Hey y'all! Welcome to this installment of In The Kitchen, where I tell you about my attempts at trying to cook for myself. I've progressed a good bit in this area since I was jokingly referred to as Betty Crocker by my friends in college after burning a Poptart in our dorm room and stealthily throwing it away in the trash can as far as possible from my room to throw off any suspicion, but I'm still not going to voluntarily cook for too many people.
However, as I mentioned last time, this pandemic has brought out a love for cooking classes via Zoom. Yelp has been offering some awesome virtual events, and when they had one for empanadas, one of my favorite foods, I knew I had to sign up.
The class was taught by a chef out of Baltimore, and we were sent a list of ingredients and a recipe to follow along with. The recipe she sent was for black bean and corn empanadas, which I would love, by Momma Hungry would hate. (Momma Hungry HATES beans.) So, I decided that I would just improvise. I would make beef and cheese empanadas instead.
But then I hit up the google machine and got some brilliant ideas - why not make a VARIETY OF EMPANADAS?! So I settled on beef and cheese, all cheese, and Nutella empanadas. A full meal in tiny little empanada discs.
I was extremely grateful that we were not making the dough from scratch, but finding empanada discs was a challenge! I went to Winn-Dixie because I knew I had seen them there before. I confidently stroll up to where the Goya frozen products are and had a minor panic attack. The shelf where they should be was empty. After trying to make them appear with my mind (which didn't work), I tried to think of other stores I had seen them because I did not want to spend all day driving store to store for them. In a last ditch effort, I started moving items around and happened to find 2 packages, exactly the amount I needed. Maybe I did make them appear with my mind after all? 😲
Once I got home, I started cooking. I got my oil heated and ready to fry and then went to figuring out which ones to make first. I went with the beef and cheese ones. I browned and drained my ground beef, then started building the empanada. I wanted to make sure these didn't come apart in the frying process (like my fried pizzas did when I made those) so I read that you were only supposed to put 1 tablespoon of filling into each disc. It was hard to follow that rule, but I did. While it doesn't seem like it would be enough filling, it really is. Aside from one of them having a nose on it, I think the first batch turned out pretty well.
See the nose on that one in the upper right?
Next up, was my batch of all cheese. One thing I learned, is that for all cheese ones, you can definitely put more than one tablespoon of cheese in these. Since the cheese melts, it almost seems as if nothing is in it once you cook it. This is one I need to try again to perfect before I attempt to serve them to people that don't live with me. Aside from that, these turned out ok. They looked like they were supposed to and I was feeling pretty confident in my empanada making skills and mentally debating if it was worth cleaning my house to invite people over to cook these for them.
Cheese only
At this point, I am super confident and starting working on my dessert empanadas - Nutella filled. I filled the first two and put them in to fry and while I was working on the next two, I forgot one very important thing about my oven. Keep something going on the stovetop too long without turning the fan on and the smoke alarm goes off. And sure enough, it starts going off.
Just so you know, the smoke alarm goes off so much that kiddo doesn't even come down stairs when it happens anymore.
But back to the story ... so while I'm turning on the vent, opening and shutting the front door and having Papa Hungry wave a towel in front of the smoke alarm, I remember that 2 of my 4 dessert empanadas are in the oil. I couldn't save them, they came out burnt. And while they tasted burnt, you could tell that had they not been burnt, they would have tasted pretty good. And that was my ego getting shot down for thinking I should cook empanadas for other people.
Can you spot the burnt ones? 😂
This meal was mostly a success. Most of the empanadas turned out almost like they were supposed to. I felt better when someone, who forgot to mute themselves on the cooking class, also had their smoke alarm start going off in the middle of class. And I'm getting more comfortable using my fryer, and also more comfortable at filming myself attempting these recipes for my Instagram stories. So thank you to Yelp Baltimore for putting on a class that was easy to follow with not too many steps so someone who is not totally comfortable in the kitchen could still follow along and have fun.
Is this content that you enjoy seeing? Should I post more of my attempts to cook for y'all? Let me know!
