Good Lard! Holy Night Empanadas

My mom cracks me up. The Martha Stewart of the Dirty South, y’all. Ain’t no lie, this woman can do seasonal decorating like nobody’s business.

I caught her in the act of transforming her home this year; like repainting the entire room because this year’s colors have changed kind of deal... I just had an inkling of what was in store as she hustled from room to room telling me about the theme fixing to unfold.

I was so astonished as I caught glimpses of this creative combustion of a human being doing exactly what she loves. She was born for this, people.

Holy crap, Mom, can you please come do this to my house?? I mean, it was Southern Living meets Architectural Digest meets someone please call Oprah...Floored by her talent and vision. It was gorgeous! Oh please oh please, Mamaw Sug, please be looking down because she surely got this divine design gene from you. My sister has it. I have it, too, I tell myself. Honestly, I’m too lazy for all that...I think my lights are still up, perpetually. In Hawaii. Lol! I digress, as usual.

So when she proceeds to tell me about the next phase entitled, Dining Table, I knew we had to really bring it this year. Photographers were surely gonna descend. Our menu had to be perfect. 

Mom continues to regale me with place settings and siblings arrivals and last minute details. My head is spinning as I run through my absolute go-to’s that would be magnificent but also do her Wonderland theme justice. She’s calling out duties and I tell her about the prime rib I just bought and she agrees emphatically that would be the star. But she says casually that she also has a special request, if I wouldn’t mind too terribly. I’m instantly intrigued. Whatever could this be?

Huh? I blink at her, wheels turning, albeit a bit slowly... She continues to cajole me enthusiastically telling me that she loves them from so-and-so but that she knows I can make them better, would I please just try? (Omg omg omg freaking out inside at the completely audacious way my mother just played me, baited by the challenge; hooked actually, too easy.) Absolutely intrigued and complicit, up for the challenge. My mother knows all too well how to orchestrate this event. I throw myself, her humble Latino servant, headlong into the unusual request.

I’ve expounded on this before...my love of all things remotely associated with lard, pork fat of any kind. It’s a secret weapon, no doubt, in most things authentically Latino. I’m not really Latino, right, but if you were to judge that by the amount of lard I admittedly use and consume, you might be a little skeptical. But if you are making tamales, refried beans and yes, holy night empanadas, then this little secret will bring down the house. Slap yo’ mama and praise the Good Lard, for reals! Lol!

Ok, let’s get this show on the road.

Here goes nothing but goodness

• 2 c flour
• 1/4 tsp salt
• 1 tsp Calumet baking powder
• 1/2 c lard (shit I used 1/4 c so maybe not enough fat as I wrote that down wrong. But I was guessing too because I didn’t have a measuring device. Worked fine because I probably used too much anyway. lol! But for the sake of replicating, I used 4 heaping tablespoons of lard, which seemed close enough)
• 1/2 c water

Prep the dough

1. Combine flour, baking powder and salt in large bowl or in your food processor, if you have one. This is an easy dough to make by hand but in my food processor I can do double batches in no time flat.
2. Cut in lard with pastry blender or 2 knives until mixture resembles coarse crumbs. Or pulse to this consistency in your processor.
3. Gradually add water, stirring or pulsing until mixture forms ball. You just want it moist enough to start coming together so if you see the ball forming but it isn’t yet picking up the remaining dough then that is just about right. The water measurement is meant as a guide as you may need a little less or a little more depending on your environment. Better too dry than too wet, rule of thumb.
4. Place dough on lightly floured surface; knead 5 min. or until smooth and pliable. I avoid this part and dump the contents of my food processor directly into a gallon ziplock bag and knead it into a smooth ball right in the bag. Easy to store or freeze for later and less mess. 
5. Wrap tightly in plastic wrap or remove the air from your gallon ziplock and seal. Refrigerate for at least an hour before using or freeze for future use, if you prefer.
6. Roll out your refrigerated dough onto a clean, floured surface. Not too thin, no transparency, but more like you would for tortillas. Not too thick to fold and seal with your ingredients, either. As I said before, your first batch will tell the story and you can course correct the next batch or just re-chill your dough and re-roll if you can’t stand your first attempt. Chilled dough rolls better due to the fat content. If your dough gets too soft or sticky, just rechill the whole thing and it will behave better.

