Pillow Road

Some years ago around Christmas, I visited Argentina and fell in love with empanadas. They are small pastries that usually come with a meat filling. In Buenos Aires, you can find small shops that sell them as a specialty. They are ordinary, everyday pleasures but also a delicacy.

I’ve wanted to re-create those empanadas. I’ve been disappointed several times when I’ve ordered them in a restaurant, and even a version I had in Spain didn’t match the little treats I enjoyed in Argentina.

So I made my own empanadas over the holidays and here’s how they turned out.

The secret of empanadas is the pastry, which means that butter makes all the difference (1-1/2 sticks). I made the dough in advance and let it sit in the refrigerator for a few days until I was ready to make them.

I found a good recipe in Cook’s Illustrated online. (It requires a subscription.) Here is a similar empanada dough recipe at laylita.com. You mix the ingredients in a food processor and roll it into a ball. This can be refrigerated and it is a good idea to do so even if you are making them the same day.

When you’re ready to make the empanadas, roll out the dough on a floured surface. I read that the dough should be about 1/8 of an inch thick. Next, you’ll cut out circles. The recipe said to use a 3″ biscuit cutter. Mine was about 2.5″ in diameter. Choose different sizes if you like. The small ones are nice as appetizers and in a tapas-type of meal. You can make them larger, but there’s something nice in keeping them bite-size.

I put the discs on parchment paper on a cookie sheet. I cooked a meat and cheese filling, which wasn’t particularly special. I also made a spinach filling for my family’s vegetarians. A teaspoon of filling on half the disc is all that’s needed. Then fold one half over the filling and use a fork to press and seal the edge.

I made about two trays, totaling about 40 empanadas. I preheated the oven to 350 degrees. Before they went into the oven, I brushed egg yolk over the tops. I cooked them about 25 minutes and then let them cool down a bit.

I served them with a beet salad, made with rainbow beets from the garden and a homemade split-pea soup, which was based on a nice Deborah Madison recipe that didn’t call for blending the vegetables.) The empanadas stood out, and everyone loved them.

I had some dough leftover and several days made another batch of larger-sized empanadas, served again as an accompaniment to soup.

I could see getting into a routine of making empanadas regularly, keeping a ball of dough in the fridge. I could experiment with a variety of different fillings.

I’d bet that empanadas would be a hit with young kids as well, a good way to show a little love for the little ones.