Email
PrintMake your holiday dinner an empanada party
The cowgirl way to host a dinner party is to keep it simple with a food a cowboy could love.
One of the reasons I bought my house in Dallas — a fantastic example of Arts and Crafts architecture, with 10-foot-tall ceilings and 1916 windows still intact — was that it had a dining room large enough for a table that would seat eight. In the long galley kitchen, there was lots of counter space for rolling out pie dough, something that would come in very handy after I discovered that one of my most successful party menus revolved around empanadas.
A seemingly humble turnover filled with seasoned chopped meats or fruits, the empanada is a genius of a self-contained food, and one with a rich history. The Spanish and Latin American answer to the Italian calzone, the Cornish pasty, and the Russian pie-rogi, the empanada is beloved both for its transportable nature and for the surprise inside. It's so much like a wrapped present, in fact, that the empanada came to be my party-menu standby — and a favorite of my dinner-party friends.
But we'll get to how the little pocket pastry got to my table later. The story of how it got to the American West depends on which history you're closest to.
Let's say you're a worker in Galicia, Spain, centuries ago. An empanada — from the verb empanar, to wrap or coat in bread — is your hearty and portable lunch. The dish was carried to South America and the American West by Spanish conquistadors, who spread their food customs as they colonized.
Or say you're a miner in Cornwall, England, where mining dates back to between 1000 and 2000 B.C. The Cornish pasty is your underground food, so easy to carry and so versatile that you can have a savory one in your left hand and a sweet one in your right. The Cornish people who immigrated to Michigan's Upper Peninsula in the mid-1800s to work in the mines made them, reheating their pasties on shovels held over the candles worn on their hats.
Early Irish-Catholic priests were said to have carried pasties as they walked around the country ministering to the flock. The meat pie was popular enough to be mentioned in Shakespeare's The Merry Wives of Windsor (1598) and was also a favored food of the nearby Scots.
If you're Thomas Henry Morrison immigrating to the United States from Wellington, New Zealand, and settling in Utah in about 1880, you're bringing your old family recipe for delicious Scottish meat pies to your new world — our Old West. In 1883, Morrison and his wife started making meat pies in their kitchen. Soon they were selling them from a small pushcart filled with heated bricks in the streets of Salt Lake City.
"At the old Godbe Pitts Drug corner in Salt Lake City at Main and First South," recounts the company website, "you could often hear, 'Hot Scotch pies, Morrison hot Scotch pies,' as Thomas, in a cheery enthusiastic voice sold his delicious pies. And just as Salt Lake City grew, so did his business. After all, who could resist a hot meat pie?"
Not many people it turns out. Demand grew big enough that the fledgling business added a restaurant in the basement of a bank in 1880s Salt Lake City. The meat pies became a Salt Lake staple, with folks lining up till the sold-out sign went up every day. Actors, statesmen, coal drivers, bankers, and, one imagines, a cowboy or two — people of all persuasions came for Morrison's pies. Some 120-plus years later, Utahans can get them from grocery stores, restaurants, convenience stores, and a new plant in Valley City.
Whatever way you look at the history of this little pocket food — the pushcart pies of Thomas Morrison in Salt Lake City in the 1880s, the saddlebag snack of a vaquero on the trail, the lunch of miners in the British Isles, or the on-the-go chow of the conquistadors — empanadas are a brilliant method of cooking and carrying cooked food. They're as perfectly suited to a trail ride as they are to a party menu.
Recipes
Now to that party menu. Having friends over for any occasion is a celebration — and with Thanksgiving, Christmas, and New Year's upon us, it's time to think about celebrating in cowgirl fashion. The first time I made empanadas for a holiday get-together, they were such a big hit that they've stayed in my party repertoire.
To help you along the party-throwing trail, I've written recipes for an easy do-it-yourself holiday menu — empanadas three ways:
• Chicken
• Spinach and mushrooms
• Sweet potato, chorizo, and goat cheese
(Need empanada dough? Here's a recipe for that, too.) Also tostaditas with margarita shrimp, and jalapeño-spiked Parmesan artichoke dip, along with some easy sides (chopped avocado, pico de gallo, limes, salsa). Pair your feast with some Modelo beer or sangria and some good country music and you'll have a shindig that will keep your friends partying till the cows come home — or till the tunes are turned off, whichever comes first.
Issue: December 2009