Fill and Bake

Preheat your oven to 400 F, putting your oven racks towards the middle of your oven. I bake 2 trays at once, rotating them at the 20 minute mark. Grease the pans with, what else? Yep, Manteca, chicas .

1. Using a cutter of some kind, cut circles (or squares, who cares?) from your dough and place on your greased cookie sheets. This is easier for me to fill doing it that way but you can fill and move to your sheet if that’s easier for you. 
2. Fill with a teaspoon of your filling. A teaspoon of meat, a teaspoon of cheese is what I do and it was perfect.
3. I use my finger dipped in water to run around the edge of my empanada and then fold and seal. I find this creates a good seal that won’t come undone while baking. I also use a fork to crimp the edges as they look nice and reinforces the seal. 
4. Using a paring knife, I cut straight small vents in the top of the empanada so it doesn’t blow its top while it bakes. Steam gets trapped and rises so a vent in the top will also ensure your filling doesn’t try to leave the party from your sealed edges because the steam can get out. If you forget, you’ll see what I mean. It’s a bummer to loose your filling to the baking gods.

Venison Filling

• 2 lb of ground venison or beef or whatever-have-you
• 1 onion diced
• 1 jalapeño diced
• Manteca (pork lard)
• 1 pint fresh Taco or enchilada sauce

This can be done anytime. I like to prep my filling the day before. That means, grating the cheese and making the meat mixture. I keep everything sealed and back in the fridge in between trays to keep it cold as well.

One reason I do is that all ingredients are cold when filling the dough, which is super helpful because it stays put and makes the folding and sealing easier. If your cheese melts or your filling is warm, the dough immediately starts to soften and spread, getting worse as you fill the tray. Not fun. And we really want to keep this fun...

1. In a large, wide skillet sauté the onion and jalapeño on medium heat using the Manteca (1 tbsp at a time) to keep it from burning or sticking. If you have olive oil, butter or bacon grease, that will work too. The venison is extremely lean so the purpose is two-fold, a fat for cooking our aromatics and secondly as a fat for flavor and texture, much like we do in the US when making burgers or using ground meat that is too lean. 
2. Cook the onion mixture until translucent, adding more Manteca as needed to keep the party moving.
3. Add the ground venison and continue browning, adding the taco sauce a little at a time to the meat mixture and letting it cook down before adding more. The beef becomes flavored and thickens up with the sauce as it cooks. The texture we are looking for is a lot like chili. We don’t want too much liquid or the empanadas will be soggy.
4. Last but not least: brush the tops of your empanadas with an egg wash. It makes a difference so don’t skip this step. Crack and egg, scramble it well with a teaspoon of water and lightly, gently brush the tops with a pastry brush. My sister didn’t have one, I used clean fingers to fake this part, but I’m glad I did. Gives a gorgeous color and gloss to the finished empanadas.

Bake
400 F on middle racks for 20-30 minutes. I set my timer for 20 minutes, then rotate my trays at that mark and finish baking for another 5-10 minutes, keeping an eye in case they start to brown too much. Remember that the filling is cooked so at this point, you just need to make sure the dough has cooked and the browning tops (and smell!) will be your best indicator. Not sure? Try one. Yep, you have full permission to check it out.

**Note:
How to Make Sweet Empanada Dough
Prepare as directed, mixing 1/2 cup sugar with the flour, baking powder and salt.

Make Ahead
Dough can be prepared ahead of time. Wrap tightly in plastic wrap or your ziplock bag and refrigerate up to 2 days. Remove from refrigerator about 5-10 min. before using but I find working with cold dough much easier to roll.

I’ve also frozen this dough and defrosted it in the fridge overnight with great success. It’s a very forgiving dough, you will find. If it gets too lazy or unwieldy, pop your dough back in the fridge so the fat can setup again. The lard is what makes it work but as the dough warms, the lard warms too and can make it feel sticky or wet when it’s not. It’s just gotten too warm in the kitchen, that’s all.

