Empanadas Argentinas

So, you guys may not know, but me and husband are going to Argentina! We'll be there overt the first week of march! 9 days of travel! I could not be more excited!

Husband travels a lot because of work, but we don't get to travel a lot togethr, and this is gonna be our first trip together thie year! So, Yey!!

I was thinking, what better way to celebrate this trip than cooking argentinian food!

And what better than Empanadas! Although I have to admit that the first time I had Empanadas were in Chile, I've never been in Argentina before. In Chile they had a type of savory pastry. Filled with seared meat, saute onions, green olives and hard boiled eggs. They were called Empanada de Pino. Delicious! Everything was an excuse to have Empanadas, and I decided to bake them home for this Argentine Special!

Boy, if I knew it would be that easy, and that tasty, I would be doing this ages ago!

Meat Argentine Empanadas

Materials

Dough

2 1/2 cups flour
1/4 cup butter
1/2 cup warm water
1 teaspoon salt

Filling

350g meat chopped in bits
1/2 shalot
1/2 yellow onion
2 garlic cloves
3 tablespoons of butter
spicy paprika
pepper
salt
4 tablespoons chive
50 g green olive
1/2 cup water
2 tablespoons flour
2 eggs
1 egg yolk


Methods

• Mix the flour, salt  and butter untill well incorporated. Add the water and mix well until a smooth dough. Cover with plastic and let it rest while you prepare the filling
• Boil water to hard boil the eggs
• Chop the garlic, shalots and onion. Saute in butter untill brown and soft.
• Stir in the meat and fry well until brown. Season with pepper, salt and paprika
• Add the chopped chives and green olives and mix.
• Add the water and flour and mix until start geting thick
• Slice the hard boiled eggs and and roughly smash it with a fork.
• Open the dough in a floured surface. Cut in circles of 10 cm of diameter. You gonna get around 10 of them.
• You can put up to 1 1/2 spoons of the meat filling and top with 1 spoon of eggs.
• Wet the edges of the circles and close. Spread egg yolk on top of it and bake at 180ºC until golden brown.

Experimental observations

You can also make Empanadas filled with cheese. But this meat one is classic, and that's what I was going for.

You want to really fiil the pastry, tastes really rich and meaty like this!

If you have some leftover of the filling, save it to make a sandwich! Or eat straight from the pan... Like I, not proudly, did.

Korean BBQ

Cooking for someone is a leap of faith.

When somebody tries your food, is a commitment bigger than telling someone to make a comment on something you wrote or drawn. Because, first of all, the person must trust you are not gonna poison them. And than, to make a judgment, the person must eat what you made! Taste it, put it in their mouth and swollow it! How big of a trust is that!? What if doesn't taste good? What if it is in fact, poisoned? What if it is poisoned on purpose?!

But what if is good? If it's good, the one that tasted it now owns you respect! And might be in fact willing to listen to what you have to say because, nobody can cook this good without something in their head!

Somehow Korean Meatballs

I don't know how, or why... But my blog gets a lot of visitors from Korea. Trust me, this is amazing for me! I don't know how they get here, but they get, and I love it!

Husband and me, we are big fans of South Korean movies! Oldboy, The Host, Mother, Thirst... You name it, we like it! And when I told him about the korean visitors, he was as in awe as I was! So, I was looking for something korean to make, not that I wanted to teach them how to make they're food, but to show my other country visitors some of this amazing culinary.

New year and BBQ Special Ribs

The first complete week of this new year! Happy new year again you guys! I'm so so sorry because the last post was so short, I was literally falling asleep when I wrote it and I had to get up early in the next morning. You know, work. So that's why the post was so meh in my opinion. Let me make up with this one by telling you guys a bit about how was New Year here!

This was me two days before the NYE. We had a lot of heat, a lot of sun and suddenly rain! Could not help but had this photo.

Sweet, Sour, Swine!

We're getting closer to the holydays! Every food blog is going crazy about Christmas yuminess. 

Here in Brazil we eat different things for christmas. We eat pork, cod fish, Turkey (we don't have Thanks Giving Day, so Christmas is our Turkey day). You guys have to remember, we're going through summer here! So, we don't actually have hot cocoa, but we do have chocolate desserts!

Since I started here not too long ago, I was getting used to the blogsphere. Now it's my turn to start showing off some of our food. And how about we start off with some Pork Loin? 

I found myself wondering what to do with it... Hmmm... Pork Loin always goes well with something sweet. So... What better than Honey Mustard Marinated Pork?