Eating Chilean Pantrucas—noodles

If you, by some old man’s whim, should decide to go to a “creole” restaurant or to one that is “Chilenized” to ask for pancuritas in tongue broth, or pancuritas by themselves, it is very possible that they would kick you out, or at the least, look discourteously down their noses while the “chef” grumbles something like “What kind of restaurant does this guy take us for?
 Never the less …. pancurtas or panturcas, perfectly made, are as good as the best Italian raviolis and are one of the foundations of our cuisine. (Enrique Lafourcade,  La Cocina Erótica del Conde de Lafourchette, Lom Ediciones, 1997  p. 22, all translations are mine)

Pantrucas,  pancurtasor pancuritas, as Lafourcade’s fictional count calls them (making them even more homey in the diminutive), are simple noodles of flour, water, salt and fat—and sometimes an egg—rolled out thin, cut into squares and added to soup. 

Pantrucas in broth                  
photo: Cuisine with a Chilean flavor

Among the more humble of Chilean dishes, they still have a place in Chileans’ hearts, and are such an icon of home cooking that one of the US’s fewChilean restaurants took Pantrucas for its name--though they don’t appear on the menu.

Chilean food blogs’ recipes for pantrucas are fairly common; often with comments that they are an old family dish, usually cooked in the broth from a holiday turkey carcass.  Here’s a typical recipe from “Recetas chilenas de cocina” (Chilean kitchen recipes):

Pantrucas 

The first thing is to prepare a substantial “full bodied” broth. The old timers used the carcass of a roast turkey, boiled until it had contributed all of its substance, or water where pork hocks, or pigs feet, or pork-rolls (arrollado huaso) had been cooked.

If you don’t have one of these, make broth by boiling beef shanks with onion, carrot and green pepper for a couple of hours; strain this soup and use the meat for another dish, or add it, finely chopped, to the pantrucas.

6 cups broth 

2 egg yokes 

2 tablespoons of minced parsley 

1 tablespoon minced chives

2 cups flour 

1 egg 

1 tablespoon vegetable oil 

salt and warm water 

Make a soft dough with flour, egg, oil and warm salt water.  Roll out, cut into 1 ¼ inch squares and add to the boiling broth.  Once they are cooked remove the soup from the fire and add one or two egg yokes beaten with two tablespoons of water.  Sprinkle with minced parsley and/or chives.

One community that continues to eat patrucasregularly is that of Chile’s indigenous people, the Mapuche.  In a recent food satisfaction survey of 400 Mapuches living in Santiago, pantrucaswere the “traditional Mapuche food” eaten by most respondents (92.5%) as well as the most frequently consumed traditional food among 62% of respondents.[1]  A survey by the same authors in Temuco, a city in the Mapuche heartland, also found pantrucasthe most commonly eaten traditional food.[2]

Origins

Maybe Marco Polo brought noodles to Europe from China or maybe they had been there since Etruscan times, but by the 16^th century they were “widely accepted in Spain”[3], and soon, whether remembered or re-invented, they were in Chile.  Chilean historian Eugenio Pereira Salas tells us that by independence:

   

Chilean cuisine had assimilated the succulent menu their ancestors tested over the aromatic wood fires of the colonial period …[including] refalosas (“slipperies”) orpancutras of wheat flour, fat, egg, and grated cheese; all in broth.

But foods, especially humble ones, are not a frequent topic for writers, so the earliest mention of pantrucasI’ve found in Chilean sources comes from considerably later.  It is in Claudio Gay’s “Journey to Araucanía in 1863.”  There he found pantrucas to be common among the Mapuche, made with “wheat kneaded with salt as in making bread” and “torn into pieces by hand and boiled in water with fat, the water serving as broth, and the dough is fried in a pan with a little fat and chili for color.”[4]

So by mid 19^thcentury we have (at least) two ways of making pantrucas, each slightly different from current recipes:  the rural Mapuche used a simple flour, water and salt dough, and if we can accepts Gay’s description, fried them in fat as well as boiling; while in the city the dough included fat, an egg and grated cheese and was served in broth.

