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She called them Dumplings II: Empanadas

Hi everyone. It’s Monday which means I am already behind in my week. Here’s a throwback post from… three (???) months ago. Back to the good old days when Pau and Zac were still with us.. and we spent an afternoon making a metric tonne of empanadas.It began, as it always does, with the meat cutting.

The first time we made empanadas together I think we spent over two hours, me cutting the onions and Enrique cutting the meat.

This time, we were smart enough to tag in and out.

Many hands, light work. And so on.
^I am 99.9% that Szymmy took this photo. Because of the Reese’s. That kid is really into product placement.

Anyway, the whole ‘tagging out’ deal was not only useful for not getting repetitive strain injuries… it was also a way to get Enrique away from the meat and onto the pies:

Lemon Pies! Chilean Style.

And of course the pastry too. Luckily for E, he quickly acquired a Sous Chef:   

While they did the general kitchening stuff (i.e., all the work), the rest of us retired to the living room:

Some of us read about vegetarianism, in what is clearly an attempt to convert the world to their #agenda…

.. others hand-knitted furiously:

… But most of us just talked and ate snacks (including some delicious potato thing that Shreya brought). 

Eventually, the kitchen team was effectively ‘done’ with their first chore- the making of the pasty…

.. and the crazy rolling marathon could begin.  

.. for some…

Back in the kitchen, the pies were getting an upgrade:

…. which was followed by a short period of rest:

In the living room, we discussed the best way to make vegetarian (cheese) and shrimp empanadas. The orders came down from the head chef that each empanada should include one large, roughly cube shaped piece of cheese.

This ‘overly large’ cheese concept was hotly debated, until the time came that the decision was taken from us, when Zac’s knife found sentience and began hacking at the cheese by itself:

Although Fabio tried to talk it (the knife) down, there was nothing to be done.

Despite our explanations, the head chef was not impressed:  

There was a brief scurry of construction, followed by some serious deep frying….

.. and then, the first of the vege empanadas was ready.. to be gifted to Shreya:  

I think she liked it!

  

Once the deep frying phase had finished, we started in on the meat empanadas. Which of course meant that E had to get back to work and fry us some meat filling:    Of course, we also managed to take a pause from the empanadas to eat cerviche, and pie.

But ultimately we had to return to the empanada-y goodness…

We also deep fried some of the meat fellows, but ended up with most of them in the oven. 

Where most was a very large number. In the tradition of ‘dumpling making‘, we of course made waaay too many empanadas.

Which meant we got some for lunch the next day, and I even managed to freeze a few for later in the month.

Which, here, is the point I would like to give a shout out to whichever of you dorks made an empanada filled only with black olives. Thanks for nothing guys.

Ok guys… Next up is… gyoza???

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