Homemade Empanadas

YUM!If you could only taste these, you'd spend the rest of your life in Chile. These are awesome!
We have had many a store bought empanada and they are nothing compared to these delectable morsels of fried goodness.My very sweet friend, Alida, came over today to show me how to make empanadas. It is a family tradition in Chile to get together at holidays, especially Fiestas Patrias, to make empanadas. Each South American country has their own version of the empanada. The typical one found in Chile is the empanada de horno or the baked empanada. It has a meat and onion filling with part of a slice hard boiled egg and an olive with the pit.
Ours are filled with onions, ground beef, parsley, and garlic.

The dough is just flour, oil, salt, and water. Rolled out with a pasta machine assembly line style

Fried to a crispy golden color in our cast iron skillet

And our finicky little taste tester get's the first bite and the verdict is ..........
DELICIOUS!
If you want the recipe, please post a comment!

Sopaipillas- Savory or Sweet?

Which do you prefer? I made these delicious little treats today to go with our vegetable soup dinner. They are fried pieces of dough  made with zapallo or chilean pumpkin. You can serve them with pebre sauce which is like a tomato salsa or with a chancaca syrup. Chancaca is a chilean molasses.

A nice golden brown fresh out of the deep fat frying cast iron kettle Jim set up outside
He loves outdoor cooking and so do I (him cooking, I mean!)

Here is the link to this great website I found on traditional chilean cooking

http://canelakitchen.blogspot.com/2010/06/sopaipillas-con-prebre-little-chilean.html

The recipes are in english and spanish and many if not most can be made in a North American kitchen!

Here they are the next morning with a light syrup recommended by Gloria on the website linked above. It has cinnamon and orange peel in a honey/sugar syrup thickened with corn starch. I must admit they are good both ways but much better sweet!

Hot Dog Completo

What is a hot dog in Chile? That all american food made the chilean way.

 Is it perrito caliente? Don't ask for this or you may get Fido

or salchicha? or just hot dog with a spanish twist to it? Jim says hot dogo

cause if you just add an 'o' to the end of a word it may actually be spanish for something!

My favorite brand is Receta del Abuelo. It has the most meat minus the food coloring.

Completo style has chopped tomatoes, mashed avocado, cilantro, catsup, and lots of mayo.

It may also have chucrut in the southern german parts which is sauerkraut.

Italiano has just tomato, avocado, and mayo which are the colors of the italian flag.

A lo pobre is the poor man's hot dog with fried onion, french fries, and a fried egg on top.

And to wash it all down a Coke Life made with stevia which, by the way, is not available in the good ol' US.

And these are calzones rotos or the torn underwear cookies. Quite tasty! They are just bits of fried dough with powdered sugar. I buy them at the feria but one of these days I'm going to try making my own.

Stuffed Chilean Pork Loin

Here is what I made for Sunday dinner. The pork loins here are excellent. They are as good as the meat at Browns Butcher Shop in Gaffney South Carolina. Real tender and they cook up juicy. The loin cost me about the same as $6.00 U.S.

Before sliced and served up fresh out of the oven

So I bought a large half of a loin about 14 inches long and flayed it out into a large sheet about 1 and a half inches thick.

On the side I diced some onions, mushrooms, celery top, garlic, savory carrots, and sauteed them in a large frying pan with olive oil and a little sesame seed oil till they were all tender. 

I had some home made bread that Lori had set out to dry and i took these loaf ends and broke them up into large chunks, being careful not to waste the crumbs. I put all of this old bread into a bowl and put it to the side. I sliced some Queso Fundo or farm cheese in nice large slim lengths and set this aside as well.

Once the veggies had started to caramelize, I took some red wine and de-glazed the pan so that I was not wasting that good flavor from the saute. I smothered the day old bread that I had earlier set aside with the onions, carrots, and wine saute. 

I placed the rolled out juicy pork loin on the chopping block in a large cooking platter. I seasoned what would be the inside of the roll with salt pepper and some olive oil. I spread out the bread and saute contents evenly over the pork loin topped it with the cheese slices, and then rolled and tied up with cotton string the whole mess of goodness to recreate the pork loin in its new and improved reconstruction. 

The whole loin, with the excess stuffing around the edges, was placed into the oven at 350 degrees for about 35 to 45 min. Once fully cooked and crispy browned on the outside, I set the loin aside for about 8 min to rest. Before slicing into portions, I drizzled some olive oil over the top. 