Filling suggestions
We use anything! Especially leftover meats and cheeses. I’ve used chopped steaks, chicken, vegetables, beans and rice, you name it. Great way to use leftovers.

Mom’s super cheat suggestion
Mom said she used to make these using store-bought biscuits in a can. When she said that, I felt a shockwave of memories flood me and I remembered them! I was like, damn, mom, wish you would have told me that 2 days ago. Lol! But she really did. She’d roll the biscuits out with a rolling pin, fill them and shallow fry them in bacon grease. My mouth just watered as I wrote that, remember it so well. After I made like 60 from scratch...lol!

Other tips
And a double batch of dough, using the recipe above, makes 18 empanadas. (I made 3 batches and not a single empanada survived the event.) I had dough left from those perfect rounds and with that, I just made one or two larger free form empanadas just to use it all up. Those larger empanadas were the first to go, turns out, so no one will care if they don’t look quite the same.

Also, I didn’t have a cookie cutter big enough or that didn’t look like a Christmas tree or a gingerbread man so I improvised. I used a plastic takeout quart container turned upside down as my cutter. I just floured the rim and went to town. Worked like a charm.

Can you tell I enjoyed this Christmas throw down challenge immensely? No one deserves that kind of effort more than my Mom. But I can’t wait to do it all again for my own crew once I get home.

Merry Christmas to All and to All a good night!

Nix the GMO - Non GMO Homemade Tamale Corn Masa

Ok, I can feel a rather long post coming on because this topic is one I can totally soapbox out on...

I'll save you.

The nitty gritty of this story is that I just made my very own homemade masa using non-GMO certified organic corn I bought from Amazon.

Hilariously, Tsunami tried to add this dried corn to his last batch of chili. He did try to rehydrate it for a few hours simmering, like a good sport. I also tried to tell him that I didn't think that was all there was to it... but not being sure myself, I let him truck along. It didn't work, of course. It never rehydrated properly and he was surely baffled. We ate it anyway. lol!

However, I decided that it was indeed time to figure it out properly because I wasn't going to keep store bought corn out of the house for very long, if I didn't.

My primary rationale for buying this in the first place was to make corn tortillas for chips for nachos. Yea, that's me, dudes. That's how I operate. It might take me days to make one dang thing I love to eat, but no one complains when I do. It's the kitchen curiosity in me, I guess. And also, I don't want to die eating the things I love to eat just because I can't figure out a healthier alternative.

My health, in my own hands, I endeavor.

Anywho, back to corn.

Nixtamalization. 
The process for making dried corn edible. There is probably a lot more to that, but you can Google that if you like. For this post, it's enough to say that the corn is a tough nut. It needs a process to rehydrate it enough to allow for the skins to be removed and in doing so, make it edible through the cooking process.

This is done by cooking the corn in an alkaline solution. And this is easily accomplished by adding pickling lime to your simmer and letting the whole thing sit overnight. Easy, right? Yup. So easy.

2 cups dried corn
2 tbsp pickling lime
water to cover well

1. Wash and pick through your dried corn just in case there are small stones or oddballs in the mix.
2. Simmer corn, lime and water on low for about 30-45 minutes, covered.
3. Turn off the heat and let this sit, covered, overnight.
4. Wash the corn the next day and store, covered, in the fridge with fresh water until ready to use. I didn't get to mine for 2 days and all was well. I changed the soaking water daily.
5. Wash corn in fresh water, gently rubbing kernels to remove skins. Try to remove what you can and don't worry if you don't get it all off. A lot will have slipped off themselves during the soaking and cleaning.

Corn Masa for Tamales

~4 c chicken stock

1/2 block of manteca (pork lard)

~ 4 cups fresh finished nixtamalized corn

salt, to taste

My 2 cups dried corn turned into about 4-5 cups of nix corn. Basically two batches in my food processor. The chicken stock is a starting point of what you may need. I had a half gallon of stock handy and used about half during the grinding process of the corn. It does depend on your environment as well because your corn may not need as much liquid, etc.

