Sabor Eats

Empanadas de Puerros

I’ve been wanting to make my own empanadas for a few years now… It’s all finally happening, so I hope you enjoy being bombarded with photos and recipes for different kinds of empanadas!

The best empanada I’ve ever tasted (thus far) is from this place called Casanova’s Restaurant. It’s a Venezuelan restaurant here that sells a lot of Venezuelan comfort food. My favorite empanada from there is the Pabellon Empanada. It’s so delicious! Shredded beef with black beans, plantains, and lots of cheese. Drizzled with the chef’s special green sauce (which I’m going to take a stab and say it’s cilantro with avocado mixed with mayo) and MMmmmMMMM!!! Heaven. Plan on falling into a food coma after eating there though, as just about every food item is composed of fried goodness.

The original recipe for these Empanadas de Puerros called for the empandas to be baked. It’s much healthier, but since it was only my second time making empanadas, I wanted to refine the timing of my frying. :) They are also just way too delicious not to indulge on while frying… I had set 2 or 3 small empanadas aside to be baked later. We’ll see if they still taste as delicious when baked.

In addition, I added more meat than the original recipe called for—although I did use turkey bacon instead of full-on thick pork bacon. I also added Mexican chorizo, though that was not intentional. I meant to add chorizo that can be cut like sausage…but since it was my first time buying chorizo, I didn’t realize that Mexican chorizo crumbles apart like ground meat when cooked. Oh well, it still turned out pretty tasty!

Next time I will not add the raisins. In the original recipe, the author thought that  the empanadas needed a little sweetness to balance the flavors. However, I felt like the raisins were detracting from the strong flavors of the empanada. And although I used pepper-jack cheese and added paprika and cayenne pepper to the filling, the empanada was not as picante as I had wanted. Therefore, I added chili powder to the recipe below.

These can be eaten as a snack or as an appetizer if made small enough. They should give you enough energy to power through until dinnertime. :)

I hope you enjoy!!!

-Erica

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Empanadas de Viento (Fried Cheese Empanadas)

I’m back!! After a long on-again-off-again break, I’ve got a new recipe for you! Empanadas de Viento. These empanadas can be eaten for breakfast with black coffee or coffee with condensed milk, at teatime with coffee, as an appetizer, or for an afternoon snack. And yes, I do recommend having coffee with these empanadas. It’s a pretty amazing combo, although the empanadas by themselves are pretty good as well.

This was my first time making empanadas, so I was crossing my fingers the entire time, hoping that they would come out delicious and close-to-authentic.

If I were to redo this recipe, I would use another type of cheese. I bought some Queso Fresco (having never tried it before) and did not know that it was not a melting-type cheese, but a Hispanic version of feta cheese…. Imagine my disappointment when I tore open a freshly-fried empanada and was not greeted with my best friend, Oozy-Gooey Cheese.

Alas, I bit into the empanada. To my delight, it was still very tasty! It was even more tasty with some hot coffee. I brought some of the empanadas to a Latin party later on that night to do a trial run—to test its taste and authenticity—and either everyone was being very nice or it was a success! I’d like to think it was a success. :)

I’d also like to give a shout-out again to all the Latin mamas who make and roll their own dough for empanadas, tortillas, etcetc. everyday—RESPECT. My weakly wrists could only knead and roll out about 13 tortillas before giving out. There was still dough left over… -_- Oh well, I guess I will be rolling out more today!

Empanada filling.

Straight out of the fryer.

With some nice, hot coffee for breakfast. MmmmMMmm!!

My not-so-oozy insides.

Enjoy!!

-Erica

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Homemade Empanada Dough

This is an introductory post on how to make your own empanada dough. Tomorrow I will release a post on how to make Empanadas de Viento (Fried Cheese Empanadas).

Rather than buy pre-made empanada dough, which has been mixed with who knows what kind of preservatives, you can make your own dough from scratch! The dough itself is easy enough to put together—it’s the rolling out of the dough after mixing and kneading the dough that really works out your wrist muscles. Makes you think of bakers and Latin mamas who roll their own dough for tortillas, empanadas, etc. in a new light. For example, they must have a lot of arm and wrist strength, so make sure you don’t upset them. If they thump you on the head or hand with the rolling pin (like you see in cartoons), it’s going to hurt! But really, throw some appreciation their way, they definitely deserve it.

What’s great is you can roll out the dough and save it in the refrigerator or freezer for later use. This is especially nice for when you don’t have the time to make the empanada fillers, stuff, then fry them on the same day. Or for those of you like me who made a lot of dough and did not have the wrist strength to roll out more than 1 bowl’s worth.

Here is a quick snapshot of my working station.

Happy rolling!

-Erica

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End of Summer Herb Haul!

Sorry, no recipe in this post!

