I shared these amazing Mexican plantain empanadas with you in my last post but I haven’t exactly let on that I am deep into an empanada phase right now. I have been eating a LOT of dough stuffed with delicious fillings and then fried or baked until golden. I was planning to sort of release these empanada favorites over time, buried amidst posts about other, maybe healthier things. But last night I decided to just go for it – I’m going to do a little empanada series instead.
To be clear, this “series” will not be exhaustive. I’m sure there are so many iterations of other empanadas, from different places, from different materials, in my future, and I’ll probably share those too. But my recently cooked recipe list revealed a curious progression of empanadas that I hadn’t really been aware of when I first made them. See, empanadas originated in Spain (Galicia, to be exact, which we had the fortune to visit last summer!) where they’re eaten as a large pie filled with meat or fish and baked. I’ll get to that next week. A hybrid of the original is the little hand pies we generally recognize to be empanadas, also filled with Spanish-style goodies. Obviously this made the trip across the Atlantic and influenced the empanadas we find in Latin America today, using native ingredients like the plantains in the dough of last week’s plantain empanadas. And there you have it, a history of savory pies.
The empanadas of this post are from Spain. Their filling is very typical of the flavors of Galicia: tuna (from a can, but good tuna from a can), sweet and roasty pimentons, onions and hard-boiled eggs. Everything is chopped up, mixed together and seasoned, and you’ll consider yourself lucky if you aren’t eating forkfuls of this out of the bowl while your dough is resting. This might have happened to me.
The dough is super simple to make. It’s also very easy to work with, which I think is crucial when you’re folding and crimping a million hand pies. There will always be a point when you’re rolling out and cutting dough and your hands are covered in filling and your fingers are tired that you’ll wonder why you’re even doing this. This happens every time. DON’T GIVE UP.
Once your little empanadas are all stuffed and lined up on a baking tray, you fry them in a heavy pot filled with oil until they’re toasty and golden. Their skin gets crispy, almost like those fried crackers they give you to put in soup at the Chinese restaurants. In other words, they’re delicious. I ate these with abandon for about a week, reheated (but not much because I couldn’t wait that long) or cold and straight out of the fridge. They just never stopped being anything but fantastic.
Ingredients
- 1 cup water
- 1/4 teaspoon salt
- 3 tablespoons butter
- 3 tablespoons vegetable oil
- 2 1/2 cups unbleached, all-purpose flour
- 1 egg
- 1 tablespoon olive oil
- 1 medium onion, chopped
- 7-oz. can tuna, preferably light meat, drained and flaked
- 4 tablespoons chopped tomato, fresh or canned
- 5 tablespoons tomato sauce or diluted tomato paste
- 1 pimiento pepper, homemade or imported, chopped
- 1 tablespoon minced parsley
- SaltFreshly ground pepper
- 1 hard-boiled egg, finely chopped
- Oil for frying
Instructions
- First prepare the dough. In a saucepan, heat the water, salt, butter and oil over a medium frame until the butter is melted. Remove from the heat. Add the flour all at once and stir until completely incorporated. Beat in the egg with a wooden spoon until the dough is smooth. Turn the dough onto a floured work surface and knead briefly, adding flour if necessary, until the dough is smooth and elastic and no longer sticky. Cover and let sit 30 minutes. Roll the dough very thin and cut into 3-inch circles.
- While the dough is resting, heat the olive oil in a skillet. Sauté the onion until it is wilted. Add the tuna, tomato, tomato sauce, pimiento, parsley, salt and pepper, and cook, uncovered, 10 minutes. Sprinkle in the egg and remove immediately from the flame.
- Place about 1 tablespoon of the filling in the center of each empanadilla circle. Fold over and seal by pressing the edges with a fork. Fry in 350°F oil, at least 1 inch deep, until the turnovers are well browned. Drain on a plate lined with paper towels.
Notes
https://www.thekitchenchronicles.com/2015/09/09/tuna-turnovers-empanadillas-de-atun/