If you were using masa harina, or ground masa flour, then you would alternate adding a little flour to your whipped manteca with a little chicken stock to hydrate your dough/batter. For tamales, you want more of a batter than a dough, which is why the manteca and chicken stock are key. They also add a real depth of flavor to your tamales, of course.

I took half my corn or what would fit in the bowl of my food processor and pulsed the corn using the chicken stock to create a loose, but not wet, corn puree of sorts. Just enough stock or liquid (you can absolutely use water) to allow it to break down into a smooth corn batter. Hard to explain this part but you will use this to add to your whipped manteca.

1. In the bowl of your stand mixer, if you have one, whip up the manteca until silky and smooth. 
2. Ladle in the corn mixture a little at a time and incorporate before adding more corn.
3. Add a little more chicken stock if it looks like your batter is too stiff. It should not fall off the spoon but still be spreadable like a good hummus. 

And that, is about all there is to that. 

There is magic in this whole nixing affair... and it is what produces THE quintessential essence of Mexican corn tortillas, cooking, in fact. It transforms the corn and produces that distinct nutty flavor found in all authentic tortillas.

To make tortillas, you don't need the pork fat. It's just the corn and water, instead of chicken stock. Press balls of this simple corn dough between two plastic baggies and fry that sucker up on a hot tomal or cast iron skillet. You may never eat another or look at another, corn tortilla the same way ever again.

A word about manteca...you could use shortening but why, dude? In Texas, at every grocery store, you can buy fresh, housemade rendered pork fat. Seriously easy to come by. I don't have that luxury in Hawai'i although the Paniolos definitely provide access to any and all real Mexican kitchen staples. I can get manteca at every grocery store. And when we get our wild boar, we'll probably be able to get more manteca than we can shake a stick at. 

Moral of this long-winded pseudo-story is to encourage you, even if you are little sketched out by the idea of pure pork fat... just allow me to gently encourage you to get over it and try it. You will not ever think of it the same way again. Your granny probably kept cans of bacon fat on the stove, right? This is no different. Why waste what most people now understand to be quite healthy for you. In moderation, big shocker.  Animal fats, our bodies know how to process. Just sayin'...

If you can't hack the idea, use shortening but just know that you will improve the flavor and overall kitchen experience immensely if you go the distance and use PORK FAT! YEA!

Smoke-a-licious Chicken Chipotle Tamales, Oh My!

What a super fun adventure we had! Ethnic grocery store shopping… even though we didn’t really set out to do that.

Seeing an opportunity to do a little stocking up, we decide to stop off at the Bodega Mercado, a Mexican super grocery store. Taking advantage of the moment, we head in to pick up a few things for our Mexican night with the kids this weekend.

Tsunami’s mother makes wonderful homemade picadillo (ground beef) tacos so for our family Sunday dinner this weekend, she’s coming over to make tacos. Unexpectedly, we have much to celebrate this weekend as a family. 

And since we based our family night on a number of ingredients that we both had on hand, turns out that Mexican night was certainly a good choice. All we were really missing was the ground beef, which they make fresh at the Bodega and so naturally, it was worth a visit.

In order to make use of a massive amount of smoked chicken we made the weekend before, we decide to try our hand at homemade tamales just to round things off. Neither of us have ever made tamales before, but his mama has so we both felt a sense of needing to get this right. Overachievers or true enthusiasts; take your pick.  Either way, we were definitely up to the challenge.

I was hoping to get masa at the grocery store pre-made for my first attempt but since they didn’t sell it in bulk, I thought why not just make it myself? What a shocker.  

I picked up corn husks, instant masa for tamales and decided to wing the rest. After all, I'm southern and have grown up eating Christmas tamales in Texas my whole life. I love to make things I love to eat and this would be no different. I just felt like it was somehow in my blood to make this and it turns out, I wasn't exactly wrong...

For some reason unknown to me, I stood in the aisle with the lard trying to decide whether I needed some. I had no idea that tamales actually require lard, but there I stood. Tsunami asks me, “Do we need lard? Why do we need lard? You don’t use Crisco either…” and he wanders off talking towards me about some black label habanero hot sauce he discovered and pointing out they have all kinds of pickled jalapenos en escabeche, which he knows I love. Kids in a candy store... 

