Wednesday, January 19, 2011

Some recipes, as requested by Alice and Summer:

Pickles (Try these, even if you don't like bread and butter pickles, you might like them. I made them for the first time today and they are amazing!)

10 pickling cucumbers
1 large onion
2 green bell peppers (I like to use 1 green and 1 red for color)
5 cloves of garlic
1/2 cup salt

1 cup apple cider vinegar
1 cup sugar
1 tsp tumeric
1 tsp celery seed
1 Tbs mustard seed

First you need to sterilize the jars that you will be using. Do this by leaving them in boiling water for a few minutes.

Then, Cut the cucumbers in thin slices and slice the onions. Chop the garlic and the bell peppers. Don't chop the peppers too small because they taste really good after pickling!
Mix everything together in a large mixing bowl and add the salt. It seems like a lot of salt but it drains the cucumbers of all their water leaving them extra cruchy. Add ice cubes or crushed ice to the mixture, I think this makes the cukes cruchier as well. Let the mixture sit for three hours.

After three hours, drain mixture. Then rinse with water (because the pickles will be really salty if you don't!) and drain again.

In a large saucepan, mix together the vinegar, sugar, tumeric, celery seed, and mustard seed. bring to a boil. Once it boils, turn off the heat and add the cucumber/vegetable mix into the sauce pan. Mix everything together. Pack the cukes and veggies into the jars and then ladel in the liquid. Seal the jar and chill in the fridge. Place the jars upside down so that the pickles are soaking in the juice and as you eat the pickles, the juice will soak the pickles at the bottom. You can either store the pickles in the fridge for a month or months or eat them instantly!

Empanada dough (I learned this recipe while working at a pizzeria/empanaderia in Chile)

4 cups flour
3/4 cups vegetable oil
1/4 margerine/butter
1 cup water
1 tsp salt

Mix everything together, knead it with your hands, add more flour or oil if it is to sticky or not stretchy enough. Roll out until dough is very thin, less than one cm. use a bowl to trace out circles with your knife.

And if you are not a vegetarian, you should try making empanadas de pino. These are the empanadas we made at the Pizzeria and they are very good.

Filling:

1/2 pound ground meat
chopped onions. You want to chop a lot of onions so that you have at least twice as many onions as meat.

First, fry the onions until they are translucent. Then move them to a large mixing bowl. Add Sugar, cayanne pepper, black pepper, parsley flakes, cumin, salt. Add a lot of each of these spices