The joys of fried things: Empanadas

Fried food is a wonderful, wonderful thing. And if you are frying something with a lot of vegetables, you don’t even have to feel too guilty about it. Vegetables make everything slightly healthy, right? Well, that was my logic with empanadas – they may be pockets of fried dough, but at least on the inside, its basically just veggies and spices. The recipe I chose is from Moosewood’s website. Moosewood is a vegetarian restaurant that puts out a lot of cookbooks. I’ve never actually been to the restaurant, but I’ve used their cookbooks – although some of them include fish. I’m sorry but fish is meat – they are animals and therefore they are meat. Period.

Empanandas de Papas – A somewhat time-consuming recipe, but fairly straight-forward. I used red peppers instead of green, and left out the pimentos and cream cheese. I don’t like cream cheese unless its in cookies or cheesecake, so adding it seemed unnecessary. I also tripled the amount of spices. In reality, everyone should spice to taste, though you should always still be able to taste the underlying ingredients.

The filling – it’s so much prettier than the finished empanada

About the empanada dough – it took a bit more water than the recipe said, but it also helped that I let it sit awhile – it made the dough more pliable. Finally – I don’t deep-fry things, so I just pan-fried this in olive oil. It worked fairly well.

the finished product

I love this recipe – It’s yummy but its also a complete meal that I can easily take to work during the week, which is definitely a factor when I chose what I’m going to cook on any given week. You can eat them plain, or top with salsa or more cheese … Ok, writing this post has made me hungry, so I’m off to leftover land!