Hello and welcome to a special edition of City Cooking Challenge. I'm Sean Monney, City Times MMJ and your host. I'm joined by a special guest Brian Sanchez. Like all of us here at City, Brian is a student at Grossmont College. But he is joining us today as a special guest cook from White Rice Bodega, a Filipino restaurant and normal heights. Welcome, Brian.
Thank you.
We're here in the kitchen studio of City Times Media on the campus of San Diego City College. And Brian, you're making us a special dish that is affordable and delicious. Tell us about it.
Today we're going to be making empanadas, they're going to be baked in our in our air fryer we're going to be making a pan seared zucchini for our filling. And then we're also going to be making with our Prickly Pear here, a little simple syrup. And then adding that to our carbonated water to have a little drink on the side. And we're also gonna be making a fresh salsa verde in our molcajete.
Awesome. So earlier today, we stopped by the Seeds at City garden to pick up some fresh produce, all the fresh produce see here. Seeds is a local urban farm that grows produce right here on campus. So Brian, why did you pick empanadas for our meal today?
Well, I wanted to pick up pick him empanadas because it's pretty simple dough to make. You just need manteca, which is a lard, some flour, salt and water. Couple just just a couple cheap ingredients to make something really good. And then you can usually fill it with anything you want. Today we chose a veggie vegetable, zucchini because we got it from Seeds. And but you can put anything you can use ground beef, you can use cheese, you can use any other type of vegetable, it's up to you.
Let's start cooking.
Yeah, yeah, definitely. Um, so you're gonna start with six ounces of water. And we're gonna throw in about two tablespoons of salt, just kind of guessing here, but two tablespoons. And then what are we doing with the lard and the flour?
You're gonna add 18 ounces of your lard to your flour, it's gonna be 18 ounces of flour as well. Sorry, it's six ounces of lard, 18 ounces of flour.
Awesome.
And you're just gonna bind this together until it's a little clumpy. And once it is then you're going to add your water and your water is going to help bind it all together, and you're going to get your fresh dough.
So through the magic of TV, we're going to show you guys with the finished product dough should look like this is after you've needed it for a little while. How long would you say you should knead it for?
Yoou should knead it until it's a good consistency. You don't want it to soft, you don't want it to firm either. You just want it nice. So it's like malleable, you want to touch it and pick it up.
And so once you've got this you can just fall on my board and roll it out, yeah? So right now I'm just rolling out the dough, trying to get a nice, thin layer. And you're gonna use a cookie cutter, right?
Yeah, it's gonna, we're using our biggest size today. You want to because you're going to shrink a little bit once you start to fold them. So you're gonna want to make sure you have enough space to work with.
Awesome. And if I cut right into the stove, I'll end up with a nice little piece like this. And so what are we going to fill this with today?
So today we're going to start with our zucchini. I'm going to turn on our hot plate. We're gonna get some oil in the pan.
In the meantime, I've got a zucchini right here. Just dice it up into nice little pieces. Yeah?
Yeah, please. Let the oil heat up.
Just be careful with your hands at home when you're using a sharp knife. Cut from your knuckles, not from your fingertips. And so my cuts aren't exactly perfect. So we're gonna use Brian's today over here.
You got some ready for you guys. Just going to toss those in. You know, a little salt and pepper if you don't mind. You can see with whatever you want to you can throw oregano, you can throw any kind of seasoning salt, garlic, salt, whatever you want. Whatever kind of flavor profile you're going for today, we're just gonna go for something quick, simple, affordable, nice and tasty.
And how long would you cook this before you say it's ready?
You want to cook this since it's going to be getting cooked in your empanadas. Anyways, you only want to cook this until it's brown. So you're gonna want to cook it as high of a temperature as you can for as short as you can. Okay. And we'll end up with nice carmelized zucchini.
Awesome. And so when once I've got this, I can take it off the heat and looks kind of like this and I'll throw it directly into the empanada.
Right into the center. You don't want to do too much because if you do too much it's going to it's going to open up your empanada you're gonna fold it into a half circle, fold over that first crease, second, crease third, or so on and so on until you're done. You've got a little empanada.
Cool.
From here. Do you want to get those into the air?
Awesome. Yeah, but today we're air frying them. What's another way you could probably cook these empanadas?
You can bake them, you can fry them or you can air fry them. So we've got our air fryer today at 350. You don't want to cook them for about 15 minutes. So we'll come back to these.
In the meantime, what are you going to put on top of these empanadas?
