Veg Empanada

Empanadas are a wonderful thing. In an empanada, the crust is going to provide the texture, and the filling is there primarily for flavor.

Baking a delicious filling enclosed inside a melt in mouth buttery tart base dough. Empanadas. You can change the filling depending on your taste.

This week, Bake Along #67, Subhashini gave us Empanada recipe with paneer filling. I followed Subhashini’s recipe to T, just changed the filling and made potota peas corn filling. This turned out so YUM!

Here’s Veg Empanada recipe-

Ingredients:

Butter – 75 gms, cold
All-purpose flour – 1 ½ cups
Water – 4 tablespoons
Salt – ¼ teaspoon

For the filling- (You can make any filling of your choice, Paneer, chicken, different veggies combination, etc)

Potato – 3 medium sized (boiled, peeled, and mashed roughly)
Frozen Green peas and sweet corn – 1 ½ cup (Microwave for 2 minutes)
Onion – 1 finely chopped
Cumin seeds – 1 tsp
Garam Masala powder – 2 tsp
Red chilli powder – 3 tsp
Turmeric powder – 1 tsp
Oil for sautéing the mixture – 1 tbsp
Salt to taste

Cheddar cheese – 100 gms, grated.
Milk – 1 tablespoon, for milkwash

Method:

1. Pre-heat your oven to 180 degree C. Line up your baking tray with butter paper or a silicon mat. Grate the cold butter into a bowl. Add flour, salt and water into it.

2. Use your finger tips to combine the butter and flour thoroughly. Do not knead yet. Once the butter has been incorporated completely, knead very briefly add 1 tbpsn pf water at a time and make a soft dough. Do not over knead.

3. Heat oil in the pan; add cumin seeds. Add chopped onion, sauté until they are caramelized.

4. Add the garam Masala powder, turmeric, salt and red chilli powder. Add corn and green peas and few tspns of water, let it cook .

5. Now add mashed potato, mix until they are blended well with the masala mixture.

6. Let the mixture cool completely before you fill.

7. Roll out the dough to ½ cm thickness, on your counter top or on a silicon mat. You can dust with flour if it gets sticky. I didnt have to dust, as it was not sticky.

8. Use a round cutter, any size of your choice. Cut out the dough into circles.

9. Add the filling into each cut out dough and add grated cheese on top of the filling. Quantity of filling depends on the size of your cutter.

10. Place another circle shaped cut dough on top of the filling, Using your fingers, join bottom and top dough, when you have gone all the way around, start pinching top and bottom together with your thumb and index finger and turning them half way in, that way you end up with a rope-like border.

11. Make a 1 inch hole in the middle of the top layer. This will help hot air exit the empanada while it’s baking without breaking the cover.

12. You can use left-over dough to decorate the empanada, using rounds, bows, lines

13. Arrange them on a baking paper/ silicon mat lined baking tray spaced just an inch apart. Milk/egg wash and bake in pre-heated oven at 180 degree C for about 20 to 30 minutes until the top becomes golden brown.