No.9 - Don't burst on me Argentina!

Feet up in front of the telly, a colossal pile of my new favorite thing - empanadas with a spicy tomato dip, juice dripping down my face and arms, uncontrollable mmmmms and lets be honest, my idea of heaven. Spicy beef, olives and a hard-boiled egg all wrapped up in a puff pastry paradise – what more could you want? A glass of wine maybe? Done.

What more can I say? Beware though, they are extremely addictive!

Empanadas

These are the most worthwhile thing I've made so far. I love anything wrapped in pastry but there really are something else, not difficult just a little time consuming but fun at the same time (for me anyway) because they're so damned cute. My inexperience with pastry (in Argentina they use a kind of ‘over and pinch’ motion that I neither had the patience nor the knack for) and the fact that I crammed them with filling meant that they inevitably burst open in the oven. This doesn’t phase me in the slightest as I haven’t yet heard of anyone complain of too much filling in their pie. True to my word (see Armenia), I bought the pastry this time and will definitely be doing so in future. God bless Mr. Jus-rol!

Makes about 12

400g minced beef

1 onion, diced

I clove of garlic, minced

2 tbsp of cumin, maybe more

2 tbsp of smoked paprika, maybe more

1 tsp cayenne pepper

a dash of hot sauce, to taste

about 10 olives, sliced

2 hard boiled eggs, sliced

salt and pepper

1 packet of puff pastry

1 egg, for glazing

water for sealing edges

Soften the onions and garlic in a pan. Throw in the mince and allow to brown, then in goes the cayenne, cumin, paprika and a dash of hot sauce – do all of this to taste. Note: I added way more than in the photo (below) afterwards - spices in Argentina are seemingly more potent than spices from Tesco so I just lashed more in.

Roll out your puff pastry to as large as you can manage (I used the trusty mop rolling pin again) and cut out circles of pastry using any suitable implement. You can do the empanadas as large or a little as you like.

Pile a ‘small’ amount of the meat mixture in the centre of the pastry circles, then top with a slice of egg and a few slices of olive. With your fingers or a brush wet the edges of the pastry and proceed to fold the pastry over to create a half moon, making sure to poke and prod the filling to persuade it to stay in. Seal the parcels as best you can by folding the pastry over itself and pinching. Place on a baking tray and wash with beaten egg. Bake in the oven for about 15 minutes at 180 degrees. Eat with an empanada in one hand and a spoon for loading it with tomato in the other.

Spicy Tomato Dip

This is really just chopped up tomatoes with some lemon juice, pepper, salt and a chili but it is absolutely necessary to go with the empanadas. I found a recipe online that served them with a cooked tomato sauce but I thought cooking ripe tomatoes was too much of a shame (and truth be told, too much effort) so I made this bad boy.

Enough for the 12 empanadas

4 tomatoes, roughly chopped

I chili, deseeded and finely chopped

juice of ½ lemon

Salt and Pepper

Lash everything in a bowl and mix.

No.8 – Antigua and Barbuda put a foot in it!

Fungi and pepper pot conjures up delicious images of a steamy clay pot full of mushrooms and peppers - at least that’s what I was looking forward to. In reality fungi and pepperpot is a ‘simple’ stew similar to any other stew, reiterating that every country in the world adds meat and veg to water and comes up with pretty much the same thing.

Fungi (pronounced foon-ji) are dumplings made from a cornmeal paste that is thickened with okra. In Antigua and Barbuda it is eaten with pepperpot, a pork and vegetable stew that contains everything except the kitchen sink. All the pepperpot recipes I found added all sorts of piggy parts including skin, bones, snout, feet and ears. I settled with adding a couple of pigs’ totters but I did remove them after about an hour. There was no way they were going to be eaten (pigs trotters are skin, fat and bone and smell pretty piggy) however they did give the stew a meatier flavor. I’m sure that you could leave them out (I like the novelty of weird animal parts) but I would recommend adding a decent meat stock instead of water if you are.

The verdict - fungi and pepperpot is a tasty stew, similar in fact to an Irish stew, although notably it does have much more flavor (due to a hell of a lot more ingredients, and a chili). But what is a stew without a spud? I craved a potato and not the funny fungi, although the butternut squash did the job well enough.

I liked this dish because this is the kind of food that all nations have in common - a pot where you throw in a few scraps of meat, whatever vegetables are lying around and season with any spices you can get your hands on – and bobs your uncle – pretty much the national dish of any country in the world. Have I cracked any major secrets of gastronomic world? Not likely, but I think I’ve definitely made a fairly basic (and obvious) discovery.  I feel I’ll be eating a lot of stews in the upcoming months!

Fungi

Fungi, fungi, fungi. The best part of fungi is how fun-gi it is to say! It tastes of cornmeal and its texture is like slippery paste, this is of course exactly what it is, but if you are going to embark on making the stew, embark on making the fungi (if only for the name). The okra struck me as bizarre but it is actually an essential ingredient because when you cook it releases a kind of green slime, which is what holds the fungi together. Do not leave it out as I nearly did.

Serves 3

1 and ½ mugs of water

1 mug of cornmeal

3 okra, sliced into rounds

salt to taste (I added quite a bit as you can imagine it tastes of nothing otherwise)

butter, to grease a bowl

Cook the sliced okra is the boiling water until tender. The water will go slightly green and become slimy. Remove a mug full of water and reserve. Add the mug of cornmeal to the remaining water and okra and mix up as best you can. Then keep adding the reserved mug of water, bit at a time. The idea is that the cornmeal gets cooked so keep that in mind – keep kind of mushing it together so everything gets a chance to cook from the heat of the pan. It should take between 5 and 8 minutes altogether to cook the cornmeal.

When all the water has been incorporated, grease a bowl with a little butter and dollop a spoonful of the paste into the bowl. Try and cover the spoonful with a little butter and then pick it up and shape into little dumplings. The butter will stop your hands from getting covering in goo (on second thought you could maybe just grease your hands!) Serve with the pepperpot

Pepperpot

What can I say - pepperpot is a good old-fashioned stew – perfect, hearty comfort food. It’s as simple as bung it all in and let it do its thing. This recipe is very adaptable so don’t feel you need to add absolutely everything (although the okra thickens the stew), similarly feel free to add absolutely anything you have lying around (the more meat the better). Like I say, pigs feet are optional but then so are snout, ears, cheek and God knows what else.

Serves 3

Vegetable oil

100g bacon, roughly chopped

100g minced beef, made into little meatballs

2 pigs feet, optional

Vegetable oil

1 onion, chopped

1 garlic clove, chopped

2 cloves

2 tbsp tomato ketchup

a few sprigs of thyme

1 birds-eye chili, seeds left in, chopped

1 aubergine, cut into cubes (neither peeled nor salted)

a handful of okra, halved

½ butternut squash, peeled and cubes

a handful of frozen peas

half a bag of baby spinach

lots of salt and pepper

Heat the oil in a large pot and fry off the little meatballs and bacon pieces until brown. If you don’t have room in this pan which you inevitably won’t, brown of the pigs feet in another pan. To the bacon and meatballs add your chopped onion and garlic and sauté for a few minutes. Next add absolutely everything (this includes the pigs feet), excluding the peas, squash and spinach. Cover the vegetables with water. Simmer for about an hour.

After an hour remove your feet and skim of any excess fat. Continue to simmer for an hour. Check the seasoning – you do not want a bland stew!

After another hour add the butternut squash and peas. (This is when I got on with the fungi)

After fifteen minutes, when the squash is cooked stir in the spinach and serve with the fungi.