The Multifaceted Empanada: Baked Samosas & Dal

Among my many food related hobbies, reading food blogs, looking up recipes, watching Top Chef, watching other cooking shows and memorizing menus, is finding new spins on Argentine favorites.  On an empanada wrapper binge, I thought to myself – what fun goodies can I stuff inside?  With a craving for some intense spices, it was the perfect time to bust out the Indian flavors and make a hearty dal with side of baked vegetarian samosa-esque empanadas.

Vegetarian Samosa Ingredients:

• 3 large peeled potatoes, boiled, then mashed
• 1/2 can peas
• 1/2 cup sauteed minced onion
• 2 teaspoon minced fresh ginger
• 1 hot chile pepper (red or green)
• 1 teaspoon cumin
• 1 teaspoon garam masala

Directions

1. Saute minced onion with hot chile pepper and fresh ginger.  Mix around until it smells nice and gingery.  Add mashed potatoes and mix up good.

2. Season with salt, pepper, cumin and garam masala. Set aside.

3. One mixture is cooled, begin assembling the samosas, similar as how you would fill an empanada.  I still haven’t perfected how to close these samosas, in the attempt to get a more triangular shape, mine began to look much more like hamantashen.

4. Baked in the oven until golden brown.

I’m all about muling spice packages from the US back to Argentina, and this package of Dal Makhani did not disappoint. If you do not have the luxury of an assortment of chemical-enhanced flavor packages, probably the more respectable thing to do would be making it yourself.  This dal recipe works pretty good, although since it requires lots of ingredients that I don’t have, I like to stick to the shameful way to make it and go with the flavor packet.

Ingredients:

• Spice mix
• Canned tomatoes
• Milk
• Lentils, Kidney Beans

Directions

1. Follow the packaged instructions, stoopid.

I actually had left over dal, so I experimented and put the lentils inside the empanada wrapper. Weird you say? Perhaps. But I am proud to report that the empandas de lentejas were pretty damn good.

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