Enticing Empanadas

Hey friends!  I am really excited for this post, since I've been holding on to this recipe for Swiss Chard, Beet and Goat Cheese Empanadas for awhile now.  I was waiting for a week when I would have swiss chard and beets from my share, but I haven't gotten beets in weeks so I decided to use the swiss chard I had in the fridge and bite the bullet and pick up some beets at the store.  I had grand designs of going down to the farmers market on Saturday to get some, but truth be told I was way too lazy (and the farmers market makes me totally stressed out).

I wasn't the only one excited for this recipe.  My Pinkerton cat has a major affinity for beet greens and every time I turned around he had his little furry head in the shopping bad eating the greens!  I took him to the vet that afternoon for his annual wellness exam and she thought his love of beet greens was pretty hysterical.  It's a healthy eating choice for a 15.3 lb kitty!!!

The recipe is pretty straight forward and doesn't take a lot of time or effort.  The most time consuming part is cooking the beets, and even that is simple.  Just boil some water (I put a little vinegar in the water, which I read is supposed to keep the beets from bleeding, but it didn't really work for me), drop the beets in and cook until they're tender (about 45 minutes-hour).

In the meantime, cut the middle stems out of the swiss chard, and chop up the leaves.  Toss the greens into a sautee pan with a half of an onion (the recipe calls for a white onion, I used a yellow one since that's what I had in the house) sliced thinly.  Sautee the greens and onion and cool completely.

Once your beets are cooked, peeled (the skins come right off under some running water once they're cooked) and cooled, dice them up into small pieces.  Mix the cooled, diced beets with the cooled swiss chard and onion mixture and the goat cheese in a large bowl.

I was able to find frozen empanada dough at my local grocery store (one of the many benefits of living in a very diverse neighborhood), but they don't carry it everywhere.  In fact another grocery store in the same chain near my office didn't carry it.  If your local store doesn't have them, you can whip up the dough on your own.  I found this empanada dough recipe that makes it sound pretty simple, but I can't vouch for it entirely since I took the lazy route :)  If you use frozen dough, make sure you give it enough time to defrost so the dough is soft and pliable before you start filling the dough disks.

Once your dough is ready, take some heaping spoonfuls of filling and place it in the center of the empanada disk.  Use a pastry brush and pain the edge of the disk with egg white to help seal the edges.  Fold the disk in half, fold the edges of the dough up and press with the tongs of a fork to really seal the dough and keep the filling from spilling out.

Place aluminum foil over a baking sheet and place your empanadas on top.  When they're all stuffed and placed on the baking tray, brush the tops of the empanadas with some egg yolk to give it a lovely brown color when they're done.

VOILA! 

Beautiful, delicious swiss chard, beet and goat cheese empanadas!  I'm not kidding, this might be one of my favorite recipes of this entire blogging exercise!  It was pretty simple and relatively quick to make so I would highly recommend giving it a try!  The recipe calls for using a dipping sauce, but I ate them all alone and there was a TON of flavor that didn't need any assistance from a dip.