One for the Road

I spent this weekend with my sister, who lives in Modi'in. The plan was to do a (short) road trip through some parts of the north of Israel. Modi'in is closer to the center, so we had to leave around 11ish (in the morning).

In order to avoid stopping for lunch and losing time, my sister had the wonderful idea of making empanadas on Friday afternoon. An empanada is a kind of stuffed salty pastry usually filled with meat, egg or vegetables, and cooked either fried or baked.

So she got all the ingredients. We didn't exactly follow a recipe, so I'll just explain what we used (but I'm unsure about amounts). You should use about 1 onion, 1 boiled egg, half a cup of olives, some (??) ground beef, and the empanada disks. You will also need egg yolk for the end. Depending on whether you fry it or not, you'll need oil. The yield for this is about two dozens.

The recipe goes as follows. Chop up the onion into very small and thin pieces. I tried doing this, but just started crying in the middle of it. It was just too much. I have to say that I found newly earned respect for my brother in law for doing this without blinking. After you've manned up and chopped the onions, fry them until their transparent. Then throw in the ground beef (with some salt, sugar and paprika) until it is cooked.

This is sort of what it should look like.

Afterwards, let it cool down for a minute. Throw in the olives and the chopped up boiled egg. Then taste this. It should taste pretty awesome. 

Now, here's the tricky part. Take a empanada thingy, put some stuffing in it, and fold it. I don't know how. This is what it should look like (my sister did this one, mine looked terrible). 

Doing this is way harder than what it looks like.  

Afterwards, brush them with egg yolks. Then put them in the oven until they're golden or brownish. This is what it should look like. 

Some people like them fried better. I include myself amongst these, but my sister insisted in baking them. 

I wanted to make some here, in my dorm. However, I couldn't find the disks in my local supermarket. Maybe I'll get some from my sister's place and bring them back. 

In any case, I'm digressing a bit from the whole 'Israeli-cuisine' idea of this blog, but that's ok. Until the next post.