The empanada game
My family definitely has a set of noticeable quirks, and that might be the most boring observation ever, because what family doesn’t have their quirks.
Growing up everything was a game. “Let’s see how fast we can unload the dishwasher!” “Let’s play a game! Let’s see how much we can clean in 10 minutes”. When we were kids, it worked great. OOH! A GAME! I BET I CAN WIN! And then we got older and the game was exposed for what it really was: not a game. And now that I’m even older, I have fallen into a trap. “Let’s play a game” I say. Joel has taken to responding with “Mind games? you want to play mind games? that’s weird”.
All this to say though, it’s not just my little family that does this. My aunt had a fun party game on easter in which her hedge trees were planted before anyone could realize it wasn’t a game. “Parties” often consist of going to someone’s house and cleaning their yard. My grandma likes to point out that life should be fun, so why not turn everything into a game. That’s probably a good point.
Lately, my grandma has been playing the “empanada game”. And that is the point of all of this. Because I decided I wanted to play too, and let’s just say this is a game I never want to stop playing.
It’s pretty simple actually. Make some dough, roll it out, fill it with some stuff, fold it shut and bake it. DONE.
For my first foray into empanada land, I followed a fairly traditional Argentinean version. I’m glad I did.
I followed a recipe I found, based purely on the photograph, because, you know, that’s a good way to vett a recipe. I followed it to the T, so I’m actually not going to take the time to write it all out. Instead I’ll just give you the link I followed and urge you to try your own variation. Empanadas. (The only thing I’d add is that you can use what ever size circle you want to cut out the dough, you don’t have to make tiny ones.)
I approve of the empanada game.
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