Empanadas Columbianas

I love discovering new foods, foods that people have brought to Maine, from their homeland. Juanita Cuellar Nichols submitted this recipe, and shares that her family came to NYC from Colombia. She has a childhood memory of her father flattening the balls of cornmeal dough into discs for stuffing with the meat and potato mixture.

The recipe recommends Masarepa, a brand of precooked cornmeal, and for the life of me, I could find it nowhere. I was pretty sure that regular cornmeal would be too coarse to hold together for a dough. At last, I discovered Masarepa on a grocery shelf.

So now I ran into a small problem with the dough. The recipe appears to indicate that you mix the cornmeal with Goya Sazon (I do think this seasoning is really meant to be used with the meat mixture) and salt and 2 tablespoons of oil, form it into a ball, knead, wrap in plastic wrap, and let rest twenty minutes. But how does all of that cornmeal bind together with a mere 2 tablespoons of oil? After researching online, I went back to the recipe to do a closer read of it. I discovered that the recipe lists 4 cups of water, and right after that, potatoes. So one assumes the water is for boiling potatoes, right? But directly below the potatoes you have instructions to cook them in chicken stock (not water). Aha! the water is what one needs to mix the dough. Maybe this will teach me that skimming recipes will get me in hot water!

We have an electric glass stovetop here in the parsonage, and this contraption is not conducive to proper heating of oil for frying. The heating elements cycle on and off, therefore cooling and heating the oil intermittently. But, I managed to fry a few of these little cornmeal wonders. I didn't have any limes, but I just put salsa and sour cream on a plate, and they were devoured with great pleasure. The cornmeal dough is nice and crispy, and a great delivery system for the meat, potato, onions, and garlic. 

This is a time intensive recipe, so don't try to pull it off if you have limited time. Preparing the dough and meat/potato filling, placing the filling in the dough, and frying the empanadas all takes time. But the outcome is savory and satisfying!