After I moved back to the town I go to school in, my parents tended to my herb garden for me. Or rather, did not tend? They watered my herbs, but that was probably it. Haha. As a result, look at how much thyme I harvested!!! This wasn’t even all of it!! This was the portion I was going to oven dry. I stored the rest (about the same amount) fresh in the refrigerator!

I didn’t get any photos of the rest of the herbs I had, but they were also quite plentiful. Lets just say I had herbs to last quite a while. This photo was taken some time in September and I STILL have quite a bit of fresh thyme in my fridge! :) 

Since the weather here has been a bit strange, we had essentially a “second season”. Plants and veggies which were supposed to die came back to live and flourished for a few more weeks. It was great (harvest-wise). Not so great in the aspect of climate change….

-Erica

Light and Refreshing Mojito Smoothie

This is a real quick and easy recipe for a “smoothie” that will start your morning. It utilizes greek yogurt so it will be a bit different from your normal smoothie. I found it more of a milkshake consistency (but not as thick).

This drink will certainly wake you up in the morning! It was so sour the first time I made it (I’ve adjusted the proportions readily in the recipe below). I suppose you could balance out the sour with more maple syrup, but since this is meant to be a healthy drink, I did not want to put anymore in. Feel free to add more maple syrup in, especially if you’re using this drink as an afternoon non-alcoholic cocktail. ;)

Enjoy!

-Erica

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Broiled Fish with Soy, Lemon, and Butter

So, I almost forgot what this photo was of. I do remember it being very delicious and easy to make though. Luckily, I remembered it was a Breakaway recipe. I did not have any mackerel on hand though (the original recipe calls for makerel), so I used whatever fish was available in the freezer at the time.

This recipe reminded me of the food in Japan. I imagine this would be the kind of thing I’d be cooking on a regular basis if I lived there. Actually, this is pretty easy/quick to do on a regular basis here as well! Hehe.

I served the broiled fish with some rice and a quick Chinese garlic and green bean stir-fry. Yum!

Enjoy!

-Erica

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Whole Wheat Cherry and Rosemary Sea Salt Focaccia

I love cherries. I miss summer (for the cherries)! Dang, this Whole Wheat Cherry and Rosemary Sea Salt Focaccia was good…  I like this recipe because you don’t have to wait an entire day for the dough to rise. You can start this around noon and enjoy fresh bread by the afternoon!

By-the-way, the aroma of fresh focaccia baking will make your house smell amazing!! Double win. Or is it triple win?

If I am correct, I made this sometime near the end of June. It was pretty delicious, minus the fact that the sea salt I used to sprinkle over the focaccia was in too large crystals. This caused the focaccia to be way too salty. I had to brush them off before eating! I’d recommend using smaller sea salt crystals.

Enjoy!

Erica

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Breakaway Shirred Shiitake Eggs

Eric Gower’s The Breakaway Cook (a book I’ve mentioned many times before) is probably my favorite hardback cookbook. Everything I have is online, but this book is just beyond amazing. The recipes never cease to please, and they’re so versatile and packed full of healthy, fresh flavors.

Here is one of my favorite breakfast/brunch items from his book. I like to serve these Shirred Shiitake Eggs with some hot hojicha that I purchased while gallavanting Japan. Plus, if you accidentally over-salt the eggs, the hot tea is the perfect drink to wash and cleanse your palate!

Bon Appetit!

-Erica

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Veggie Collard Green Wrap

Sorry, no recipe for this one. I made this collard green wrap over the summer. It was a great idea, healthy lunch and whatnot, the only problem was that the raw collard green was too bitter for my taste!!

The fillings were fantastic though. I lined the wrap with tomatoes, gouda cheese, carrots, cucumbers, roasted yellow bell peppers, avocados, homemade tzaziki sauce, and Dijon mustard! Yum!

Enjoy!

-Erica

Kkakdugi: Korean Radish Kimchee

I finally got around to making my own kimchee (actually, this was made in the summer, I just got around to uploading the post now)! After watching the Korean drama, Kimchee Family, I have been itching to make my own kimchee!

Note in these photos that I placed the kimchee in 2 differently sized jars. Since it was the first time I was ever going to make kimchee, I did not want the jar to be bubbling over with kimchee juice while it was fermenting. I’ve opened several kimchee jars that I’ve bought from the Asian markets and without fail, every single time, the kimchee cabbage pops its head at least 1 inch out of the jar and the counter top becomes red with kimchee juice. :P Not fun!

After about 55 hours I noticed that the kimchee in each jar shrunk a bit—the radishes shrunk enough that I could just barely fit the smaller jar of kimchee into the larger jar. Great!! Now I only have to keep one huge jar in the refrigerator instead of two unequally sized jars.

Serve with rice and other dishes. I have discovered that kkakdugi is pretty delicious with some spicy ramen! Give it a try, you may find out the same thing too.

Enjoy!

-Erica

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