Empanadas empanadas!
When we were in Barcelona we all fell in love with this little empanada shop down the street from where we were staying. For something like 1 Euro they sold these puffy little empanadas with eggplant and gherkins. Yes, gherkins. And they were delicious. In a fit of Sunday afternoon nostalgia we attempted a recreation.
You’ll need
Pastry
- 3 cups (450g / 1lb) plain flour
- 2 1/2 tsp sea salt
- 200ml of water
- 1tsp white vinegar
- 1 egg
- 80g butter
- 1/2 tsp of baking powder
- An extra egg, beaten (for brushing over the top)
Filling
- about half a cup of roughly cut gherkins
- 250ml of tomato puree
- two eggplants (or one big one) roughly chopped
- 5-6 button mushrooms quartered
- handful of peas
- half a brown onion diced
- 2 cloves of garlic (crushed)
- 5 tsp of mango pickle (see picture below)
- salt and pepper
After making them, we thought a bit of goats cheese wouldn’t go astray either.
To cook
Mix the pastry ingredients together and knead until smooth. Refrigerate for 1-2 hours.
Fry the onion and garlic in some olive oil. Add the mushrooms and eggplant and keep frying. Once soft, add the rest of the ingredients and simmer for 20 minutes until the eggplant is really soft. The mango pickle is critical, you can get it at Indian grocery stores and it looks like this:
Leave the mixture to cool until the pastry is ready.
To assemble, roll the pastry out until it’s half a cm thick and cut into rectangles (or you know, whatever shape you like). Place a little mixture to one side and fold over. Brush with the egg and bake at 180 degrees C until brown.
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