Empanada Mama

I had the day off on Friday and headed to Nutley, NJ to visit with my friend Sarita who moved to Cairo with her family about four and a half years ago. Sarita and I have been friends since college (technically since high school) and she's one of those friends who you don't see (for obvious geographical reasons) but as soon as you do it is like you just saw her yesterday.

You can imagine my suprise when in casual conversation, Sarita revealed that in her search for bagels like she used to have here in the states, her & her husband decided that they need to open their own bagel business, Jared's Bagels! She sent me home with a sample (honey wheat, multi-grain, sun-dried tomato and cinnamon raisin) --- I had the honey wheat yesterday morning and I gotta say I was impressed! You really can taste the honey -- something I haven't quite found in other honey wheat bagels here and it certainly makes me look forward to the rest of my Egyptian bagel tasting... I'll let you know how the other three measure up. So if you are ever in Cairo, check out Jared's Bagels - and hey, they deliver!

So after hanging with the kiddies and the cousins, Sarita's Mom invited me to stay for dinner. She was making empanadas and who can resist authentic Latino cuisine! Of course her Mom had to endure the barrage of questions from me on her technique but basically in this particular batch she uses onions, ground chicken, hard boiled eggs, peas, carrots, Spanish seasoning and I believe tomato. Sometimes she uses beef, other times mozzerella and sugar on the empanada post-frying. While she used store bought dough, her Mom had also made the dough by hand but believe me, this was just fine!

Watching her carefully fill each empanada with just enough filling so it wouldn't burst on frying, I was in total awe and inspired to try and copy her recipe at home. The flavors of the filling melded perfectly and the empanadas were fried to perfection, while the dough remained light and airy. We also had some yellow rice as a side dish and she used left over empanada filling along with some chicken breast in the yellow rice and it was absolutely fantastic! What a pleasure to see others make meals from their family traditions.

It was wonderful to see Sarita and getting treated to a fantastic dinner was the icing (or empanada) on the cake!