Tag: Goya

I never got a food post up last week, I forget why. I didn’t want last week’s menu to get lost, though. Why? Because EMPANADAS, THAT’S WHY.

Or, to put it another way:

Knock knock.
Who’s th–
INTERRUPTING EMPANADAS.

Or, to put it another way:

Whatever you’re doing right now is the interruption, when what you really ought to be doing is shopping for empanada ingredients, making empanadas, eating empanadas, or making plans for the next time you will do one of those things. 

We did eat a few other things this week, so here’s the food post:

SATURDAY
I have no idea. This was 400 years ago.

SUNDAY
Chicken caprese sandwiches

Boom.

I have also planted some tomato plants and some basil seeds as of Sunday, so I expect to have some wonderful home-grown basil to eat in about . . . never. I’m the world’s worst gardener and I have the lowest hopes ever for my garden. But I’ve had fun planting it.

MONDAY
Gochujang pork chops, rice, sugar snap peas

I only had a little gochujang left, so I mixed it up with tons of honey and soy sauce and crushed up some garlic, and away we went. If you want a more precise recipe than that, here it is:

Jump to Recipe

I let the pork chops marinate all day and then broiled them in the oven.

This marinade is also wonderful if you cut the pork into strips and marinate it along with matchstick carrots and slices of onion, and then fry it all up on the stovetop. But it’s great on whole pork chops or ribs, too. Pot of rice, some raw sugar snap peas, and you have a great meal.

Someone should give the Koreans an award. 

TUESDAY
Empanadas, beans and rice, pineapple

Okay. Empanada day finally arrived. I had only ever had empanadas once in my life, but somehow got fixated on them, and my experience on Tuesday totally justified that fixation.

I will tell you in advance the four things I learned:

1. Goya sells empanada dough discs that are cheap and super easy to use, and they taste great. I tried the kinds with and without annatto and couldn’t taste much difference, but the ones with were a prettier color. 

2. You can deep fry them or bake them. Frying is not hard, as they hold together well, but baked is way easier. Baked tastes different from deep fried, but it’s honestly just as delicious. Hear me now: The harder way is not clearly superior. 

3. I realize I’m from New Hampshire, but it seems to me you can put whatever you want inside the dough and cook it and call it an empanada, and it will probably be delicious. 

4. If you have some spicy filling and some mild filling, and some plain dough and some dough with annatto, and you are going to bake some and fry some, and thus you have six, no, twelve different varieties of empanadas that you have to make in batches, and they look more or less the same from the outside, and even though it’s very hot and you’re standing over a pot of hot oil and you’re running late and you don’t know if anyone’s going to eat this food, but you think you can probably keep all the different varieties straight in your head if you pay attention . . . you know what, go ahead, you cockeyed optimist. 

Anyway, they were just delicious. I loved them so much.  Like at one point during the week, I got up out of bed to rummage around in the fridge and eat some cold empanadas, even though we’re going to an awards banquet and I’m trying to fit into this trashy dress I got from Shein. That’s how much I liked these empanadas. 

I followed this Argentinian Smitten Kitchen recipe (omitting the raisins). But when I tasted the finished product, it was astonishingly bland, even after I increased all the suggested spices. So I did half with the bland filling for the kids, and then I added a bunch of stuff to the rest: a bunch of chili powder, some red pepper flakes, salt, and quite a bit more cumin than I planned, because the top fell off the jar. 

It’s so easy. You grab a disk, you slap a spoonful of filling on,

flip it closed and crimp it with a fork,

give it a little egg wash, and bake it. I used a heaping tablespoon of filling for 5-inch wrappers. I kind of smooshed the scoop into an oblong, to make it more evenly distributed, but the wrapper holds up well and you could probably smoosh it after crimping, too.

I tried using a little dumpling press I have, but it was a bit too small and didn’t save any time. The dough was very easy to work with, though, and I made forty empanadas in a short time. As you can see, the dough discs are separated with squares of plastic film, so they separate easily. 

Here’s the inside. You can see that the baked ones, like this one, come out perfectly crisp and flaky.

The fried ones have a more blistered outside.

This would make great party food. I made the empanadas in the morning and baked and fried them before dinner.

I stacked the raw empanadas two deep until I was ready to use them, and they kept their shape very well (but I wouldn’t do that for longer than several hours, probably). I believe you can also freeze the raw or cooked empanadas. They held up in the refrigerator for several days very well.

Just an A+ all star food. I’m going to keep the wrappers on hand and use them when I’ve got leftover meat from tacos, carnitas, chili verde, pulled pork, or any number of things. I also want to try putting potatoes and/or cheese in there.

We also had fresh pineapple, and beans and rice. The beans and rice was delicious. I made it with rice, black beans, canned tomatoes with chili, fresh cilantro, chili powder, red pepper flakes, salt, and cumin. It wasn’t that great, so I dumped in some salsa from a jar and then it was delicious. Lots of compliments. 

WEDNESDAY
Chicken quesadillas

I vaguely remember this. 

THURSDAY
Meatball subs

Just my regular meatball recipe,

Jump to Recipe

except I threw in a jar of green pesto and half a jar of red pesto, and it was very tasty. I ended up having a couple of meatballs for lunch, and then Damien and I went to the church for dinner, where they were having a meal presentation for the capital campaign. It’s a great parish and of course we’re going to pledge what we can, but I’m looking forward to the personalized letter where they squint at us and make a suggestion about what they think we, specifically, can afford. People tend to think we are probably tottering on destitution. Which we kind of are (some punk stole my debit card at the beach and went on an Amazon shopping spree right at the end of the month, which didn’t help!), but only in pockets, because we have weird priorities. Like I can finally buy myself a box of Ziplock bags (well, Great Value zipping locking bags) without breaking into hives, and we are renting a house on Cape Cod for a week this summer, but also I couldn’t find my toothbrush the other day, and it turned out one of my children had thrown it out, because it didn’t seem possible to her that that could be someone’s current toothbrush. A perfectly good toothbrush, that I’d grown very attached to over the years! Anyway, we’ll see what the letter says. My mother’s friend Eileen once donated some canned goods to her church’s Christmas food drive and then, on Christmas day, she opened her door to find on her porch a cheery basket containing, yes, those same exact cans. Supplies! Anyway, the church dinner was delicious, although my caesar salad had way more chicken in it than Damien’s. And that’s my meatball recipe.

FRIDAY
Spaghetti or something

Okay, now we’re all caught up! Got some nice summery recipes coming up for this week, so y’all come back!

And I’m reading over this post and realizing I told the interrupting empanada joke wrong. It’s supposed to be: 

Knock knock. 
Who’s there?
Interrupting empanada. 
Interrupting empanad–

and then there would be the sound an interrupting empanada would make. But I don’t know what that would be, which is, I suppose, why I got the joke wrong. You know it’s been a long time since anyone has asked me for advice on how to become a writer. Coincidence, I suppose.