I served up the loin with hot buttered and seasoned home made pasta noodles, and a healthy glass of red wine.  

Sliced and ready to put on the table

Here is our quick video on the pork loin. I am sorry I did not have time to film the preparation of the meal.

A bountiful harvest

Fall is a bountiful season here. From the blackberries, to the plums, rosehips,mussels, and now the apples. We have been very busy.

We went down to our cove on a beautiful afternoon last week and noticed in a sandy area around the dock was a large bed of mussels. So Thomas and I picked a bagful and Jim cooked us up a shellfish feast. Though Thomas would not eat any!

Here are the plums I picked at my friend''s house. I made plum jam and canned some for future use in pies and cobblers.

These are rosehips or the seed pod of the rose. Most of the rose varieties in the US are hybrid but these are from the old fashioned rugosa roses and they produce lots of seed pods. A friend showed me how to make mosqueta which is rosehip marmalade. First we take off the ends and stew them until soft.

stewed with some water until soft

pushed through a strainer to remove seeds

Then it is strained a second time through stockings to remove the hairs
then boiled with sugar until thickened

a jar of mosqueta!

This week we picked apples in an old orchard in our neighborhood. Free for the taking, several varieties. We just had to battle the yellow jackets off and dodge the cowpies. We brought a couple sacks over to a restaurant in Puerto Octay that has a cider press. Here is Andrew and friend putting them through a grinder.

Here is the mash going in the press

Pressing down ....

and squeezing tight!

pasteurizing

6 bottles for $6

Bet you wish you had some!

Smoked Salmon

The other day, before Emily left, we went down to the Feria or market in Puerto Montt. This open air market is called Angelmo. The market is located at the actual Pacific Ocean port and is primarily a seafood market as well as an open air market section for tourists that sells trinkets and wool products.

First of all it stinks like fish, which is to be expected, but on the good side the colorful small fishing boats dock here and it is kind of neat to see them all unloading their fish and the bounty of the sea.

Emily, Andrew, Thomas and I bought a large 15 to 20 pound Salmon that was fresh off the boat. The fish monger filleted the Salmon and at our beckoning vacuum packed 1/4 of the fish and gave the rest of the fish to us to eat over the next couple of meals. Emily of course loves Salmon, and she was kind enough to scarf down a good bit of Salmon over the next 4 days.

The remaining section of salmon I decided to slow smoke as I was already cooking on the grill a smoked pork loin. I thought it would make for a wonderful dinner for a house guest we had visiting, but our guest did not show up until 12:30 midnight and the meal was a bust! His loss eh?
So far be it for me to let good food go to waste, so here it is:

Smoked Salmon, Pork Loin, Fresh Farm Cheese, and Crackers with a good Chilean wine. 

I did not season the salmon at all. Just fresh salmon and slow smoke. I was delightful, not harsh and strong flavored like I have had in the USA. Lori said that it could have used some salt, but I do not think so. I think it was perfect, especially with the farm fresh Coumey Cheese. If anything it would have been nice to have some capers, but overall it was easy to make and delicious.

Bacon (yummy, juicy, tasty, pork goodness)

Here are a few pictures of the pork bellies that I purchased and made into bacon on the smoker grill. We sampled the bacon on Monday and it turned out perfect. I am not trying to preserve the meat just give it flavor. To make smoked preserved bacon is a much longer, more difficult process using a lot more salt and other preservatives. My bacon is just as good, but I use a freezer instead of a smoke house to keep the bacon for later days.

Looks like bacon

 Simple Recipe: 
Salt
Pepper
Sugar
Garlic Powder
Chancaca or Molasses syrup

Put equal parts of the dry contents in a bowl for rubbing on the pork bellies. Make sure you have good lean pork bellies, with a good mix of fat and meat. After rubbing the dry spices all over the meat (do not forget the sides) drizzle the syrup on the meat and rub in as well. Put all the seasoned meat back in the fridge and let it rest for an hour or two. You can adjust the salt as you like to flavor. I actually taste it on my finger to get a feel for what I like. There is no hard and fast here, but to be safe equal parts worked fine for me.

Now put it on the grill:

smells like bacon.
See the pesky onion getting roasted at the other end of
the grill?

