Empanaditas (The Philippines)

Allegra describes Empanaditas as little porky flaky pastries, and that's precisely what they appear to be. They looked great in the book and the only problem I had with them was that the insides seemed like a rather odd combination. 

As you would expect, there are two main steps; making the pastry and making the filling.

The filling is made up of a combination of minced pork, glass noodles, sultanas, onion, potato and pumpkin, with seasoning thrown in.



Pumpkin, aka my new best friend!

To start with, you fry the mince with the onions. When the meat is cooked, you add the potato, pumpkin and saltanas and then leave it to cook on a low heat with the lid on for about 20 minutes. 

When the potatoes and pumpkin have softened enough, you take it off the heat and leave it to cool.  To finish it off, once the meat mixture has cooled, you lightly mash it, add in the cooked noodles and fresh corriander and its ready to go into the pastry shells.

The pastry is made using iced water, mixed into the flour and butter mixture.

I'd actually never made pastry this way before so I was excited to try it and see what effect it had. 

As you can see, the resulting pastry was very sticky and looked more like a very solid sponge mixture than any pastry I'd ever made.  Soph, however, assured me that it was the desired outcome and that after some time chilling in the fridge it would be a very workable dough.

As it said in the book, the main challenge for this dough is that it has a very high fat content. This means that it melts rather quickly when it's out of the fridge and if it's overworked it can become very sticky. Because of this, Soph took over pastry duty when it came time to roll out the pieces for the pastry cases.

The rolled a length of pastry out, used a cake-cutter to cut circular pieces, and then rollled over them another two or three times to turn them into ovals. 

It took a little bit of trial and error to get the thickness of the pastries right. Thicker is easier to fill without ripping but the pastry then takes longer to cook. 

Since Soph was working away on this task, portioning the filling and folding the pastry into pockets fell to me.  As you can see from the pictures, I probably wasn't the best choice for this either - my niece probably could have done a better job. 

My first attempt and making
a pocket

Before I had been struggling for too long, Soph did point out that I was probably finding it harder because I didn't cut up the noodles. In my defense, I did think this was odd but I was following the recipe. No where in the book does it say to cut the noodles up into smaller pieces (probably because Allegra assumes we'll exercise some common sense). 

So I proceeded with the filling and folding and slowly improved my technique. 



Taking scissors to the filling mixture
in an attempt to make them
easier to portion


Next came the interesting part; deep frying.  Once we figured out the best timing option, we were on a roll and all-in-all we were done in about 20 minutes.

By the time we were ready to plate up, Soph and I were very excited for the outcome because they looked and smelled incredible. There was nothing too spicey or odd involved for me to panic about but for some reason I was still a little nervous. As it turned out though that was completely unfounded.

The pastry was great. It cooked perfectly and had a lovely crisp to it while managing to stay quite moist. The filling was also excellent. It had a marvelous mix of flavours; none of which was overly strong or overpowering. The blend was superb and the noodles added a nice texture contrast.

Overall we were thrilled with the outcome.  We even used some of the filling and wrapped it in spring roll pastry and that was equally delicious. I would definitely recommend you try this recipe.

Rooibos Malva Pudding (South Africa)

This recipe looked very interesting; probably because it resembled a syrup sponge. And who doesn't love syrup sponge? 

Infusing the Rooibos
teabags

The only reason we didn't do this recipe sooner on in the challenge is because Soph and I had never heard of Rooibos tea and we assumed it would be tricky to track down. We were assured by friends that it was in fact very easy to find so on our next shopping day, we looked for it and, sure enough, right there with all of the other teas/infusions was a packet of Rooibos tea. So, we went home excited anticipation for our desert for the evening. 


When it came time to make the pudding, we were also plesently surprised to discover how simple it was. First, you mix the pudding ingredients together in a specific order. One of these that I was worried about was apricot jam. For some reason, I only like red/black jams. I've never been overly fond of apricots, although I can't say when I last tried eating one. Basically yellow fruits just never appealed to me.  Regardless, in this recipe there wasn't a particularly large amount of jam included so I hoped that the pudding wouldn't taste too apricoty and plodded on. 


