Wheat empanadas are well-known throughout Spain, perpetual participants in snacks and birthday parties, and great allies of supermarket ready-to-eat departments because of their long shelf life at room temperature (and it’s difficult for an empanada to go bad even when it is). is very little. money you spend on its ingredients).
But there is an empanada that I think is a bit above the wheat empanada and not very famous outside of Galicia. I’m talking about corn empanada, one of the Spanish recipes that uses this wonderful grain. Aside from the sweet and cloying cans, once cooked, it’s crispy, full of flavor, and gorgeous in color. Besides corn, these empanadas have something even better: their fillings, typically sea mollusks. The one with cockles is a classic, but if you’ve just been paid you can stuff it with scallops and indulge in the good life with a glass of albariño to go with it.
Note to sailors: while corn dough contains some wheat flour to make it easier to handle, it doesn’t get as firm a structure as a 100 percent wheat dough because corn doesn’t produce gluten, which is responsible for the elasticity of the masses. For this reason, when shaping it in the mold we cannot stretch it with a rolling pin, we have to take parts, stretch them one by one and create a puzzle that connects them until we cover the entire shape. This may cause some cracking in the oven, but don’t worry: they’re very characteristic of the aesthetic of these empanadas, and if you let them cool completely, they won’t fall apart when you cut them.
Time: 60 minutes
Difficulty: Be patient forming the empanada from pieces of dough
Ingredients
For 4-6 people
For the empanada batter
- 250 g untreated cornmeal
- 100 g strong wheat flour
- 250ml of water
- 10 grams of fresh yeast
- 6g salt
For the filling
- 1.5 kg shelled cockles (or 300 g shellfish meat)
- A dash of white wine (optional)
- 1 medium onion
- 1/2 red bell pepper
- 3 cloves of garlic
instructions
1.
Soak the cockles in salt water for two hours, changing the water halfway through to help them remove any soil that may be present.
2.
For the dough, mix the corn flour, wheat flour and salt in a bowl. In another bowl, mix the water and dilute the fresh yeast in it. Make a hole in the middle of the flour, add the water and mix little by little until a dough forms. Knead with your hands for three to four minutes until you get a smooth dough with a plasticine texture. Place the dough in a bowl, cover and let rise at room temperature for an hour.
3.
Drain the cockles well, then place them in a large, preheated saucepan over medium-high heat. Add a dash of white wine, cover and leave open for about a minute. Remove the cockles, save the cooking water, then remove and save the meat from everyone.
4.
In a skillet over medium-high heat, add the onion, bell pepper, and minced garlic cloves and sauté until tender and lightly caramelized, 7 to 8 minutes. Add 100 milliliters of cooking water for the cockles. Cook over medium-high heat until almost completely reduced. Adjust the salt if necessary (the cockle cooking water is quite salty) and reserve the sauce in a bowl.
5.
Line the bottom of the chosen mold with baking paper and brush it with a little olive oil. Take some corn dough, stretch it out with your hands or a rolling pin until thin and place it in the mold. Repeat the process with more pieces of corn dough, covering the entire bottom with jigsaws, squeezing the joints between the sheets so they stick.
6.
Once the bottom is covered, repeat the same process for the walls of the mold, squeezing the junctions with the bottom well so they don’t get too thick.
7.
Cover the base with the sauce and then spread all the cockles on top. Cover the filling with more pieces of dough, then using a fork, join the walls to the top, pressing them well to fuse them together.
8th.
Make a hole in the center of the empanada and surround it with a churro of the dough. Brush the entire empanada with an egg mixed with a dash of water, then bake at 200 degrees, heating on the bottom only, for 35 to 45 minutes, or until well browned on top.
9.
Remove from the oven and let cool in the tin for at least two hours before removing from the tin and serving.
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