Nothing excites me like not having to make decisions, so I was ecstatic to find Karen had already chosen a couple recipes. She had used our leftover plantain from last week and cooked a test batch of "tostones" (which I had suggested last week in place of the chips that ended up sort of sucking) so we decided to do a rebooted attempt at plantains, frying them not once, but twice. Delicious, no doubt about it, but something about deep fried plantains and dough filled with pork butt sounded a bit filling. Probably the pork butt part. So I added my own two cents and suggested we pair this meal with a salad. Karen grunted a hardly audible sound of consent, and we had ourselves a full fledged meal.
For the record, I am not opposed to salads. I just think that they're kind of stupid to eat in a world where sandwiches exist. Anyway, the empanada recipe was our most extravagant so far. It has a rather lengthy and varied list of ingredients. I mean, green olives and raisins together in one flaky buttery pocket! It's madness! But Tony and I were really on top of things this week so we popped on over to our local Sprouts and picked up every thing we needed for Empanadas of the Immaculate Conception, an avocado and lime Mexican-y salad, and plantains "Take 2" and made it back to the kitchen by 3:00pm to start the cooking.
The one problem we encountered was that it was not avocado season, meaning that all the avocados being sold in the greater Los Angeles area were plucked not from a tree, but from the nest of an overprotective Dragon holding a machine gun and the prices reflected this. I was disgusted at having to drop two dollars on a single avocado, but once I have my heart set on this, my favorite of all fruits, I can't be swayed. And let me tell you, boys, this was an avocado to get your heart set on. It was perfect.
No, you hang up first! That was stupid. I'm sorry. I'm just nervous.
Back in the kitchen, we busted out the aprons, put on some tunes (tUnE-YarDs to be exact), and burst into joyous dance. No seriously, Tony did the weirdest lankiest lookin' thing with his arms that I've ever seen and I went full on "robot penguin" which consists of sticking your arms straight down at your sides and moving them in tight circles while waddling back and forth. Yes, we were that excited. And yes, we are that white. Here, look:
Glorious.
The jovial mood only grew from there as I began to make the empanada dough and had the immeasurable pleasure of dumping two whole sticks of butter and an entire packet of cream cheese into my mixing bowl.
If only every meal could begin this way.
There was something fiendish, even terrifying, about the way Karen was gazing into that bowl of butter and cream cheese, as though she saw in it the promise of a new world order, a horrible dystopian future in which every meal begins and ends with butter and cream cheese. She was in her element, so I let her do her thang and got to work on the meat. Unable to find pork butt, we settled on some much less hilarious pork shoulder. I chopped the meat and set it simmering with garlic, onion, carrot, bay leaf, peppercorns, thyme and salt. I was essentially boiling a bunch of meat, which is not a preparation I'm used to and which produces some very unappetizing grayish brain meat.
I quickly sauteed some onions and garlic and got that brain simmering in tomato sauce.
Meanwhile, I mixed up the pastry dough faster than you can say "brain meat" and, as Tony mentioned, moved on to the tostones part of the meal. I couldn't let my tasteless cardboard plantain nuggets be the final word on plantains for this blog, so during the week I'd whipped up some fried plantains courtesy of Alton Brown, damn know-it-all is always right about how to make things delicious. Anyway, these double fried, garlic-y, savory plantains went over muuuuuch better than the previous week's so I made them again to go along with our latin theme. Unlike my neurotic brother, I have absolutely no trouble frying any and everything that I can get my hands on. I love to hear the sound of sizzling and feel the hot oil splash against my skin. Actually, no, that part kind of sucks and so I have a habit of throwing things into the oil and then running away squealing and ducking for cover like a hysterical piglet.
But just look at those babies frying up to a nice golden brown. This recipe is fun because you get to smush the plantains and then fry them again, soaking them in a little garlic salt water in between. After all that they sort of just taste like really good french fries. No problem there.
**SPOILER ALERT: Do not look at the platter next to Karen's head! Those aren't finished empanadas!
Success! The empanada filling flavors had satisfactorily mingled, or as well as one could hope for at a party with such disparate guests as green olives and raisins. Fun fact: green olives prefer to be called manzanillas when they are used in a Spanish or Latin American dish. Don't you forget this, or else you'll have to go to two different stores because the first one didn't even have manzanillas, just these stupid green olives.
A truly inspiring sight, manzanillas, raisins, almonds and pork all hanging out, having a grand old time. And who's that tree branch looking thing in the back? Is that cinnamon stick? Yup, cinnamon stick showed up.