But there I still stood, pondering and mesmerized. He starts to unload my arms for me because I’m carrying way too much without a basket as usual and with my free hand, I grab a tub of rendered pork fat that is produced by the market’s own meat department and restaurant. No clue why or what made me do it, but that's what I grab. Pork fat.

We carry on and head out with our goodies, which included the freshly ground beef we explicitly came to get for his mama's tacos. We also take home some manzano chili peppers which we are lucky enough to find fresh here in Florida and of course, the black label habanero hot sauce he was enthusing about earlier.

Once at home, I look up a couple of recipes in some of my cookbooks, research a few cooking sites online and all of them had one thing in common which I did not get: lard! Gosh darnit, I’m thinking to myself… there was a reason I was locked in place for fifteen minutes just standing there in front of the shelves of lard! But, then I remembered my pork fat! So I quickly google whether or not you can use rendered pork fat instead of lard and the resounding answer was yes! In fact most of the authentic Mexican recipes recommend rendered pork fat, if you are fortunate enough to obtain it. Aye aye aye!

And so… we endeavoured...

It should come as no surprise, but if someone ponders lard for 15 minutes, chances are good something will go right.

Our first tamales. And they couldn't have turned out better, more delicious or more satisfying. Maybe that is because we were both so fascinated with each part of the process.

Filling:
First, we had a bulk of smoked chicken quarters that we didn't want to go to waste. Not sure why I thought of it, but I decided that smoked chicken tamales were the ticket.

Next, I made a batch of fresh salsa and after pulling all of the smoked chicken off the bones, we marinate the cooked chicken again in the salsa overnight.

Once ready to make the tamales, we strained the chicken out in a colander and reserved the salsa liquid to make the tamale sauce below.

For the filling, it really was just the smoked salsa chicken. No other seasoning was required and it was delicious.

Tamale Sauce:

• Salsa from marinating the chicken
• 1 can of chipotles
• Poached, roasted garlic
• Garlic oil
• Honey
• Roasted whole fresh red jalapenos, charred in the oven until blackened

We put all but the oil and honey into the sauce pot and simmered on low. I dumped everything from the sauce pot into a blender and slowly added in about 2 tablespoons of garlic oil which made the sauce so smooth and silky.

At the end, I added about a tablespoon of honey just to soften the flavors and it turned out to be so delicious. I mean, come on... honey smoked chipotle tamale sauce... How can you not love it?  I practically licked the whole blender clean.

Corn Husks:
We bought corn husks which we brined overnight. I mean, why not? The husks are used to steam the tamales so why not add some flavor to that part of the party as well? You must soak the husks for a few hours or overnight like we did, so we just added flavor at the same time.

Tsunami used a jar of chile pepper brine we had on hand from making hot sauce and to it he added onion salt, garlic powder and black pepper. If you don't get all OCD like we do, but want to season your husks choose flavors that make sense like garlic, onion and fresh lime, for instance. It's very close to the flavor profiles we used to marinate the husks. We just like to use whatever we have on hand and we almost always save our chili pepper brine for just such an occasion.

Masa:
On to my first batch of masa. Here's how I made my first masa, which turned out perfect on my first try. Don't be intimidated. I was a little bit unsure of myself but I'm ok with failures in the kitchen so I was more unprepared for my success than I was expecting a little bit of a first time fail. Turns out, it wasn't at all hard.

• 2 pounds (4 cups) instant masa for tamales
• 10 oz (1 1/3 c) rendered pork fat (soft but not at all runny)
• 1 1/2 tsp baking powder
• ~ 2 cups of homemade chicken stock (yes, absolutely makes a difference)
• salt to taste

To make the masa, start by combining the masa flour with the pork fat. Just like a good pastry recipe, you combine the fat with the flour and it gets crumbly.  I just mixed it with a large fork, then added in the baking powder.

Next, add about 1 cup of chicken stock and keep adding more stock slowly until your tamale dough holds enough stock to be loose like a muffin or cake batter. Thick and fluffy, but not stiff and loose enough to spread. If it holds its form on a spoon but spreads easily like a thin icing, you are in good shape.

