A Taste of the Places We Cannot Visit: Vegan Empanadas
About two months ago, Courtney and I were closely watching a cruise ship of the coast of Tokyo, hopeful the novel coronavirus would be contained and not cause community spread on the mainland so our Japan adventure would remain intact. If only we’d known!
As it became clear the Japan trip of our dreams was no longer going to be a reality, cheap flight deals to a continent yet to be touched by COVID19 led us to quickly pivot to a different trip entirely: Argentina.
At the time, I was proud of our ability to turn lemons into lemonade, negotiate flight changes with no fees and quickly do a huge amount of research to plan an amazing trip. After much debate, we decided on an itinerary that included Buenos Aires, Santiago (Chile) to be shown around by good friends, Mendoza for wine, and Iguazu Falls. It was the perfect blend of culture, nature and indulgence. In fact, I was nearly as excited about Argentina as I’d been about Japan. If only I’d known!
Anyway, no one could have predicted the scenario we now find ourselves in. But once again, we’re trying to make lemonade out of lemons (or more accurately cocktails out of carrots) by making delicious vegan dishes from all the places we’d planned to visit.
On my last trip to Trader Joe’s before deciding to avoid stores entirely in favor of delivery, I picked up vegan chorizo (you may remember it from the fateful homemade corn dogs). I wasn’t sure exactly what I’d do with it when I picked it up – but when I decided to make empanadas I knew this would be the perfect filling. The recipe I found called for a blend of soy chorizo and ground Beyond Burger – which I just happened to have half a package of in my freezer. Meant to be!
Empanadas aren’t necessarily hard to make so to speak. But they’re a labor of love, requiring preparing the dough and the filling and rolling, cutting and hand filling every individual pie. I decided to save them for the weekend when I’d have nothing but time.
We actually had a weekend that felt as close to normal as any has since this epidemic hit. Friday night we made carrot cocktails, played games and ordered takeout from our favorite restaurant, complete with a very nice bottle of French wine.
While it wasn’t the restaurant experience, Rose’s did a very nice job of translating their amazing food to takeout – and they have the socially distanced pick-up down to a science! And while we went full-bore and ate chicken and pork for the first time in two months, my very favorite dish was the cauliflower with yogurt, raisin puree and truffle bread crumbs that were maybe supposed to go on the rigatoni. We don’t really know.
On Saturday we took the dogs on a nice long walk through Rock Creek Park (how in my 12 years in D.C. have I never been there?!), made more carrot cocktails and played (online) poker with friends. And Sunday I made these empanadas and brought them over to my parents’ house and enjoyed an Easter picnic in the back yard making at least moderate attempts to socially distance.
I thought empanadas were a pretty non-traditional Easter dish, but actually read that “empanadas de Cuaresma” are a traditional Argentinian dish served on Easter and during lent, typically filled with tuna or dogfish. We forewent the fish, but these were a delightful treat topped with vegan sour cream. You probably wouldn’t know they didn’t contain meat.
Want to make these? I used this recipe from 86 Eats. Instead of deep frying them, which I find to be not only unhealthy but a total pain in the ass, I brushed them with olive oil and baked them for 20 minutes at 400 F.