And what of the name, “are they called: pantrucas or pancutras?” The Chilean Linguistic Academy answers:

It is certain that both words can name this dish of indigenous origins that has come to form a part of our national cuisine. Never the less, there are differences in the use between the two forms.  The first, “pantruca,” predominates among persons of urban culture; the second, “pancurta,” is the common form in rural areas.  So it seems that there are two coexistent terms to designate the same reality.[5]

Thus the Linguistic Academy tells us that the two terms are equally valid, representing differing urban and rural dialects, and notes in passing that they are “a dish of indigenous origins.”   Chilean Anthropologist Sonia Montecino Aguirre agrees:  “Pantrucas or pancutras: a dish made with pieces of dough boiled in water or in broth.  The word is derived from the Mapuche.”[6]

And to ice the cake, Arturo Hernández Sallés’ Mapudungun, Spanish, and English dictionary gives us the original Mapuche word: Pangkutra.[7]

It all makes perfect sense: inventive Mapuche housewives, needing simple ways to feed their families on wheat flour, adopted as a staple food during the wars with the Spanish invaders (see Mapuche Wheat), mixed flour, water and salt and reinvented the noodle, naming the finished product “pangkutras,” which became pancurtas in Chile’s rural dialect and panturcas in the city.

Or so it seemed. 

Then one day I was watching the Spanish language TV foodies on ElGourmet.com when I heard a familiar word on a program abut the food of Asturias, Spain:  Mikel Alonso’s  “El camino del cantábrico.”  He said:  “pantruques.”

And what the accompanying picture showed were large lumpy dumplings floating in a bowl of bean, pork and blood sausage stew called “fabada”. 

  

Fabada from Restaurante Sidreria Casa El Rubiu, Llanes, Asturias, Spain

 (Photo TripAdvisor)

A coincidence?  Seems unlikely, although about the only thing that Chile’s pantrucasand Asturias’ pantruques have in common is that both are dough cooked in broth. 

But it’s not surprising; I don’t imagine many of those Spanish conquistadores knew much about cooking and dumpling are dumplings, pantruques are pantrucas. And they still may have been reinvented by the Mapuche, even if a lost Asturian named them.

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Having followed my story this far, I can hardly leave you without recipes for pantruques and fabada.   These are from Mariadelas, an Astorian who writes a food blog called “Se me quema la comida:”

She says:

The pantruque is a roll that we make here in Asturias to eat with any kind of stew, fabada, pote asturiano (white bean and pork soup/stew)… along with the cured meats (compangu: blood sausage, chorizo, bacon, cured pork shoulder).

2 ounces bacon, finely minced

½ minced onion 

½ teaspoon paprika (pimentón) 

1 egg 

Salt 

Yellow corn meal[8] 

Mix the bacon with the onion, salt and paprika.  Add the egg and mix well.  Add corn meal a little at a time until you can form it into a roll.  Not too much, it’s better if it’s a little sticky.  It helps to wet your hands in water.   Once you have made the roll, fry it in oil until it is brown.  When the fabada or stew is ready, add the pantruque and cook for another 15 minutes.  Serve in slices.

In Mariadelas’ recipe for fabada she says:

Here in Asturias, we call beans “fabes”(singular faba).  Fabada is a typical regional dish; the best known one. It is a substantial dish but here we eat it as a first course.  At fiestas we usually eat it before the meat… and finish with rice pudding.  The first photo is what we call compangu.  The bacon we use is the kind we call “streaky,” mixed fat and lean, and the lacón is cured pork shoulder.

2 lbs of large white beans (fabes de la granja) 

3 blood sausages 

3 chorizos 

1 lb of lacón 

3 oz of bacon 

Garlic 

1 onion 

1 tablespoon of oil 

A stem of parsley 

Saffron 

Singe the lacón to remove any hairs and soak overnight.  Soak the beans overnight too.  Put the beans, lacón, blood sausages, bacon, minced garlic, the onion cut into four pieces, the parsley and the oil in a large pot, and cover with cold water and bring to a boil, skimming off the foam.  Once it has boiled, lower the heat and cook for a while without a lit.  The beans need to remain completely covered in water or their skins will come loose.  Once and a while you should “scare them,” by adding a half glass of cold water.  Do this two or three times. Stir from time to time to keep from sticking.  Add crumbled saffron.  When the beans are done add salt and remove the onion and parsley.  If the broth is very thin, mash some beans and return to the pot.  It’s better the next day.  Serve with a piece of blood sausage, chorizo, bacon and lacón or what ever you like from the compangu.