So for your first time making tamales, I suggest doing what I did. Google making tamales and watch a mamasita make them on youtube. I had no idea how to do the masa part and I found a video  not only instructional but it boosted my confidence as we began the process. It certainly helped a lot to have a partner in the kitchen to help, so we divided the tasks between us. I spread the masa using a spoon and my fingers. Meanwhile, my better half did the filling, rolled and tied the tamales.

Process:
Remove the husks from your brine, squeezing out excess brining liquid. They will steam the tamale filling so they don't need to be dry, just not dripping wet. Take any small or torn pieces and pull the husk apart creating thin strips which will be used as ties to tie the filled husks just before steaming.

Place the tapered end towards you and leaving about an inch of space at the tapered end, spread filling with a spoon or your fingers, applying the masa all the way to each side edge.  My first ones looked like the one in the pic, but I ended up doing it edge to edge and that worked nicely.

Don't go so thin, you see husk through the masa, but don't go so thick that it oozes out of the edges too much when you roll it up. Do a few and you'll see what I mean.

Place about a spoonful of filling (can be cooked meat, cheese, jalapeños, anything) down the center of the masa and then fold one side over the masa and seal like a roll of sorts with the other masa edge. This creates the tamale and the masa encloses the filling.

You never want to put masa on the entire husk. Just about half is good, leaving enough to allow you to fold over creating a bottom seal. Once the tamale is "rolled" the free end is folded over and creates an envelope of sorts with the tapered end remaining open. Don't worry, nothing falls out.

Cooking:
I used my rice cooker! Yep, that's right. I put a plate that fit the bottom of my rice cooker inside and layered the rest of the unused husks on top of that to create a steaming platform for the tamales. I added just enough water to cover the bottom without getting the husks wet. (You definitely won't like soggy tamales. )

I layered the tamales in the rice cooker and much to my surprise, I got 30 tamales in there perfectly. My rice cooker steams rice in about 20-25 minutes and I thought this would be perfect for the tamales. It was just right. My rice cooker goes into "warm" mode automatically but we were eager to try them so maybe about 40 minutes later, I took one out to test.

Tamales will pull easily out of their husks if they are done. The first one I tried made us both swoon in total amazement at what we had just done on our first try. It isn't rocket science but oh how satisfying when you do something simple so well. We quickly piled a few on plates and gobbled them up, serving them with more of the chipotle sauce on the side. Just incredible.

Just in case you were wondering... his mama came over yesterday to watch our new puppy while we went to Spring Training for the Marlins. Left at home with a warm rice cooker full of tamales, she proudly announced that they were so good, she ate 4. She also admired our ingenious use of the rice cooker and said that was the perfect way to reheat them. Super high praise coming from our favorite family chef!

**If you don't have a rice cooker but have a large stock pot with a steamer, use that. If you have a veggie steamer, you can use that. I just happened to have my rice cooker and suspected it would be perfect for this task and it really was. But in future, when we make more tamales and we most assuredly will make bulk tamales now that we know how, I will probably use a large 20-40 quart stockpot with a steamer basket.

**You may or may not know but tamales are excellent for freezing. Just take out what you need and re-steam. Perfect for stock piling.

**Another tip: get a $7 masa spreader.  Google it. Watch the tamale lady's video and you will never spread masa by hand again. Amazon sells them and I bought one immediately. It will get so much use and makes quick work out of this traditionally time consuming part of making tamales.

***UPDATE*** So of course, we make another batch of tamales once the masa spreader arrived. An absolute must, so glad I got it. This time we made just under 5 dozen tamales in about 40 minutes. And this time, we didn't fuss with tying the tamales. Just folded them up and put them in the steamer upright on their ends. This way, we got about 4 dozen in the rice cooker and we froze the other dozen or so fresh. I mean, after all, you will steam them again to reheat so why not just steam them fresh? That's what we're gonna try next. :) So fun and so delicious. We also got a little creative and made pizza tamales for the kids which were so yummy! Pizza sauce, shredded mozzarella, pepperoni. So good.