I like a good slow smoke for my bacon. The lower the heat the better. I put the meat on the far side of the grill so that it is not directly over the heat while still getting a good smoke. The idea here is not to cook the bacon, it is just to smoke the bacon (with out inhaling). You will know when it is done when the meat has a good rich red smoked color and the meat has sweated a little bit. The meat should never get so hot you can not touch it with your hand.

Now remove the meat from the grill, trying your best to keep all the juices on it and once cool enough put it in a plastic bag and then the freezer. The freezer will firm up the bacon and it will absorb some of the juices and most important will allow for easier slicing.

Here is what was left of the smoked chicken and sausages as well as the roasted onion we had for dinner later in the day.
For the onion I slices a grid pattern in the top and season it with salt, pepper and a drip or two of olive oil. Let is roast over 3 hours and it has a nice caramelized outside and a warm sweet center. Yummy!

If you look you can see the snow capped Osorno in the background

Slice the bacon as you can, with a knife or on a meat slicer, and cook up in the frying pan for a good old Bacon Lettuces and Tomato sandwich.

The Most Important Post "THE SMOKER GRILL"

The tale of Glorious, Smoked, Tasty, Juicy, Tender Goodness of the GRILL!

Here is the Grill as it arrived assembled on site

Ok three confessions:

1. I like to cook

2. I like to eat (bless me father for I have sinned...... again)

3. I spent too much money on the grill (i do not think so but Lori made me add this... $400.00)

Down here in Chile the Chileanos cook out on a Parilla or Assado. This is much different than in the USA in that they do not really have the same type of grills that are found in the USA. They do have these little Hibachi type grills that they call Parillas that are like little "Easy Bake Ovens" (remember those:), that are made of tin foil and would likely fall apart or be scrunched into a pile of scrap foil under the weight of true MEAT! 

No little meat on a stick or simple buffalo wings would suffice in my thought as a justified meal worthy of a cattle or sheep farmers fork and knife. So with the prospect of having no good choice for a grill and with my propensity to cook all forms of yumminess, I found it Necesito or necessary to have a proper grill manufactured. 

This is again where the Mennonites came into play as one of them named Ernest is an artist at welding and a Texan at that, and everyone knows Texans love to eat MEAT. So we had the motive and the means for the crime and all that was needed were the tools and the supplies. So below are the results:

One of our Mennointe friends John and I and a look at the rear of the grill. With smoker grills lid weight is always the problem. The Mennonites designed a lid counter weight system made from an old leaf spring and it works perfect, even Thomas can open the lid.

All painted up and ready to be used

A Large Pig on the grill will fit fine (Andrew)

Side View, see the door for the hot coals and the chain on the door can be used to control the air intake.

Thomas the Monkey on the grill

If you look close you will see Ernest the welding artist who made the grill

All in all I am extremely pleased with how it turned out. I made the design so I kind of knew what I wanted and needed to get a good smoker grill that I could also use as a regular grill to cook burgers, hot dogs or chicken without compromising the smoker qualities.

Also there is an issue here in Chile that they hand make their charcoal which is called CARBON. Carbon can be expensive by the bag, as most manufactured items are here in Chile, so I chose to sort of make my own. When I grill I use fire wood which is readily available and easily burned down to make hot smoking coals that I can shovel into the side door of the grill. Ernest has made me a custom shovel that I will attach to a 6 foot pole to so that I can spread the coals all the way from one end to another of the 5 foot grill.

I did not put wheels on the grill or make it a tow behind because I did not want to spend the Pesos right now and it also makes it a lot harder to steal. I would expect to pay about $2,500 for this grill in the USA as it looked on the day of delivery, so I think it was a pretty good deal, especially since we eat outside on the grill a whole lot. Also fire wood is a lot cheaper than natural gas is to cook with. The best part is that this grill will likely last for generations as it is made of really thick steel, and the bottom is disposable and easily replaced.

We did cook on it Saturday last. We made BBQd ribs and whole chickens and it was fantastic! (sorry no pictures as we eat up the evidence quickly) It cooked perfectly with no hot spots, good heat control, excellent smoking qualities and overall ease of use. We are very satisfied with the new grill. Thank you to our wonderful friends the Mennonites (Ernest the grill and Guillermo for the cutting board and handles) and thank Y'all for stopping by the blog. Now all you have to do is stop by for dinner.

We have an accompanying 10 foot picnic table with benches that will go along side the grill that is almost complete. We hope to have the whole Mennonite community over for dinner / cook out when everything is in place, and we will post some pictures of that event when the time comes....... Jim