Winner, Winner Empanada Dinner!

It being a Monday and all (not only a Monday, but a Monday in June) I decided to make up some empanadas for our prayer group tonight. Now. Here’s why. I canned a good twenty pints of taco meat last fall, and we must not’ve been in the mood for tacos over the Winter, because I still have a good ten pints left to use up. And because cooking the meat and letting it cool completely is the most tedious part about making empanadas. Because the meat has to be cold. No doubt about it. Even a whisper of warmness and all that butter and lard that was so carefully chilled until it was just so( in order to make that perfectly flaky crust) will melt and it all would all have been for nothing. Nothing I tell you. So. The meat has to be cold. And you can use any kind of meat you like. In fact, you can go with no meat at all, in the way of a bean and cheese empanada, although I wouldn’t go crazy and call it vegetarian (even without the cheese) because any and all true empanadas must have one thing: lard. You can fill it with whatever you like. You can use either corn flour or regular or both. But drop the lard and you’ve only got a meat pie on your hand. Plain and simple as that. And this is how it’s made:

Two cups of flour, any kind you’d like, although having at least half being regular helps keep the whole thing together. Usually I use a one and three quarters regular flour to a quarter stone ground corn meal, for texture, but tonight I left that out. Because someone very near and dear to me who will just happen to be at the gathering tonight happens to have a corn allergy. So. No corn. I took my two cups flour and into it stirred one teaspoon salt and just a pinch of sugar. To that I cut in one third cup very cold lard and one third cup very cold butter, both chopped fine. They were cut in with a pastry blender until all was smooth and almost wanting to come together all on it’s own. To that I added one third cup very cold water and the whole thing was stirred and then finally lightly kneaded together until a smooth ball formed. The ball was left by itself to rest a bit while the butcher block was dusted with flour. The dough was then rolled out and cut into rounds. A scoop of taco meat (or anything else you’d like—here’s your chance to be creative!) was placed just north of center. The edges were slightly moistened with my finger dipped in a bit of water, and then the top was folded over the bottom until it looked like what it was always meant to be; a crescent moon. A fork pressed along the edge sealed the deal and the newly formed empanada was set aside on a plate where it will stay in the fridge until I am ready to cook it later tonight, at three hundred and fifty degrees, for about twenty minutes. Now. A good empanada always needs to be dipped. And for that, I’ve been known to take a bit of the taco juice and stir that in some sour cream and call it good. But tonight I’m missing the sweetness of the corn, so I’m taking baked bean juice (you know the stuff, right? The brown molasse-ey goodness that surrounds each and every bean before being baked (aka baked beans). Yes. That. A bit of that, say a tablespoon or two is stirred into a half cup sour cream (more or less to taste) to be set alongside the empanadas. It’s a winner, winner empanada dinner.