At Home in Kanesville: Empanadas

Today September 18th is Chile's Independence Day (Fiestas Patrias) and because she is such a wonderful person Pamela K from the Pheasant Meadow ward has "volunteered" to share how she makes a traditional Chilean dish. Empanadas. (Pamela, I won't close the comments on this so your free to re-but the volunteer part if you want).

Chilean empanadas can have a wide range of fillings, but three basic types are the most popular: One is baked and filled with pino, a traditional filling consisting of beef, onions, raisins, black olives, and a hard boiled egg. The second is usually filled with seafood and fried. The third type contains cheese and may be baked or fried, although the latter form is more common.
Many variations on each of these basic types are found (e.g.: pino without raisins and olives, all kinds of seafood such as mussels, crab, prawns, or locos (similar to abalone), and mixed shrimp/cheese, etc.). They are considerably larger than the Argentine type, usually with one empanada being enough for a meal.

Pamela made the first kind with the pino filling and you can tell she know what's she's doing because the recipe has a lot of, a bit of this and a bit of that.

Here you go though with pictures to help.

The pino should ideally be made before hand so that it can be cool. (This will probably make around 2 dozen empanadas)

Pino
4 medium sized diced white onions
3 lbs. ground beef
3 tsp salt
1 Tbsp paprika
1 1/2 tsp ground cumin
1/2 tsp ground chili
1 tsp garlic powder
1/2 cup water and one beef bouillon cube

1/2 cup raisins, soaked in a little water
5 - 6 hard boiled eggs, pealed and sliced
1 can black olives

Cook the onions in a little oil until soft (not crisp), add spices and then ground beef, until cooked. It should be the consistency of a thick sauce not dry and crumbly.

Cool

Pastry
9 cups flour
1 cup shortening
2 - 3 cups of milk
2 egg yolks
2 tsp salt

First mix the egg yolks, salt and milk, melt the shortening and add all the liquid ingredients to the flour. Mix until combined but don't knead. Dough should be elastic and not sticky.
Divide and roll to about 1/2 a centimeter thickness. It works best when you roll out small (handful) sized piece of dough at a time. Cut into rectangles or circles. Circles the size of small dinner plates (or about 7 inches across) or 6" x 8" rectangles make a kid-friendly sized empanada.

fill the empanada with pino, egg, olive and raisins

Scoop a few tablespoons of meat mixture onto circle. Then top with a slice of hard boiled egg, 3-4 soaked raisins and a black olive. Fold the circle almost in half and moisten the exposed edge. Crimp the lower edge up. Brush with a beaten egg yolk and a squirt of milk, then prick the dough four or five times with a pin.

brush the tops with egg yolk mixture to achieve a golden brown color

prick the pastry to release steam

Bake at 350 degrees until golden brown (about 30 minutes).

"let's eat now please"

printable recipe

Because there was extra "pino" left over she went ahead and made another dish called Pastel de Choclo. It's like a casserole with pino at the bottom, all the same knickknacks spread over it and a paste of slightly sweetened corn on top.

Pastel de Choclo

3 lbs of corn kernels (frozen and thawed or fresh)
process them to make a creamy paste, cook in a pot with 3 tablespoons of butter and 1/3 cup of sugar until it boils. stir constantly for another 3-5 minutes.
then you put the same filling you use for empanadas (about 1and 1/2 lbs of ground beef) on a 9x13'' pan

sprinkle it with the same goodies: sliced hard-boiled eggs, olives and raisins
spread the corn, dot with some butter and sprinkle some sugar for a nice golden- brown
bake at 400 for 20 minutes and then broil for 3 minutes