Grandma Clari's Empanadas

Author Notes

All day I have been buffeted by a terrible nostalgia for everything Argentine and long gone, for my grandmother’s beautiful and varied cooking, for the shape of her fingers (one bent due to a kitchen mishap, another with its tip sliced off), for the all-encompassing feeling of arriving at her kitchen surrounded by cousins. I blame all this on my old friend Hernán, who last night for no earthly reason posted a shameless list of classic Argentine hits from the mid-eighties.
My grandmother Clari was the sort who sent you to the vegetable patch to unearth potatoes if you wanted gnocchi for lunch, and who all but burnt our small flat down when, on a visit once to Geneva—and wanting me to eat proper, homemade dulce de leche—set the big Le Creuset pot on a low fire and settled in for a nap. She died ten years ago, and I’ve been missing her awfully.
It’s easy to get really great empanadas on almost any Buenos Aires block, and in the past decade regional empanadas (especially those hailing from Tucumán, Salta, and Mendoza) have really gussied up the offerings—but nothing quite has the flavor of Clari’s homemade empanadas. I have a tiny black notebook in which she wrote out some recipes for me, and the only thing that stands out, possibly apart from the alchemy and other ethers, is the combination of flavours created by combining plumped raisins, green olives, and cumin, and the specific texture and juiciness of the hand-cut beef. Don’t take a shortcut on this step. In terms of the effort you’ll put into it, it’s really not a big deal, but the results are incomparable to ground beef. If a shortcut is absolutely necessary here, make it by using premade dough for the empanada rounds. It won’t be the same, but it will be good enough, and not everyone has access to flaky beef back fat. But I really wouldn’t bother to make these with ground beef.
Clari baked her empanadas, and they’d emerge from the oven steaming and almost juicing over, just waiting for the first bite. But if anyone has a preference for frying, I’d say go for it. It’s got to be a great take on these. I recommend a nice Malbec and a late afternoon breeze to accompany the empanadas.

Buen provecho!

NOTE: You can play with the amounts of cumin, coriander, oregano, and pimentón to come up with your own best flavour.

The images are of my grandmother's kitchen, her standing in front of the house (sometime in the fifties, I'm guessing), of our woodburning empanada and pizza oven, and a generic image of empanadas. —nogaga

Test Kitchen Notes

Beef fat should be easy to find for those who live near cattle-rearing communities. However, for the rest of us, shortening will do. Feel free to halve this entire recipe if feeding a smaller crowd—though you may appreciate the leftovers. —Stephanie Bourgeois