Empanadas

I've been wanting to try to make empanadas for a while now.  My grandmother used to make pasties (pronounced with a long "a" like cat and, no, they're not the little buttons with tassles worn by pole dancers).  On a trip to Cornwall, England, I learned that pasties are actually a Cornish dish made for the miners: basically a pie crust filled with chopped meat, turnips, potatoes and onions (see here).  Empanadas are the same idea but from Argentina.

I found two recipes that looked good (here and here) but wanted to work with what I had in the kitchen.  First I made the cream cheese dough recipe.  I wanted to try something that was different from Grandma's dough so that it wouldn't taste like a weird pastie;  I'm glad I did.  I doubled the recipe from the Dinner with Julie website:  beat 1 brick of cream cheese, 2/3 cup of butter, and 4 eggs with the mixer until thoroughly combined.  Add 2 cups of flour (1/2 cup at a time) using a rubber spatula and/or your well floured hands. This dough is super soft (be sure to refrigerate it for at least 30 minutes before rolling out) but it has a great texture when baked.  In fact, while baking, the butter comes out and it sizzles and browns as if it was frying a little in the oven!

I had frozen a couple of chicken sausages from Trader Joe's:  chicken basil pesto and chicken with sun-dried tomatoes.  I was able to peel the skin off the pesto sausage but not the other.  Instead I chopped them up very fine.  I sautéed half a yellow onion in about 2 tablespoons of butter.  Then I added the 4 finely chopped sausages (which already had some spices in them) and about 1/2 cup of diced green olives with pimentos.  I scraped all of the brown bits off of the bottom of the pan.  Sprinkle on about 2 teaspoons of paprika.  Set aside (or in the fridge) to cool.  It doesn't look like enough filling, but I had just the perfect amount to fill up all the dough circles.

Preheat oven to 400 degrees.  Roll out the chilled dough.  I used a glass from the cupboard to cut into circles.  If there are two of you, it makes things easier since if the dough sits at room temperature too long it becomes difficult to work with (you can stick it in the fridge if there isn't a helper in the kitchen).  Put about 2 teaspoons in the middle the dough circle.  Pull the far side of the dough up and over the filling.  If the dough breaks, just smush it together with your fingers.  The dough is so soft you don't need to do much but pinch it together.  Use a fork to crimp the edges.  Place empanadas on a cookie sheet.  I greased one sheet and used a Silpat on the other.  Given the butter in the dough, greasing may not be necessary.  Cook for 12-18 minutes, depending on your oven.  They should be a pretty golden yellow color.  I ended up with about 30 empanadas (I had 3" circles of dough).

Eat while hot or even cold.  I put them in a covered plastic bowl in the fridge... then snuck one out later in the evening.  Yum!  These would be great picnic treats.  Julie's website suggests that you could also freeze the empanadas before cooking them-- a perfect suggestion if you are having a party and want to do all your prep ahead of time.

This dough is spectacular and I think other variations would be possible-- sweet and savory.  Next August, when peaches are ripe, I might try slicing in ripe peaches as the filling.  Or finely diced apples seasoned with cinnamon and sugar.  And, I really need to experiment with some chocolate chips and marshmallows (though this has me wondering if I could somehow convert the dough to use brown sugar and make it more graham cracker like)!