And of course, with panturques.

Mariadelas’ Fabada

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[1]  Schnettler, Berta, et. al. 2011. Satisfacción con la alimentación en personas Mapuche en la Región Metropolitana de Santiago, Chile. Arch Latinoam Nutr. 61(2): 172-182  on line at http://www.alanrevista.org/ediciones/2011/2/?i=art9

[2]  Schnettler, Berta, et. al. 2009. Diferencias etnicas y de aculturacion

en el consumo de alimentos en la Region Metropolitana de Santiago, Chile. Arch Latinoam Nutr. 59(4): 407-418. On line at http://www.scielo.cl/pdf/rchnut/v39n1/art02.pdf

[3]International Pasta Organization, History of Pasta.

http://www.internationalpasta.org/index.php?cat=21&item=6&lang=2

[4] Gay, Claudio. “Viaje de la Araucanía en 1863,” as quoted in Ricardo Couyoymdjian,  “Comiendo con los Indios Testimonios de viajeros en la Araucana en el siglo XIX. In Carolina Sciolla, Ed., 2010, Historia y cultura de la alimentación in Chile.  Santiuago: Catalonia. P. 202.

[5] Notas Idiomáticas, Academia Chilena De La Lengua, Correspondiente de la Real Academia Española, , Director: Aifredo Matus Olivkr N9i4 ABRIL 2000  on line at http://www.institutodechile.cl/lengua/notas/NI-14.pdf

[6] Montecino Aguirre, Sonia. 2006.  Identidades, mestizajes y diferencias sociales en Osorno, Chile: Lecturas desde la antropología de la alimentación. PhD thesis, Leiden University. p. 186 on line at https://openaccess.leidenuniv.nl/handle/1887/4864

[7] Hernández Sallés, Andres. 2003.  Mapuche Lengua y Cultura (Mapudungun, Español, Inglés). Pehuen, p 27

[8]Corn did not arrive in Asturias until early in the 17^th century, so the pantruques that early Spanish colonists in Chile knew were different from today’s, perhaps made with chestnut flour, an important dietary staple in pre-Columbian Asturias.  Various European cuisines make chestnut dumplings, but the only Spanish chestnut dumplings I found are sweet. 

Plateada – Chilean pot roast

With the changing seasons—Santiago does have seasons, you know--my wife puts away my shorts and tee-shirts and brings out the corduroy jeans, long sleeved shirts and sweaters.  And wants winter food; this time it was plateada a la caserola with puré de porotos, Chilean pot roast with bean puree.

Roberto Marín’s plateada - La Cocina de Lolo’s version

Plateada is among the 10 most popular home cooked dishes in Chile [1] and appears of the menu of every restaurant serving traditional Chilean Creole cuisine.  It is usually served as pictured, sliced with a little “of its own juice.”  

Plateada, literally “silver plated,” is a cut of beef, uncommon in English speaking countries where it is called “rib cap.” It is a flat muscle (the Spinalis dorsi if you really want to know) that is above the rib eye. The “silver” refers to the silvery skin on the rib side of the cut; on the other side is a thick layer of fat.

The rib cap is labeled “2” and shown in cross section in the rib-eye steak photo below. Of course most Chilean meat cuts are boneless following the lines of the muscles instead of being cut across the grain, so it comes as a flat, irregularly shaped piece of meat weighing a kg. or so. 

Photos:  plateada or rib cap in cross section          ….and whole, trimmed square.

