Curry Pork Empanadas

Living in Texas, I love me some Mexican food, or Tex-Mex, as we call what traditional Mexican cuisine has morphed into here in the Lone Star State.  Things like this happen when a cuisine gets exported from its homeland to another place.  Chinese American cuisine is quite different from what is served in China; Same deal with Italian American.  Pretty much everywhere, local chefs put their creative stamp on whatever cuisine comes their way.

This tasty little dish is sort of like that--a fusion, a hybrid, something that might have occurred if Mexican cuisine had made it to the Far East.  We've taken a traditional Mexican dish, the Empanada, a little baked meat pie, and exoticized it with the addition of some South Asian ingredients like curry powder and soy sauce.  The result, well--taste it for yourself.  It's simple to make and ready in a flash. Maybe we'll call it Thai-Mex.  Better yet, let's just call it delicious.


Dough Ingredients

16 oz Cream Cheese
8 oz Butter
1/2 Teaspoon Salt
3 Cups All Purpose Flour


Filling Ingredients

1/2 Pound Ground Pork
2 Tablespoons Olive Oil
1 Onion
1 Clove Garlic
1 Teaspoon Curry Powder
1 Teaspoon Cumin
1/2 Teaspoon Cardamom
2 Tablespoons Marsala Wine
1/2 Teaspoon Soy Sauce
1 Teaspoon Sugar
1 Teaspoon Cornstarch
1 Egg

For the dough:

Mix the room temperature cream cheese, room temperature butter, salt and flour until dough forms. Refrigerate for one hour.

Brown the ground pork.

Reserve.

Dice your onion

Add the olive oil to the skillet and then the diced onion.  Cook onions and, a few minutes later, add the minced garlic.

 Add curry powder

and the cardamom.

Stir and cook for a minute or two.  Return meat to pan.

And stir this up until everything is well mixed.  Add the Marsala wine

soy sauce

cumin

and sugar.  Mix cornstarch with an ounce of water and stir it in to thicken the mixture.  Chill the mixture in a bowl in the fridge for 15 minutes or so.

Now for the dough.  Roll it out to a thin layer on a cutting board, somewhere between an eighth to a quarter of an inch thick.

and use a three inch biscuit cutter to cut rounds.

Place the rounds on a parchment-paper-lined baking sheet.  Spoon a tablespoon of the meat mixture into the center of the dough rounds.

Brush the edges of the rounds with egg wash

and fold over to seal and form a pouch.  Use the tines of a fork to press down the edges of the empanadas.

Spread them evenly on a baking sheet

and brush them with the rest of the egg wash.

Bake in a 375F oven for 15-20 minutes until golden brown.

They will be flaky and delicious.  The crust, will all that cream cheese, is light and tangy in flavor.

The filling, spicy and exotic.

Serve em' up hot and they'll be gone before you know it.


Until next time,


¡Adios Amigos!


Chris