Empanadas

You might recall from January 20th post on milanesas, that it was the Argentine favourite food. If that is true, the empanada comes in a close second.
An empanada is basically a pie: a piece of pastry with a filling. These fillings differ from minced meat, to knife-cut meat chunks, to ham and cheese and to a host of other interesting ingredients and combinations. In Argentina, empanadas are also quite regional so that those eaten in the Province of Salta are spicier and will differ from the sweeter Cordoba ones, while those from Patagonia will use lamb as opposed to beef used in the majority of other empanadas.
In Argentina, the empanada dough disks are sold ready-made. They are circular, with a diameter of 12cm. If you need to make your own dough, follow this recipe:
Sift two and a quarter cups of flour and one and a half teaspoons of salt into a bowl. Add about half a cup of butter and rub into flour until you achieve a crumbly mix. In a separate bowl, beat one large egg, a third of a cup of ice water and a tablespoon of vinegar. Slowly add the liquid mixture to the dry ingredients until just incorporated (it will appear quite shaggy). Turn out onto your work surface and knead a few times until the dough comes together. Form into a thick rectangle, wrap in plastic wrap and cool for an hour in the fridge. Once cooled, roll out and cut your circles (with a dessert bowl?). You should achieve about 12 disks.
Or you could just live in Argentina and buy the disks ready-to-use!!
Now for the classic Porteño (Buenos Aires) filling (and a more South African version too):
For 500g of lean minced meat, use one large onion, cut up into small cubes. Fry this in a pan with butter, adding salt and pepper to taste. Once transparent, add the minced meat and while it is cooking, break apart with your stirring utensil. The meat will give off liquid so don't add any. Once thoroughly cooked, add two hard-boiled eggs that are cut up finely as well as olives without the pips, that have been thoroughly diced. To finish the mixture (and to help it bind), add a healthy squirt of ketchup.
The South African version is the same as the above, just that at the onion stage there is garlic, chili, ground coriander and a teaspoon of masala paste added to the mixture. Also, no olives!
Allow the filling to cool thoroughly. And now the fun starts: folding the empanadas. This is tricky but a YouTube search for "how to fold empanadas" or "repulge" will deliver a host of cool and pretty instructive videos. All it takes is a bit of practice. Empanadas are often identified by their fold, and the traditional fold for meat empanadas is the common one seen in the videos.

To all my Argentine friends and family, please forgive me but I couldn't resist buying an empanada folding thingy that works like a charm!!!!! Technology meets tradition!!

Once folded, these are then either baked in the oven on a buttered baking sheet or deep fried in oil. They also store very well and I enjoy making up to three dozen at a time (different kinds) and then freezing them, ready to pull out of the freezer and cook.
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