Cooking plateada a la cacerola

“A tremendous national dish of great substance and marked meaty taste,” says Chef Roberto Marín Vivado in Chileans Cooking Chilean Style, plateada a la cacerola is “very tender and flavorful when prepared according to the rules.  It’s offered in all corners of the country with the announcement "Here's the best dish of Chile," ……which in vast majority of the time is a fallacy”.  He continues:

The errors that they always make in preparing plateada are:

1.      Removing all the covering of fat, leaving it thin and naked;

2.      Not marinating it long enough;

3.      Not browning it well enough;

4.      Not browning the onion and carrot with witch it is cooked;

5.      Adding water which gives the plateada the appearance, consistency and flavor of boiled meat and makes it watery besides.

His instructions are to get a “big thick and fat” plateada and if necessary remove some of the fat yourself, “don’t let the butcher do it.”  Rub it with four cloves of pureed garlic, salt and abundant freshly ground pepper—“at least two of three teaspoons.”  Put it in a sealable plastic bag with three tablespoons each of olive oil and red wine vinegar, expel the air, and put it in the vegetable section of the refrigerator for one or two days.

Heat three tablespoons of oil until almost smoking in a shallow wide pot with a lid.  Remove the meat from the bag, drain thoroughly, reserving the marinade, and put in the hot oil, fat side down.  Brown over high heat to a deep brown color, “I insist, an intense brown color.” If the meat is too big for the pan, cut it and brown in two batches, then remove.

In the abundant fat in the pan, brown four big onions, cut into eighths, and two big carrots cut into thick rounds until they are a nice golden color.  Add the meat, any meat juices that have collected, and the remaining marinade.  Cover the pan tightly and simmer for an hour, turning the meat from time to time. “Remember, don’t add water!”

Transfer the contents of the pan to a pressure cooker and cook for 30 minutes.  Then check for tenderness and if necessary, cook longer. If you don’t have a pressure cooker, continue to simmer in the original coverer pan for another two hours.  In this case, add a little water if necessary to replace the liquid lost in cooking—but in small quantities “to avoid producing boiled meat.”

When the meat is tender, remove from the pan and cut into ¾ inch thick slices across the grain of the meat.  Return the slices to the pan and simmer again until you take it to the table in a deep serving plate with all its juices.

 My plateada a la cacerola with spicy bean purée

In winter serve with the traditional Chilean stewed beans, or spicy bean purée; the rest of the year with rice and mashed potatoes and in summer, with porotos granados (shell beans) or salads.

*********

For once I followed the recipe religiously (more or less---I sieved the juices and left the sad brown veggies behind) and the photo above is what I got. No pressure cooker, but I didn’t have to add water since the vegetables created plenty of liquid and my pan has a tightly sealing lid.  The meat was tender but not falling apart with a very meaty flavor and the juices were rich and slightly sweet from the onions and carrots.  And in classic Chilean style, there was just enough ‘juice’ to moisten the meat… abundant gravy is not Chilean and does not go over the mashed potatoes. 

Or in this case, over the puré picante de porotos, the spicy bean puree, which in Chile is made from “peeled beans.”   They need only 30 to 40 minutes cooking (the package says 20) before being pureed with an emersion blender or food mill. To season the puré, sauté abundant minced bacon with merkén (Chilean ground smoked chili) and paprika for heat and color. When rendered, add minced onion to brown in the fat, and then garlic.  Mix with the bean puré and, to make it muy chileno, add Chilean aliño completo to taste.  It’s Chile’s own masala (complete seasoning) composed of cumin, paprika, oregano, garlic, chili, and pepper).  

It’s a good pot roast, and of course can be made with other braising cuts: chuck/sobrecostilla, brisket/tapapecho, eye of round/pollo ganso, etc.

*********

But why is Chile’s favorite pot roast the plateada, a cut most of us have never heard of? 