So today we're going to be serving our emapandas with freshly made molcajete salsa. We're going to be using tomatillos, chili serranos and garlic.
This is what we got today. We got these all fresh from Seeds this morning. And actually, you don't have to chop any of this is that right? You just throw it directly?
Yeah, you;re just gonna throw it directly into the pan. Do you mind passing me a napkin real quick, Sean? Thank you. We can we just go straight into the pan, and you're gonna want to char these. So you're gonna want to keep a high heat and try to get them nice and if you can black, because a lot of that a lot of that's going to translate to flavor once you are actually crushing and emulsifying everything together.
Awesome. So once again, we're going to speed this up a little bit, you're gonna want to leave these searing in the pan for about how long?
or maybe like 15-20 minutes usually instead of a pan, what I like to do at home is leave them over and open flame. It'll cook it a lot faster, and you'll be able to, like really get a lot of those flavors out.
Awesome. Yeah. And so it's gonna look like a lot like this when it's finished. And we're gonna do with this?
To start the salsa, we're gonna start by crushing up our garlic.
Taken out the garlic cloves in here.
just a tiny bit of salt, tiny bit of salt. You want to crush this up into a little paste. Might have to move a couple of things here. Making them go sideways. There we are. From here, you can start to add your other ingredients. I like to go chilis and then tomatillos. You kind of want to follow by water content. You don't want to put anything that's too juicy in there right away because it's not going to work the way you want it to. Sean, if you wouldn't mind finishing that up. I'm gonna hop on my next little ...
Can I add in the tomatilos?
Absolutely. So from here, I'm just going to show you what I did real quick. So we took our prickly pear that we got from Seeds today. And I use a strainer just to chop it up and try to get all that juice out because these come with a lot of seeds and those seeds are really hard to chew on. I like to but it's not for everybody. And once you do, you're gonna end up with the juice and you're gonna cook that juice just for a couple minutes just until it starts to bubble. We're gonna have a nice red syrup right here.
Is this sweet on its own or would you add sugar to it?
You can add sugar. Tunas or prickly pears are usually naturally pretty sweet. But because you're boiling it out adding it with water you might want to add some sugar, lemon juice, mint, whatever you would like.
And what kind of other drink options could you have to make with that syrup?
You can use you can use that kind of syrup to make mixed drinks. You can use it to make any kind of festive drinks. You can add you can add this to anything if you make jamaica with fresh hibiscus leaves and you can just use a little bit this add a little flavor maybe even clothes or cinnamon to make it festive. That salsa is looking really good. Let's check on our empanadas. You're almost there. Just gonna give them a little flip.
Awesome. So what kind of empanadas would you describe these? I know they eat them in a lot of different countries.
These are more of like a Spanish style empanada. You can empanadas are very versatile. You can use whatever you want. Put whatever you want in them and call them whatever kind of empandas you want. The only difference between these is I didn't get to add paprika today. That was the only difference that would make these real Spanish style.
Awesome. Alright, right.
That looks good to me.
Cool.
So when you got this plate over here. Should I put a drink?
Let me get a nice little cut on this empanada here. You can see the zucchini in there. Nice, a lot of dough. Pretty good.
They're nice and flaky. If you if you fry these they come out very crispy and nice and brown too. It's my first time air frying them but I'm sure they're still very delicious.
Awesome. So we've got our empanada here.
can you scoop a little bit?
Yeah.
And just like a lot of you college students out there, I'm sure we're all a little short on some tools or certain things in the kitchen. So just always be sure to leave us whatever you have, use your creativity. And at the end of the day job, the job will get done. I'm sure everything's gonna taste amazing.
So you got two pieces right here. Want to try?
Absolutely. Cheers.
Awesome. The dough is really nice. Really flaky like you said. And the salsa definitely has some spice to it. It's not overwhelming.
Should we try the drink?
Yeah.
Let's see if this works.
Thank you. And it just blends right in. Awesome.
You give it a little shake.
Gonna give it a little shake with the carbonation? Okay.
Cheers.
Cheers.
That's really good.
That is really good. Yeah. All right. Well, thanks for coming today, Brian. Um, where can fans follow you on social media?
On Instagram, My handle is 13 R-I underscore N. So it looks like it looks like Brian when you look at it. Excuse me.
And of course you can eat his food at White Rice Bodega in Normal Heights. If you want to make this recipe you'll find it in the YouTube description and also on SDcitytimes.com. Just search for "City Cooking Challenge." I'm Sean Monney with Brian Sanchez. Thanks for joining us and happy holidays.
