Despite eating and being exposed to Filipino food all my life, I had never actually learned how to make a single dish. For the longest time, for a number of years when I had still lived with my parents, I despised Filipino food. Somewhere in my senior year in high school, I had turned over a new health and fitness leaf, and the thought of all that greasy, fried, fatty foods—frequently substantiated by the most calorie-heavy parts of a pig you can find—just plain grossed me out. Now that I’m all moved out and grown up, and only in presence of Filipino food during holidays with the family, or during birthday parties and Pacquaio boxing events, I start to miss it every now and again. Though I prefer it this way because I like not having diabetes thank-you-very-much, I figure I should learn how to make some dishes for those rare occassions when I feel like being unhealthy. I figure it also helps when I want to impress people with cultural diversity via the magic of yummy foods.
The journey began with trying to decide which dish I should make for my friend Allen’s NFL Draft Party. He and his family are a pretty open-minded bunch, and they gave plenty of notice before the party so I had some time to plan. “What should I make and bring to this party?” I asked myself. Lumpias, perhaps? After all, lumpias are synonymous with Filipino food, and White people love them so much, it’s the only dish they can identify. “Yeah, lumpias. They’re like, those little burritos!” they will say.
Nah. Too cliche. What about adobo? According to Wikipedia, it’s the dish that I should have already learned how to cook anyway! Bleh. Too greasy.
In the end, I decided to make empanadas because they’re White-people-friendly, they make perfect finger foods, and you can make some proper substitions for the filling to make it less unhealthy but still have them taste decent.
Sautéing the filling.
Making the filling, however, turned out to be the easiest part. Making the dough from scratch was a little messy, and when it was time to roll it all out, I realized pretty quickly that I had taken on a fairly ambitious project. Considering myself to be a novice in all things kitchen-related, I am inexperienced and therefore was very slow at rolling, handling the dough, and fluting them to look pretty. It took me a freaking hour to make 23 empanadas! >.< No wonder I always saw 3 or more women sitting around a table preparing these before parties. I bet these are more pleasant to make in a team effort. =T
Rolling the dough.
Preparing to be egged and baked.
I think ultimately, they turned out rather nicely. My fluting ability definitely got better after each empanada, haha. I guess they tasted okay since they quickly disappeared once I had laid them out at the party. I also made cupcakes, and even though that doesn’t accomplish anything in the list, I’m just happy to say that both dishes were empty by the time the party was over. =)
Hot and ready!
Allen, eating an empanada, yay! =D
All in all, it was a fruitful and rewarding learning experience. I would definitely make these again in the future. Hopefully I’ll be faster next time, and hopefully one day, I’ll be confident enough to bring these to a genuine Filipino party, getting some positive responses amongst even the most critical of Filipinos (i.e. my family).
Or, maybe I’ll just bring them cupcakes.