Prior to the 20^th century (and during a good portion of it) most Chilean beef came from free ranging Criollo cattle, descendants of stock brought by the Spanish in the 16^th and 17^th centuries.  Four hundred years of natural selection to life in the Chilean central valley produced a strong, vigorous and tough (in all senses of the word) breed of cattle.  The 1882 New Kitchen Manual recommends this: 

                                              

Method for tenderizing meat before preparing it – Before putting on to roast or stew, beat or pound very forcefully for a minute with a wooden rolling pin;  this simple operation is the secret for tender and delicate meat. [2]

And although I found no discussion of plateada  in any historic Chilean cookbook explaining its popularity, I think it's because it turns out to be among the tenderest cuts of beef, ranking 3^rd in tenderness after the tenderloin and the flat iron steak.[3]  In the USA it appears occasionally as “rib cap steak” or rolled, as:

Midwestern Rib Cap

  

“Buckle your seat belts Ladies and Gents; this one is going to knock your socks off.  A little known cut that will amaze you in taste and texture.  The flavor is so intense that almost any description will fall short. A very rich cut so 8 ozs would be a safe serving size. This is a very unique piece of meat, and equally difficult to find, so remember where you saw it.”  Bryans Fine Foods

And here’s a report on rib cap steak from Chowhond, a North American food site:

"Okay, then -- you wanna know how it tasted. Let me tell you, folks, it did not disappoint. It was every bit as tender as a filet mignon, but with all the beefy flavor a filet never has. Ridiculously juicy, magnificently meaty. The best of all possible words."

Hummm….   Maybe I’ll grill the next one.

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[1] Terra, Blog Gouyr.net.  El Terremoto se quedó con el premio Bicentenario.  2010-03-26.  On line athttp://www.terra.cl/gournet/index.cfm?

[2] Anonymous. 1882.  Nuevo manual de cocina: conteniendo 377 recetas de guisos escojidos de las cocinas francesas, española, chilena, inglesa e italiana: arregladas para el uso de las familias del país. p. 40. Valparaíso : Libr. del Mercurio de Orestes L. Tornero  On line at http://www.memoriachilena.cl/temas/documento_detalle.asp?id=MC0003181

[3] Calkins, Chris R. and Gary Sullivan. n.d. Ranking of Beef Muscles for Tenderness. Calkins, Chris R. and Gary Sullivan..  BEEF FACTS  Product Enhancement.  On line at http://www.beefresearch.org/CMDocs/BeefResearch/Ranking%20of%20Beef%20Muscles%20for%20Tenderness.pdf

Chilean Empanadas

Para español, haz click

Roll piece of dough into a circle or rectangle, add a heaping spoon of a savory or sweet mixture, fold the dough over, seal the edges and bake in an oven or fry in oil.  What is the result?

It's a:
 cazone, sromboli, kish, Jamaican patty, Cornish pasty, smbusac, smosa, srudel, bidie, turnover, brek, pgača, perogi, bierock, runza, calzone, panzerotti, jiaozi, mandu, gyōzain, curry puff,  momo, or maybe a Natchitoches meat pie.

In Chile (and most of South American) it is an empanada.

 

Chilean baked empanadas

Why so many names and varieties?  Practically everywhere that there was wheat--from northern Europe and north Africa to India and China and the whole world by 1700 or so--it was ground and mixed with water to make dough.  And some of that dough was filled with a mixture of meat, fish, cheese, vegetables or fruit and fried or baked. The result was tasty, portable and handy to eat out of hand.

Where and when were these filled pastries first made?  No one knows but, central Asia sometime before the 9^th century AD seems like a good bet. 

Arab cookery books of the 10th and 13th Centuries refer to the pastries as sanbusak (the pronunciation still current in Egypt, Syria, & Lebanon), sanbusaq or sanbusaj, all reflecting the early medieval form of the Persian word: sanbosag. Claudia Roden (1968) quotes a poem by Ishaq ibn Ibrahim-al-Mausili (9th Century) praising the sanbusaj. [1]

And from there they surely came to Spain with the conquering Arabs, sometime after 711 AD.  Remarkably, they left us a recipe.  It is from an anonymous Andalusian cookbook, The Book of Cooking in Maghreb and Andalus in the era of Almohads, of the13^th century. 

