Sunshine State Empanadas (part I - the dough)

As served at the Sunshine State Eggfest, empanadas (pronounced as spelled with no 'yu'after the 'n') maybe the national snack of Argentina. They are pastry turnovers with savory fillings. They can and do have a variety of fillings but generally will include meat, onions, and often hardboiled eggs potatoes, olives, ham, raisins, cheese etc. I prefer emapandas with potatoes. There's something about the smell of potatoes, onions, meat and potatoes baking in a pastry shell that is just sort of earthy and primitive that reminds me of the meat and potato pies I used to eat in England as a child at the end of the war (more potatoes and meat than meat and potatoes)- it's making my mouth water just thinking about it.

Empanadas take a little while to prep but you can do it in stages over a few days. I prepped and froze the emapanadas for the Eggfest at home as we had to travel from Canada. Hardboiled eggs do not freeze well (in fact you can freeze yolks but whites freeze badly) so the Sunshine state variety was missing that ingredient. Freezing pastry items requires that each item be frozen separately otherwise they will freeze together and like siamese twins be inseparable if they thaw and the pastry will break if you try to separate them while frozen. Freeze them on trays or platters without touching and when frozen they can be bagged together without risk - as long as you keep them frozen. Be careful with poorly chilled coolers.

First the pastry: it is a stiff dry dough traditionally made by hand and rolled out with a rolling pin. I mix the dough by hand but prepare the pastry in an old Simac extrusion pasta maker. If you have a pasta machine it simplifies the job, makes the pastry shells consistently thinner than you can by hand rolling. Rolling is more traditional though and no one notices any minor imperfections - I have to press two strips of pastry together from my pasta machine's lasagna die.

You will need;

2 cups water
1 1/2 tbs salt
3 1/2 tbs good quality lard
6-7 cups all-purpose flour

Make 'salmuera' by boiling the water and dissolving the salt in it. I don't really know if it makes a difference but Argentine cooks routinely use salmuera in varying concentrations as seasoning rather than adding dry salt.

Pour the salmuera into a wide bowl in which you will make the dough. Melt the lard in the salmuera and allow to cool to room temperature. Measure 5-6 cups of flour into a separate bowl and add the flour in handfuls to the water until you can form a ball. The lard will have started to recoalgulate at the edges of the bowl. As you fold in the flour it will be absorbed.

If you don't have access to a pasta machine, flour a work surface and knead the dough adding more flour until you can't add any more. Wrap or cover the dough well and chill it for an hour or more - overnight will work fine if you need a break.

Having mixed the dough by hand I use my pasta machine to do the final kneading and then remove it and chill it.

You can freeze the dough for several weeks if it is well wrapped.

An aside about lard: in my humble view, it makes the best pastry. Good lard may contain saturated fats but no hydrogenated anythings.

This seems a good place to break. Part II, Filling, in the next post.