Empanadas

Empanadas are made in most cultures with diverse names...
In Chile they are special, big and tasty
Calzones are made by Italians, inside a square sheet of dough
Ours may be made with corn, then fried or with wheat dough, baked.
Yesterday I made a bath of empanadas, here are some of the tricks:

Dough, may be bread or pie pastry or commercial, frozen flake pastry.
with the roller pin it is thinned out over flour and cut in round shapes, any size.
Mine are 10 to 20 cm in diameter.

Filling. Anything is great inside an empanada, favourites are:

• Cooked chicken breast garnished with sweet peas and capers;
• ground meat in a good tomato sauce with finely chopped potato and slices of hard boiled egg
• finely chopped mild sausage, cooked pork meat with rice and finely chopped vegetables (zucchini, leeks, carrots, sweet peas, sweet potato) mixed with stir fried tomato and onion and cooked rice
• cooked fish in white or bechamel sauce with chopped rosemary or dill

Place a spoonful of filling on each dough circle, wet the extra space outside the filling, fold half of it over and seal. You may do a bit of decoration in the seam.

Have a beaten egg at hand to ¨paint¨ the top outside of each empanada to get a golden color when baked.
Bake on oiled cookie sheets for 25 minutes at 350 until golden, not burned

Serve hot with a great salad.
Left over empanadas may be refrigerated (2 or 3 days) and warmed to serve.