Cooking Class

Last Monday I took an empanada cooking class with Amanda and Emily (birthday present courtesy of Mom!), which was really fun - something a little different, out of the city, and of course a delicious lunch too.

Here is where Mom found the cooking class - this woman (Teresita) runs a bunch of different classes just out of her house in a suburb of Buenos Aires. The town, called Adrogué, is to the south of the city, about half an hour away by train. I knew Adrogué would be a nice town

because my host mom was raving about it (muy lindo! ayy que lindo es!), and she has very distinguishing taste - preferring exclusively the swanky neighborhoods of Recoleta or Puerto Madero or (parts of) Palermo. Anyway, the point is, Adrogué was really pretty and quiet. To the right is a picture of the street Teresita lived on.

We made two different types of empanadas, carne (meat) and humita (corn) - the two most typical Argentine types. We started by cutting all the vegetables and preparing the filling, which had to chill before you stuffed the empanadas. Basically what goes in the carne empanadas is: onion, raisins, green olives, hard boiled egg, and green onions, pepper, cumin, and of course beef. The humita empanadas have: onions, bell pepper, crushed red pepper, and of course corn.

While the fillings were chilling, we had a mini wine tasting where she told us what wines pair well with the two types. I basically no nothing about wine, but apparently a Torrontes goes well and of course Malbecs (which is the famous Argentine type).

We had to make the dough ourselves next and then knead it and make it into flat circles. This part was kind of annoying, and I think I would be tempted to buy premade dough if I made empanadas regularly. Basically you mush lard, brine, and flour together and it turns into the dough. Once we had the flattened circles, you put a clump of filling on them and then seal them. She was trying to have us seal them a fancy way, with rolled fancy edges, but we weren't so good at that part.. Anyway, half of the empanadas we fried (you just dump them in for a couple seconds) and sprinkled sugar on, and then the other half were baked.

Once they were all done, we had a picnic lunch in her backyard garden, which was really pretty, and it was also fortunately a beautiful day out. My favorite combination was surprisingly the fried corn ones ... I thought the fried would be too much, but it was really delicious, especially with the little sugar on the top. We had made about 4 dozen empanadas, and there were only 4 of us to eat them, so we eat got to take home the leftovers too!

The other woman that was taking the class with us, Leslie, was American, but she had been living in BA since last December. Her Argentine husband owns "estancias" (basically big cow farms) all over the country and they export beef to the US. She was living quite the life...in BA for 2 years with no real things to do except take cooking classes and take her kids to their swanky private school every day. Oh, well, she actually just accompanies the kids, they have a full time driver. She travels around the country whenever she can, and her family goes to their "ranch" in the North every 2 weeks. It was quite the extravagant life! I really liked her though, she had some good stories, and an interesting perspective on Argentine life. She took the train home with us (her driver was getting the kids), and it was her first time riding BA public transportation. Haha. The train was enough for her though, when we got back in to the train station in BA, she turned down the last leg of the journey on subway and we took a taxi back into Recoleta with her.

Now, if I can just reproduce these when I get back home!