Chile

This morning I awoke to an email from a friend asking if I'd heard about the earthquake in Chile. I hadn't, so immediately turned on the news and found out that the country I lived in for 5 years and in many ways consider my home country was hit by a terrible earthquake.

Watched the news for about 3 hours before deciding I couldn't sit in front of CNN all day. So I decided to bake something classically Chilean. At first I thought perhaps Pastel de Choclo or Ensalada Chilena. I decided instead upon Empanadas de Pino. So I set to work after a trip to the grocery store.

First up, the Pino. I was afraid that perhaps my onions were a bit old, since one of them seemed to want to be in the ground:

 

My others seemed to be ok, though, so I could proceed chopping, sauteeing, adding in beef and spice and end up with the final pino:

  

Once the pino was in the fridge, I needed to make the dough. Now, if I'm honest, pastry dough of any sort scares me silly. I just can't do it like my dad can, so why try? But, my dad's not in Baltimore so I must make an attempt.

The first part I've got down, I can cut the butter and shortening into the flour mixture. Easy as..pie!

Now comes the hard part. Slowly added the eggs/water mixture with a spoon until I couldn't stir it anymore. I tried the dough hook on my KitchenAid, as the recipe said, but I have trust issues when it comes to dough hooks, so quickly switched to the old fashioned way. Kneaded it, then made it into a ball and let it sit for an hour.

After the required hour, I cut it up (everyone should have a dough cutter in their kitchen!) and made it into a bunch of beautiful balls.

 

Next came the best part! Roll it out, fill it up, seal it. They're filled with the aforementioned Pino, raisins, a piece of a hard boiled egg, and olives (whatever you do, do NOT chop up the olives like the recipe says).

 

 

Made a few and then coated 'em with an egg and milk mixture

Baked for 30 or so minutes and then put them on some wire racks to cool.

  

And let me tell you, these are everything you could desire in life. The pastry dough is a little bit sweet, the delicious savory inside with those occasional bits of sweet raisins. So so good.

In other news, if you're in the Maryland area and would like to try some of these, please please let me know! I leave for Japan in 5 days and I have 25 of these.

The recipe I used is here but I can't say I followed it exactly, just as a guide. I measured nothing other than the empanada dough.