Done! Here! I held up the skillet and demanded Karen turn the meat stew into empanadas while I spent my remaining time hanging out with avocado, maybe making a salad. Or is it too soon? Do you think avocado even likes me? I'm not good enough, AM I? With a firm backhand, Karen brought me back to my senses, then delivered a proverbial backhand by informing me that we had to actually put the meat stuff into the dough stuff ourselves. Moi? I don't bake and this process really towed the line. However, it can't be that hard, right? I summoned every bit of knowledge I had on matter and spatial relations, and I managed to do this:
"KILL IT! KILL IT!" Karen yelped, as she cowered in the corner clutching her rolling pin, crying what I'm pretty sure were joke tears. Har har, very funny. You try it. You shmuck.
Yes, fine, ok; Karen's didn't have a gaping hole in it. And yes, mine looked like a pumpkin spliced with road kill begging to be killed and put out of its misery, but in my defense . . . whatever, I don't even care. I'm calling avocado, it accepts me for who I am!
Since this post has been totally and completely out of order from the get-go I'll stick with the theme and talk about rolling out the empanada dough. Now, you might ask, "Hey, didn't you just stuff the empanadas? How could you stuff the empanadas and then roll out the dough?" To which I reply, "How do you know that we don't have a time traveling kitchen? Huh? You don't. And I'll never tell. So shut it." The dough had been chilling in the fridge for about an hour while Tony fussed over the stuffing and fretted over how the world would judge him and his unnatural avocado love (harshly, by the way) and I couldn't wait to get it out and start the rolling. On my list of favorite things to do in the kitchen, using my rolling pin is right up there with apple peeling, bread kneading, and sliding across the floor in my socks. So I was excited to roll out the empanadas and find a suitable sized circle to use as a cookie cutter.
Rolling pin excitement verging on madness! Anyway, I grabbed a random piece of tupperware and started makin' some circles, not really knowing how big we wanted our empanadas. On a side note, this is where I wish there was a synonym for "empanada" because the writer in me feels that I have repeated that word one too many times. So from now on, I will alternate the use of "empanada" with "Spanish Hot Pocket."
Is this the right size? I uhknow. As Tony's mutated drooling first attempt would show us, no, it was not big enough. But since I couldn't find a better cookie cutter, I cut them and rolled them out a little bigger, so that explains the lopsidedness of the first batch of Spanish Hot Pockets. Luckily though, and I'm not sure if you knew this, but being slightly lopsided in no way affects the deliciousness of this item. They did get a little prettier as we got more practice. Here you can see the progression of prettiness from left to right smothered with egg wash and sesame seeds.
Anyway, they all look good to me once they're baked. I just wanna pinch their little cheeks.
It was almost time to dish up when I realized I had to make the salad, meaning it was time for avocado and I to . . . errr, ok any attempt to keep up this "being in love with the avocado" metaphor is going to result in explicit descriptions, so consider it abandoned. I sliced it up and tossed it with romaine lettuce, cilantro, a cumin-lime vinaigrette and feta cheese. Cotija cheese works even better if you've got it. This combo is fresh, the flavors complement each other and you can throw a bunch of other stuff in there too like corn, bell pepper, black beans, a taco, whatever. Ah yes, I also added in some pepitas which, if you read last week's entry, you know is a food that Karen does not respect. (That is correct.) I don't know that I changed her mind, but the salad was good. The Spanish Hot Pockets, on the other hand, were amazing. Utterly fantastic. The dough was sweet and buttery, the meat was salty and tender, the olives chipped in a great tang and these things are so portable that you can tuck one into your cargo shorts, overalls or other large-pocketed clothing and hit the town.
What better way to wrap this meal up than some delicious alfajores, shortbread cookie sandwiches with Dulce De Leche in the middle? How about not having those because someone (me) didn't realize that it takes a minimum of two and a half hours to make Dulce de Leche? You'll have to tune in next week to see the alfajores in action.
Let me just reiterate before wrapping this up that these empanadas were friggin' fantastic. They are hands down the best thing that we've made so far. While they do take a bit more work and patience and it helps to have a fun cooking partner, they're totally worth it. And since this blog cares not for linear order or the nature of time, I will let you in on another secret. We actually cook our meals while writing about the previous week's adventure, meaning that we made these Spanish Hot Pockets last week and this week made a different delicious meal which we'll tell you about next week. Confused yet? I only tell you this because I ate one empanada each day for dinner after cooking these and by Thursday when I finished my last one I felt such an extreme feeling of loss and sadness that I knew this recipe was something special, something worth holding on to, worth fighting for. Worth dying for? No, that's ridiculous, but worth adding to my "make these as often as humanly possible" list of recipes. I highly recommend that you try them. And then freeze one and mail it to me. I'll wait.
No comments:
Post a Comment