Thu, 21 Feb 2008

Empanadas and My Friends Kick Ass

soo-ah and yoko cooking Everyone knows I like hanging out with 'ma [sic] peeps'. And everyone knows I like cookin' and cookin' with my peeps. But what happens when I get to do that in a commercial kitchen? I get a big ol' smile on my face.

Yoko, Soo-ah, Helen and I met up on Sunday to cook in a restaurant up in Marin. The idea was to get together and have dinner, but also to each cook enough food to be able to send the others home with a crap load ton of leftovers. Let's just say, I'm eating well this week.

Yoko made a kick ass curry dish. Helen made duk bok ki (which I've been craving- but that's another story). Soo-ah made a metric tonne of baked ziti, and I made beef empanadas and later some steak and veggies. (and Rick, Max and Luis put up w/ us).

All in all, an excellent night. I just wish we had more time to gab- but maybe we'll just need to meet more regularly.

Here's how I made my empanadas:

For the wrapper- cheat and buy them at Luca's Deli in the Mission. They keep them in the back back freezer on the right on the bottom shelf at the very back. Yes, I had some in my freezer already.

-cut this part in half unless you want to make a lot because I'm assuming you're not making more than 20 of these -

For the filling, you'll need:
2 lbs of ground beef, 1 medium yellow onion, 3 hard-boiled eggs, a can of ro*tel, some (5-8?) sun-dried tomatoes (I have a pack of dried ones in my cupboard) or about 1/3cup of raisins, (but sometimes I don't like raisins which is why I subbed in the sdt's), and some olives if you're being traditional, but I ran out.

Dice and saute the onion in two pans (this makes too much to use just one pan, unless you work in shifts) for a few minutes on medium to med-high heat. Add a pound of the ground beef to each pan and brown. prepping empanadas

While the beef is browning add the folowing spices: paprika, salt, pepper, cumin. The following additional spices are optional (but nice): ground chipotle, ancho chile pepper.

While the beef is cooking, do whatever you need to do to prep your sun-dried toms, and then chop them into thin slices. Then start de-shelling your hard-boiled eggs to kill the rest of the time. Put a bottle of Torrontes in the fridge.

When the meat is cooked, drain it and put it in a mixing bowl to cool.

Add the can of ro*tel. Add the sun-dried toms also. Stir it up and taste it. You may need to add more spice or seasoning.

While the mix is getting cooler, chop up your eggs and add those to the bowl. And then start warming up your oven to 375F.

Take the bottle of Torrontes out the fridge, and open it and pour yourself a glass.

That's about it really. Once the mix is cool, you can prep your dough and spoon in some mix onto each round like this.

Fold them up and either pleat the edges or use a fork's tines to seal the empanada and arrange onto baking trays. Traditionally, you're supposed to add an olive to each one, but sometimes I'm lazy, and I was out of olives. Empanadas

You can add an egg wash to the process, but I like to just spray the empanadas with cooking spray if I'm rushed and then I just throw them in the oven.

Baking time will vary, but you'll average out to about 20mins. Just keep checking the dough for done-ness. Your filling's already done, so you're just really cooking the dough until it's nice and flaky.

And yes, you can easily make this in advance. Just do the filling one day, and assembly the next day.

Let them cool from the oven for a bit and serve with a nice glass of red wine as you should have finished your Torrentes while cooking.

21 Feb 22:14 | /food_and_drink | 1 comment(s)


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