A Pie [Mukhabbazah] of Lamb

Make meatballs of lamb with all the spices and flavorings, beat them with egg white, and put into the pot a spoonful of oil, cilantro juice, a spoonful of onion juice and half a spoonful of murri [use soy sauce], and pepper, cinnamon, Chinese cinnamon [cassia], a handful of pine nuts, coriander, a little caraway and a spoonful of water.  Cook until the meatballs stiffen, and cook the sauce and boil two eggs in it, then cover [the contents of the pot with eggs and breadcrumbs] and take it out to the hearthstone [a lower heat] until [the egg layer] wrinkles.  Knead a dough with white flour, water and oil.  Prepare a crust dough of this [line a pan], and put in the meatballs and the boiled eggs, after splitting, and put all the filling inside this.  Then cover it with a sheet of dough made in the same manner.  Fasten it closed and send it to the oven until it is done. Then present it, God willing. [2]

By the 12^th century, the pastries were in Christian Spain and were sufficient renowned that they were shown in statues in the cathedral of Santiago de Compostela, Galicia.

Left:

“Nobles enjoying themselves in a banquet with savory empanadas,”

Right: 

 “penitent sinners in hell… eternally condemned to the tormenting penalty of not being able to eat an empanada because of a leather halter fastened around their necks so they cannot swallow.” [3]

The Spanish added pork, as in this Pigeon Empanada from the 17th century Art of Cooking, Pastry, Cakes and Preserves by Francisco Martínez Montiño (1611), head of the kitchens of Spanish King Philip II (1527-1598):

Take four tender young pigeons from the nest and after cleaning them take some ham cut into very thin (slices?) and soak them until the salt has been removed and then squeeze out the water and season the pigeons with spices and salt and (take?) a leaf of English sweet dough for empanadas and place the pigeons on it and put the ham slices all around and close the empanada and serve hot.[4]

Today the empanada gallega (from Galicia) is the classic Spanish empanada and its 16^th century ancestors (without tomatoes. peppers or paprika) inspired for the empanadas of Chile and other Latin American countries.  In its basic form it is a large pie (small ones are empanadillas) with a crust of flour, yeast and oil or lard; a sofrito or seasoning mixture of sautéed onion, green pepper, tomato, garlic and paprika (pimenton dulce); and a filling of pork, fish, shellfish or vegetables cooked with the sofrito. A circle or rectangle of dough is rolled out, the filling is spread on it leaving an ample border, and a top crust is applied and sealed by pressing. A hole is made in the center to let the steam escape.  Leftover dough is applied to make a design, it is painted with beaten egg, and the empanada is baked for 30 to 45 minutes in a moderate oven.

THE source for recipes is “La Empanada Gallega: Everything about empanadas and Galician gastronomy”  Google provides a reasonable translation here, and there’s an authentic Galician recipe in English here.

 Empanada Gallega    photo: Maria Gonzáles 2007

In her novel Ines of My Soul Isabel Allende tells us that  empanadas arrived in Chile in 1541 with conquistador Pedro de Valdivia and his companion Inés Suárez,  and she may be right.  By the 1620s they appear to have been completely incorporated into Chile’s Creole cuisine by both Spanish and Indians:  Francisco Núñez de Pineda y Bascuñán ("the happy captive") says that he was given empanadas by his Mapuche captors in the 1620s.[5]

The classic Chilean empanada, with a pino (“filing”, from the Mapuche pinu, for pieces of cooked meat) of meat, onion, raisins, hard boiled egg and chili seems to have taken form during the colonial period and became an “indispensable national dish,"[6] but not one that got mentioned in writing very often.  Even Chile’s foreign visitors, usually a good source for information about food, seem not to have noticed them.  Only Maria Henrietta de la Cherois, in Over the Andes from the Argentine to Chile and Peru seems to have found them worthy of mention.  She describes them as “squares of thick paste filled with meat, gravy, and a suspicion of onion--Excellent!”[7]

The earliest Chilean empanada recipes I have found come from The New Kitchen Manual of 1882:[8] The recommended dough recipe reflects 19^th century Chile’s abundance of, and taste for, beef fat.  As Chile’s best know culinary historian Eugenio Pereira Salas explains “what butter was for the French, and olive oil was for the Italians and Spanish, beef fat was for the Chileans.”[9] 

Take four pounds of flour, two pounds of beef lard and a pound of beef fat [grasa de vaca], melt the lard and fat and beat until fluffy before mixing with the flour.  Add six egg yokes and enough very hot water, knead for a long time and roll out many times.

