Around ten years ago Olivia and I went on the trip of a lifetime: four months backpacking through South America, from trekking in Patagonia to volcano climbing in Chile, island hopping in Lago Titicaca, city exploring in Buenos Aires and admiring the breathtaking Iguazu falls in Argentina. I have no words for this trip, other than WOOOOOOOW! I wouldn't have done it with anyone but Olivia, who else would put up with me for that long ;-) A big part of our trip consisted of trying every single food we came across: alpaca (yum), guinea pig (gross), alfajores (yumm yumm)...and many more. But by far our favourite were empanadas, so easy, cheap and delicious. A few years after we got back Olivia's friend Maritza, who is originally from Chile, taught us how to make empanadas. I could make these all the time, seriously so good!
Recipe for lots and lots of empanadas
Mix 1 kg self-raising flour with 250 gr butter (soft), 1/2 tsp baking powder, 1 tsp salt. Make a well in the middle and add 1/2 glass of beer (not sure how big this glass is), 3 egg yolks and 1 1/2 glass of water (mix boiled and cold water). Mix this batter to an elastic dough. Add more flour if too sticky.
You can keep the dough if you wrap it nicely for 4 to 5 days.
Filling: You can obviously mix this up, but we were taught this one.
Chop 750 gr onions (or less if you're not a fan) and put them in a pot with two cups of water and 1 tbs of sugar. Let this boil for 10 minutes. In a different bowl, mix 4 tbs olive oil with 2 tsp paprika powder, 1 tsp cumin and a cube of beef stock (don't add water to this!). Remove the onion from the pot and add this little herb mix instead, making it into a kind of paste. Add 1 kg ground beef and mix all of this together, then add the onion again with some salt. Leave this to simmer for 5 minutes or so. Once this is ready, leave to cool in fridge.
Back to the dough. Roll it out in little circle of approx. 0.5 mm thick. Make sure the edges are same thickness as centre. Put a scoop of the meat mixture in the middle (not too much as you do want to be able to close it), add a black olive (no pit), 1/4 boiled egg, a couple of soaked raisins and then make the edges wet with some water. Fold it double and press the edges close so no liquid can escape. Beat an egg and 'paint' this on the outside of the dough for a nice shiny empanada. Put on a hot oven tray with some flour in a preheated oven of 200 degrees Celsius, for about 15 to 20 minutes.
Other possible fillings: spinach and cream (watch out for too much liquid), scampi's, crab... you name it, anything goes.
Enjoy!
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