In the quest for a yummy empanada dough recipe, I have been amassing various recipes, and decided to put two to the test. Having tested the first, I didn’t want to wait too long before testing the second one. After making a quick run to the store for eggs, round deux began!
I was using this recipe for the dough, and opted to make a quick filling out of leftovers in the fridge: chorizo, leftover roasted potatoes and yams, onions, garlic, golden raisins and some sherry.
A couple of interesting things about this recipe:
- It starts out like regular pastry dough, but adds milk and egg yolk
- The milk that is added is warm, not cold, so some of the fat in the pastry melts, making a really soft dough. You do need to refrigerate it before working with it.
To make the dough, I opted to cut the butter in by hand. You can see that the butter is cut in pretty well with the pastry cutter. I think this approach (rather than the food processor) leaves a little bit of the butter intact for a bit more flakiness than the mechanical approach. Plus, there is something meditative about making some things by hand once in a while!
Once the butter is cut into the flour, you add the milk and egg yolk, and let it rest in the fridge while making the filling. Its quite soft when rolling out, but quite manageable with flour on the counter and rolling pin. I cut slightly larger circles this time (about 5″ using a saucer) for dinner-sized empanadas rather than cocktail-size.
Working with this dough was quite a bit easier than the last batch of dough. Because it is nice and soft and workable, it’s fairly easy to do the pretty empanada edging to seal the perimeter. Brushed with egg before going in, and baked for about 25 minutes…
For comparison, here’s the cutaway view of both batches of empanadas (#1 has vegetarian filling, #2 the chorizo filling). You can see the dough with the masa harina is much thicker, much denser, and in tasting, isn’t as nice a complement to the filling as the second. The second filling, while flaky, still has a bit of chewiness to it — like a pate brisee, but much more tender.
i’ll definitely be putting this recipe in the file for regular use.
Finally, to go with the empanadas, fresh greens from the garden, and pears poached in coffee (a la Jacques Pepin’s grandmother!) .
… Gotta go eat!
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