Aside from the dough, the standard baked empanadas were similar to today’s, if a little plainer:

Fry minced meat, free from nerves, with a little chopped onion, fried in color [grease mixed with chili] and when the meat is done add a tablespoon of flour, mix well, and add a little water so that there will be enough juice, and leave to cool.  Make a dough with a little flour, burned fat, two eggs and brine; make the empanadas with a little of the pino inside, and bake in a good hot oven.

 But there were also empanadas “a la chilena” which were quite fancy: 

Mix a little salt, a little cinnamon, six egg yokes and an egg white in a pound of flour, half a  pound of sugar, a quarter of grease and a half cup of sweet wine.  Form a dough from all this and if it is still dry add a little milk and knead it a little.  Cut the raw meat into small pieces and fry with a little color. When the meat is cooked add onions, also fried in color, take it off the fire and add a tablespoon of raw flour; mix and season with salt, whole peppercorns, and a little sugar.  Make the empanadas and decorate the pino with raisins, olives, slices of egg, pieces of firm cooked chicken and onion, also cooked in chicken broth.  Put in the oven and when it is time to send them to the table, pour on a thick syrup mixed with ground almonds and sweetened sour cherries.

Today’s Chilean empanadas

Empanadas a an Independence Day celebration

Baked empanadas filled with beef pino are the most Chilean of foods; there is an empanadaria in every neighborhood, every food store from up-scale supermarkets to barrio groceries sells them, and they are part of every festival and public celebration.  And on Chilean Independence Day, September 18, when everyone eats empanadas, even the 33 trapped Chilean miners had specially made empanadas designed to survive the arduous trip down 700 meters through a narrow bore hole.

The recipe below is a very standard one, from a classic Chilean cookbook, La Gran Cocina Chilena [10]

Baked Chilean Empanadas

 500 gm. flour (7 cups) 

1 ½ cups warm milk

125 gm. lard melted (5/8 cups)

1 teaspoon baking powder

salt

 Make a mound of flour, salt and baking powder.  Make a well in the center of the flour and add the warm melted lard, then the milk a little at a time mixing to form a soft dough.  Knead the dough until smooth, cut into 8 pieces and roll each into a circle. 

Pino  (Filling)

 2 onions, chopped fine

½ lb / 250 gm ground beef

2 hard boiled eggs

16 olives

24 raisins

1 clove garlic, minced

Salt, pepper, parsley, oil 

Sauté the onions ground beef, garlic, chopped parsley and salt and pepper until well cooked.   Allow to cool.   Place a mound of pino on each circle of dough, add a piece of egg, 2 olives, and 3 raisins.  Fold the dough over and seal with a little egg white.  Bake until well browned.

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Naturally there are other recipes, some a bit more elegant.  The one below is from La Sazón y el Gusto: Un menu en tres cidudaes de Chile  (Seasoning and Taste: Menus from three Chilean cities) as part of a menu representing Santiago.

While the classic pino of beef and onions is the most popular, many other filings abound, mostly in specialty empanada bakeries:  cheese, mushroom and cheese, olive and cheese, ham and cheese, corn and cheese, bell pepper and cheese, Roquefort, chicken and paprika, chicken and mushroom,  spinach, artichoke, Napolitana (ricotta, parmesan cheese, tomato, sausage), Salmon, shrimp, shellfish, etc.

Fried Empanadas

Fried shellfish empanadas

Fried empanadas, usually about half the size of baked, are very popular as a first course, especially in seafood restaurants where they are filled with a variety of shell fish, or with cheese; and of course with home cooks filled with cheese, pino, shellfish, or occasionally with fruit.


The dough, like that of baked empanadas, can be very rich with lard, up to a cup or more for 2 cups of flour, or relatively austere with only a tablespoon for the same amount of flour—in either case frying makes them para chupar los dedos,-- finger lickin’ good.

