.

Smažený sýr

That's Czech for “grilled cheese” Well, actually fried cheese, but that's OK. This dish is rated one of the five “must try” food from Prague's central square. Sally brought me back a bag of sýr spice blend, so I of course have to at least try the dish out. No calories here folks!

In Prague they either use one of the wonderful local cheeses, or something more generic, like Edam, Swiss, or Jarlsberg – semi-hard cheeses that will stand up to a minute or so of hot oil bath without completely melting down.

The principle is really simple, and I'm surprised we don't hear more about deep-fried cheese as a staple at county and state fairs.

1 “slice” of Edam or similar cheese, about 1/2” thick

Spice for dredging – here in the States a Cajun spice blend might go well

Flour for dredging

1 Egg for dredging

Breadcrumbs for dredging – I used panko because it's what I had on hand, but regular crumbs might work better in this case

Heat 1/2” of vegetable oil in a suitable pot or skillet, to 375F.

Dredge the slice of cheese in the spice blend, then the flour. Follow that with dredging in egg and then breadcrumbs.

Carefully lower the breaded cheese into the hot oil and cook for 20-30 seconds per side. Drain on paper towels and serve.

I let my oil get a bit too hot, but the result was still downright tasty. As an appetizer you could cut the “slice” into 1” squares and remove them from the oil oil with toothpicks for serving. They would need to be kept warm and served immediately, as the delicacy cools pretty quickly.