Its a small, small world - Empanadas

When I left my small hometown at the ripe old age of 18, I didn’t really know what to expect of my big move to the BIG Apple. Starting college is such a surreal experience and landing in the middle of Manhattan makes it that much more exciting. I think the main reason NYC is such a sensory explosion is because you spend most of your time walking, as opposed to driving. As you pound the pavement, you are forced to use all 5 senses to take the world in.

I think my favorite part of walking around is the smell. No, I’m not joking here because if you truly breathe it in, Manhattan smells like FOOD! If you are in little Italy, you can smell the rice balls frying by Tony’s. If you are in Chinatown, take a whiff in front of Noodletown and the smell of roast pork will knock your socks off. If you are by NYU, you can smell pizza and Starbucks on every corner. Those smells and the availability of food is what brought my inner foodie out to play. I never realized how much food fascinated me until I moved to, what I consider the international food capital of the world.

My fascination not only came from the accessibility of cuisine but the variety. My small town upbringing didn’t provide me with a vast array of foods to sample. We ate home most nights and ordered out for pizza on Fridays. But in Manhattan, I could have Thai on Monday, Korean BBQ on Tuesday and Indian on the weekend…hello Freshman Fifteen!

It was amazing to learn, through food, how other cultures live and eat. I realized that all over the world, we are all eating different versions of the same dish. My spaghetti is someone else’s lo mein. For every dish I grew up eating, I could find another with the same base, just the spices and ingredients tweaked to fit what was available to those who were preparing it in their far away land.

This revelation, for me, brought about a strong acceptance and understanding of all the different faces on the new streets I was exploring. I had a flashback to seven years old, sitting on a ride at Disney World I made my dad stand in line for over and over again because I loved all those little dolls singing about how similar we all really are. Maybe, through food, we can see it’s a small world after all.

This post’s recipe is Beef Empanadas because I remember that the first time I had this delicious Cuban food I thought, this is like a Jamaican meat pie or Polish pierogi or Chinese dumpling…just a bit different. Seems like every culture took some dough, added a yummy filling and serves it to their family for dinner!

Beef Empanadas

For the dough, I just take store bought pie crust (the ones that are rolled out) and cut circles with glass. Someday, I’ll make the dough from scratch but for now…

Filling:

Olive Oil
1 lbs of ground beef
3 cloves of garlic, chopped fine
1 onion
1/3 cup golden raisins
One lime, juice and zest
Slivered almonds
Salt and Pepper
1 teaspoon cumin
¼ cup tomato sauce

Get a frying pan nice and hot and drop the olive oil in. Once its warm, sauté and onion and garlic until fragrant. Put the raisins in and move them around until they are plump. Toss in the lime zest, the juice the almonds and the spices.

Remove it all from the pan and drop a little more olive oil. Now sauté the beef until nice and brown, then drain the meat of any excess fat and water. Throw all the aromatic onion mixture back in and toss until combined. Throw ¼ cup of tomato sauce to make the filling a little moist but not too wet.

Use a tablespoon and drop some filing in the middle of each dough round. Fold them over and use a fork to make an imprint along the crease. Bake at 400 for 15 minutes.

If you have chicken, you can substitute the beef. Another good idea is if you have left over pork chops, make them into a small dice and use them too! Its fun to serve a variety. Make more of the onion mixture and then you can mix it into all three meats! Enjoy!!