Filipino Empanadas

This weekend felt a bit like a cooking weekend. We decided to do some freeze-ahead meals for quick weekday lunches and dinners. Of the things we made, we made some filipino empanadas. These empanadas are like pocket meat pies. I made the dough in accordance to some site that I found, but unfortunately never bookmarked (ugh - sorry if this happens to be your empanada dough recipe.)

For the filling, I didn’t really follow a recipe and didn’t measure any of the ingredients. This is one of those recipes where you can play around with the amounts of the ingredients and it’ll taste good. Here’s the basic recipe that I followed.

For the dough:

• ½ cup butter
• 3 oz cream cheese
• 1 cup flour
  

1. cream butter and cream cheese together. It may help to microwave it for a few seconds first.
2. Add flour, mix well.
3. Wrap in wax paper, & refrigerate overnight
   

For the filling:

• ground beef


• minced onions


• minced garlic


• potatoes nearly minced


• raisins


• soy sauce, salt, pepper to taste

1. brown the meat


2. add onions and garlic, cook for a minute or two (til onions are soft)


3. add the potatoes and raisins, stir


4. add soy sauce, salt and pepper to taste.


5. Cover and simmer for a few minutes (maybe 5 or so)


6. remove from heat and let it cool down in pan (this will give the raisins some time to absorb some of that yummy meat sauce.


7. When it has cooled down, strain the meat with a strainer and let it continue to strain overnight in the fridge.

Wrapping:

1. Take a piece of the dough (about 1 ½" size ball), and knead a bit to make the rolling out a bit easier. Have flour on hand for dusting, you’ll need to do that a lot. Roll out the small ball into a circle that is about 5" diameter and about 1/8" thick.


2. Take a heaping spoon of drained filling on one side of the rolled out dough (but not too close to the edge).


3. Fold over dough and pinch down the edge a bit. You can use a fork to pinch it down better.


4. Place on cookie sheet and make more til you’re out of dough.
   (If you end up with some extra filling, eat it as is with some rice, it’s tasty).


5. Brush a little beaten egg on top of each empanada for shininess.


6. Cook empanadas in a 375 degree F oven for about 15 to 20 minutes or til golden brown.


7. Let cool and enjoy!

Notes:

• You can freeze the cooled down empanadas in a freezer bag, to reheat just put in the microwave for a minute or so.


• You can probably use a simple pie recipe, or even buy the pie dough from the store.