Allegra gives rather particular instructions when it comes to combining the liquid with the dry mixtures for the sponge. Once the butter, egg and sugar are blended, you should add a little of each, alternating between wet and dry, until all of the ingredients are mixed. This seemed rather finiky but didn't take as long as I thought it might. 

My second moment of doubt for this recipe came after you've added all of the ingredients in together, when Allegra says to pour in a considerable amount of white wine vinegar. I had never made a pudding before where white wine vinegar had been an ingredient and the weirdest part about adding this was what it did to the mixture. It's clearly intended to airate the pudding but, not knowing this at the time, seeing the mixture rise and form bubbles was a little panic-inducing. It didn't take long for us to realise this must be why it's used though and that calmed our fears, we just hoped you wouldn't be able to taste it. 

What happens when you
add vinegar to sponge
mixture!  

Once this is done, you pour it into your dish and start making a Rooibos syrup. After letting two tea bags infuse a small amount of water, you add sugar, butter, and some more of the dreaded apricot jam and heat it on the hob for a little while, until everything is melted/dissolved. 

About half of this syrup is then poured over the pudding mixture, and the pudding is put into the oven, covered with foil. 


After about half an hour, you take it out of the oven, pour over the rest of the syrup and cook it uncovered for another 20 or so minutes. 

Our oven runs a little hot so we should really have put it on a slightly lower temperature than it was.  

What emerges from the oven after this is a sublime-looking Rooibos pudding. It smelled fantastic and looked great. Ours was a little burned on the edges, resulting in some particularly solid syrup pieces, but it got eaten nonetheless. 

This recipe was so amazing that we actually made it the next week as well. Since most of the ingredients will probably be in your house anyway, all you need is a jar of apricot jam and a pack of tea bags and you can make these till your heart's content. 

It's safe to say this is a recipe that will be repeated time and time again because it was so tasty and simple to make. I think it was so well recieved because it was different from the deserts we usually make but not so out-there that it was complicated or odd-tasting. you couldn't taste the vinegar or the apricot jam so I was very happy with that and all-in-all. Good call Allegra! 

Roast Pumpkin with Cumin (Morocco)

This recipe looked marvalously simple to make, as soon as we could track down a pumpkin. So, when Soph spotted one on the market last week, we decided it was time to try the Moroccan roast pumpkin.  


In my world, pumpkin only recently became something you eat. Mum used to make soups and breads with pumpkin and Soph had always been a fan, but I'm not sure I ever actually tried any of it. For most of my life, the only reason I would ever buy a pumpkin was to carve one for Hallowe'en; I never  wanted to eat it.  Moving to Germany however, meant that I was introduced to a lot of Americans who raved about the things you could make with pumpkin and how versatile it was. Most of the things they made me try were sweet; pumpkin cookies, muffins and, of course, pumpkin pie.  So, having tried it, I can honestly say I do not like pumpkin pie.

Still not being a big fan of pumpkin deserts, I was a little dubious about whether or not I'd like roast pumpkin. Soph, however, was very eager to try this dish because she loves pumpkin it sounded very interesting to her.  So Soph took on the task of peeling, de-seeding and chopping the pumpkin into chunks. 


Basically, this dish is pumpkin, cut into chunks and tossed in honey, almonds, and cumin. You then top them with some pumpkin seeds and roast it in the oven. We cheated here because Allegra said to use the pumpkin seeds from the pumpkin, and why wouldn't she. Soph however, in her fabulously well-stocked kitchen, happened to have pumpkin seeds that she'd removed from a different pumpkin and that she'd already cleaned off and toasted - so we used those instead. 

When we took it out of the oven it looked great and smelled even better. That combination made me very eager to taste it. I wasn't disappointed. It tasted amazing. A little like sweet potato. It had the texture of a nice soft roast potato and the honey added a sweetness that was just fantastic. 

Everybody loved it and it was so easy to make. Once you've mixed up the ingredients it can just sit in the oven while you cook the rest of the meal so it's a great accompaniment to a more complicated tea.