Saturday, March 27, 2010

Empanadas break my drought of food posts

I haven't been blogging about kitchen creative explorations as of late, have I? When I'm busy, which I have been crazy-like busy, it's the last thing I have time for. And when I do? I don't have time to include my camera.

But guess what? This is not about my busy schedule and life. This is about the elusive and delicious hand pie known as Empanadas. Oh how I love my little empanadas. And they are not difficult. Once you get the system down, you're golden.

Making empanadas

And you know what the key thing is to empanadas, right? It's the pie crust. I use my same, infallible recipe and technique (without any sugar in the dough), and I roll the dough as thin as I can get it without it breaking apart. I was using a glass at first, for cutting out the round dough shapes, but moved up to using a small tupperware container that provided a bigger circumference for a larger sized empanada.

But I'm getting ahead of myself. Because the the goods inside of these empanadas come from my favorite Mexican chef, Rick Bayless. But I modify his recipe a bit. Instead, I use ground turkey, and I like a lot of green olives in mine. His recipe is great because it's sweet and savory, mingling the juicy raisins with the salty bite of the green olives... yum yum and more yum.

Empanada maker at work

As you can tell my Empanada co-hort here is fast, and it's hard to fully capture her technique. The key is to moisten the edges of the dough, place your filling, then fold in half, crimping the edges and getting them to really seal. A nice egg and milk wash before you pop them in the oven means they come out with a beautiful golden brown tan.

Empanadas and salad is what's for dinner

Here's a secret: if you run out of filling, try some homemade jam in there. Uh, yes.

And that, my friends, has broken the chain of my no-food blog posts.

P.S. Speaking of pie, head over to the Portland Tribune to read a sweet little article I was recently interviewed for, about pie!

9 comments:

Best Wishes, Marie said...

oh yes, the raisins are a must !!! these look so good.

Best Wishes, Marie said...

and, if you have a vegetarian dinner guest, or like you say, have a little leftover, diced very small sauteed potatoes are also yummy or mashed potatoes. the possibilities are endless.

they can give almost any vegetable or leftover a new life.

chook said...

nom nom nom. thanks for sharing your savory pie secret. these remind me of indian samosas.

Ewa said...

they look similar to Polish pierogi - filling is different and possibly dough - I will check that :) I link my pierogi recipe to my name here :)

Heather said...

The raisins sound awesome - shall have to try it!

Deb Rox said...

WANT!!!

Tricia said...

just made 'em- not soo pretty... oh, well- next time! Can't decide- sour cream? avo? hmmm...

LeLo said...

Tricia; oh no! Sounds like you need to brush up on Ye Olde' Empanada Skillz. We don't use anything else with them: if they're dry, I'd go for salsa.

Tricia said...

I haven't made them before... they were fabulous and didn't need a thing- But, I had some cold avocado on hand and the contrasting flavors and textures were lovely. I also made some Mexican brown rice- yummy.