Empanadas

I was craving something different for dinner last night and was browsing through some cookbooks for ideas.  I came upon a Pioneer Woman (Ree Drummond) recipe that she calls "Meat Pies".  It turns out they were exactly the same thing as something my Argentine cousin/sister makes that she calls "Empanadas".  Whatever you call these wonderful little hand pies, they start with a delicious meat filling.  This was a mixture of ground beef, Anaheim chilies, onion, tomato paste, and some savory spices (chile powder, cumin), shredded Jack cheese and parsley.  Making the filling is quick and easy, but then the real work begins.  Once your filling is cooled down, you have to roll out little balls of dough and fill them and shape them into turnovers.

Making 36 of these was taking forever, so I enlisted my husband's help to do the crimping and egg wash on the little turnovers.  He was an excellent crimper.  I highly recommend an assembly line process with this recipe.

Our finished "meat pies" were so pretty and quite delicious to eat.  We did our best but we only could eat about 10 of the 36 turnovers, so we are saving the leftovers to serve on Tuesday when Sara comes to dinner.  The recipe says you can freeze the finished pies and reheat later.  

The only change I would make is the following:  PW's recipe called for using frozen dinner roll dough, which you thaw, let rise and roll out to form the turnover crust.  My cousin always uses pie crust for her dough and it is better.

I hope you had a great weekend.  It was grey and dreary here, and I was having some back issues, so I took it easy.  We did venture out on Sunday afternoon and took Eva to see Dr. Doolittle, which was actually pretty funny.  Lots of "adult" jokes that would go right over the little ones' heads if you know what I mean.  We all agreed that the polar bear was our favorite animal character in the movie.