Cornish pasty, Gyoza, Samosas, Burek, Spanakopita every country has their own style of pastries and this is a Latin Europe/American one. I have tried these before and enjoyed them, I decided I will make them one day and today was the day!
I have a deep love for cook/baking books but I have a lot of them and have a bad habit of just drooling over the pics making a recipe or two and then it goes back on the bookshelf, some books I haven’t even made anything from! I really have to hold back from wasting my money on them but sometimes I really get so tempted and on this occasion I took the plunge and recently brought the book ‘baking with vegetables’.
This book is awesome, I was really inspired, the recipes are amazing all based with vegetables and they are sweet and savoury. The first recipe that took my fancy was the kale and blue cheese scones, which were really tasty and this empanadas one.
The sound of chilli and cheese together is something that grabs my attention them two work well together. I really like fresh chillies in food it’s so tasty and melting cheese all i think of is ohhhhh gooeyyyyy cheese yummy, it just such an amazing combination.
I did make changes to this recipe, the originally recipe grilled the chillies but I decided to use fresh chillies and seasoned the flour. The recipes was said to make 12 empanadas but whilst I rolled it out I realised the pastry was to thick, I’m not a fan of really thick pastry and rolled mine to £1 thickness.
- 425g - Plain flour
- 175g - unsalted butter
- 1 whisked - egg
- 50ml - cold water
- 1 tsp - salt
- 1 tsp - cayenne pepper (optional)
- 1 tsp - paprika (optional)
- 1/2 tsp - ground cumin (optional)
- generous amount of fresh ground pepper
- 2 small - potatoes
- 1-4 chillies finely chopped (red, green, birds eye, which ever you fancy) - depending on your taste
- 150g - mozzarella cut into small pieces
- 115g - feta crumbled (you could just use the whole packet)
- 1/2 small - red onion
- 1 tsp - oregano
- 1 tsp - smoked paprika
- 1 tsp - cayenne pepper
- generous amount of fresh ground pepper
- 1. In a food processor add the flour, salt and spices blend until mixed. Add the butter and blend until it resembles crumbles, add the egg and water until it forms a dough, don't over combine. Chill in the fridge for 30 minutes.
- 1. Start by cutting the potatoes into small pieces and setting to cook until just tender. Once cooked leave to cool.
- 2. Divide the dough into 20 or more balls, roll out each one so they are roughly 121/2 / 5" dia in size.
- 3. In a bowl add the cheeses, spices, chopped chillies and cooled potatoes mix so all the seasoning is dispersed.
- 4. Preheat the oven at 220°C and line a baking tray with baking paper.
- 5. Take one of the circles moisten each edge with some water and then fill half the circle with cheese mixture. Flatten the edges slightly and then using a fork crimp around the semi circle.
- 6. Place them on baking tray, brush with milk and egg and bake for 18-20 minutes.
These look delicious, I will be truing them soon. Your photos are lovely 🙂
Thank you Amy. Yes please try them and let me know how it goes.