Here’s a recipe for Fried Cheese Empanadas with dough on the lighter side:

3 cups sifted flour

1 ½ tablespoons melted lard (60 grams)

1 cup of hot milk or water

1 teaspoon of baking powder

1 teaspoon of salt

Sliced cheese (1/3 inch / 1 cm thick)

 Mound the flour and baking powder and make a well in the center.  Add the melted lard and add the hot milk or water, stirring with a spoon.  When cool enough to handle, knead until smooth, soft, and elastic and wrap in a kitchen towel so that it remains warm.

 Roll or cut out circles (to any size you wish, usually between 4 and 8 inches/10-20 cm top with a slice of cheese (queso chanco if available), fold over and seal.  Fry in hot oil until golden.

And for shellfish empanadas, the ones in the photo above, there is an excellent illustrated recipe at Comida Chilena.  Here’s a translation: 

Fried Shellfish Empanadas 

1 kg mussels in their shells (or ½ lb / 250 gm frozen or canned shellfish, mussels, clams, machas, etc.)

1 lb / 500 gm. minced onions

Dough for 12, 4-5 inch / 10-12 cm empanadas

Steam the mussels in a little water and white wine until they open, about 2 minutes.  When cool, remove from shells and simmer with the onions and a little of the reserved steaming liquid until the onions are soft.  Fill each circle of dough with filling, leaving an ample border.  Paint the border with water or egg white, and seal.  Fry in abundant hot oil until golden.  Remove from oil and drain on paper towels.  The should be nice and juicy inside.

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[1] The Samosa Connection.  On line at http://www.samosa-connection.com/origin.htm.  The book referred to is A book of Middle Eastern food.

[2] Anonymous Andalusian Cookbook: The Book of Cooking in Maghreb and Andalus in the era of Almohads, by an unknown author. Charles Perry,Translator. On line at http://italophiles.com/andalusian_cookbook.pdf

[3] Historia de la empanada. La Empanada Gallega. Text and photos on line at http://empanadagallega.fiestras.com/servlet/ContentServer?pagename=R&pubid=979757027793&c=Page&cid=1257209522972  All translations mine unless otherwise noted.

[4] Martínez Montiño,  Francisco. 1611.  Arte de cozina, pasteleria, vizcocheria y conserueria. On line at http://books.google.com/books?id=tVMQ2Dsmv-8C&printsec=frontcover&dq=Arte+de+cozina,+pasteleria,+vizcocheria+y+conserueria&source=bl&ots=kGGUd5fgaV&sig=GQ0t7jfXNveXQbZSj8lkYDP4vAA&hl=en&ei=KxASTeHmD4OglAe-4tC6BQ&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=1&ved=0CBQQ6AEwAA#v=onepage&q&f=false

[5]  Núñez de Pineda y Bascuñán, Francisco. 1999.  El cautiverio feliz

Alicante : Biblioteca Virtual Miguel de Cervantes. Edición digital basada en la edición de Santiago de Chile, Zig-Zag, 1948. On line at  http://www.cervantesvirtual.com/obra-visor/el-cautiverio-feliz--0/html/

[6] Pereira Salas, Eugenio.  1977. Apuntes para la historia de la cocina chilena.  Santiago : Universitaria. p. 60.  On line at http://www.memoriachilena.cl/temas/documentodetalle.asp?id=MC0006512

[7] De la Cherois-Crommelin, Maria Henrietta. 1896. Over the Andes: From the Argentine to Chile and Peru.  p. 230  on line at http://www.archive.org/details/overandesfromar00cromgoog

[8]Anonymous. 1882.  Nuevo manual de cocina: conteniendo 377 recetas de guisos escojidos de las cocinas francesas, española, chilena, inglesa e italiana: arregladas para el uso de las familias del país. Valparaíso : Libr. del Mercurio de Orestes L. Tornero. Pp. 94-5  On line at http://www.memoriachilena.cl/temas/documento_detalle.asp?id=MC0003181.

[9] Pereira Salas, Eugenio. Op.Cit. p 20

[10] Alfaro, Mónica T. 2000. La Gran Cocina Chilena, 8th Edition.  Santiago:  Ediciones Occidente S.A. p. 416