Empanadas cooking play date

The other day, I had a play date with some other moms. We decided to have a play date and also cook something together. I always wanted to try making Empanadas so we decided to make empanadas on this play date.

Empanada is a very popular dish in Latin America and Spain. You make a dough and wrap meat and some vegetables with the dough and bake or fry them.

This time, we decided to try baked Empanada. One of my mom friend got a recipe from her friend in Chile. This particular Emapandas have ground beef, onions, boiled egg and olives. Also, it supposed to have raisins in it but I forgot to have the raisin ready so we totally forgot about the raisin.

First, we knelt the dough.

At the same time, make the filling. Saute the onions.

Add meat and spices.

Divide the dough into small balls and roll it out. ( For me, this was the most difficult part. So my friend rolled most of them out!)

My friend brought Empanada molding so we used them to shape empanadas. With this tool, it is easy to make a perfect empanadas. I love it!

Add the fillings. Ground beef with onion, boiled egg and olive.

Then, close it to make the empanada shape! Oh we brushed the edge with egg wash to make it stick better.

Brush the empanadas with egg wash and bake in the oven. Here is the end result! Looking great.

I think it came out really good! This was my first time making Empanada and it took us a while to get it done but we had lots of fun and it was great! I definitely try making this again!

This was the Chilean version of Empanadas but one of the mom said that she knows Venezuelan version of Empanadas so we will try that sometime.

One of the great thing about living in the U.S. (Especially in California and NY) is that you meet people from all over the world. You get to learn different cultures and you get to learn some special dishes like this.

It is sometimes quite a challenge to cook and watch your kid but since we were four of us today, one of us were able to watch the kids all the time so others can concentrate on cooking.

It was a great idea to do cooking and have a play date. We made lots of Empanadas so everybody brought some home for dinner. So, we have play date and when you get home, the dinner is ready!

Before I have a baby, I was not sure if I will be able to have mom friends around here since I didn't know many people but I found wonderful mom friends. And our kids are about same age so we can always talk about their growth and help each other with what we know. I am so thankful that I met these ladies. I hope we can keep our friendship and watch our kids grow together!

Back to Empanadas, we had a little bit of dough left over so after dinner, I made some dessert Empanadas with chopped apple and chocolate. It tasted good but since I am not good with rolling the dough out, the dough part was too thick. I think it was great if the dough was thinner. I need to practice rolling our the dough.

Anyhow, great turn out! I loved cooking play date. I am sure there are more to come!

Sauteed Pork with Apple Sauce

When I go to Manhattan, I sometimes stop by this Japanese used book store called "Book Off". This is a popular used book store in Japan and they have branch here in NY! This is great for someone like me since I love reading books especially in Japanese but those Japanese books are quite expensive when you buy them from a regular book store.

Ever time I go there, I buy a few books. One of them is normally a novel from my favorite author named "Kotaro Isaka" then I also buy a few cooking magazines. They sell old cooking magazine very cheap. It might be a magazine from 2002, but I don't really care much since I can always find something interesting to cook in any magazines. Maybe it doesn't work for fashion magazine but it totally work for cooking magazine.

So the other day, I was looking through one of those magazines which I purchased for $1.00 each. The magazine was from 2002 March. In there, I found this fabulous looking pork with apple. Ingredients were easy to get from regular supermarket so I decided to make this dish.

It came out really good. Pork and Apple goes very well together.

And it was quite easy to make. You just have to cook apple in separate pan with sugar and butter. Then, cook pork in a different pan with oil, sage, apple juice, brandy and soy sauce.

My husband loved it also! I am very happy that I found this recipe.

It is in Japanese but if you are interested in, here is the link for the recipe.

I recommend looking through your old cooking magazine or books sometimes. You might find something which you didn't notice before!

Lazy Chicken Curry using Patak's Hot Curry Paste

When I feel lazy about cooking something, I get some help from some products such as these Patack's jarred paste. I had curry paste from them and all I had to do was add meat, onion and diced tomatoes.

This is the paste which I used for this dish.



I used "Hot" but it was not very hot for my taste but it tasted pretty good. This is a great product to use when I am feeling lazy.

My husband loves curry and he also liked this curry. I didn't tell him how easy it was to make it. I think that he believe I spent lots of time making this dish. Well, nothing wrong for him to think that way to maybe I just let him believe that.

Well, I recommend using these curry paste when you don't have time to make indian curry from scratch. I also think that there are some other creative ways to use this paste for some other dishes. I will think about it and post it when I come up with some ideas and trial dish!

I buy Patak's product from my local supermarket. They have many different kinds of paste and sauces. I like most of their products, if you have a chance, please try them :-)