Empanada de atún bento

Empanada de atún bento #2 - 07.04.2010

Spanish flavours in today's lunch, as I decided to make empanadas de atún last night to pack in our bento boxes. As it was a kind of a "spur of the moment" idea, I didn't have the time to make it completely from scratch as my MIL used to do. Luckily for me, the "organised business woman" I am, has everything she needs in her fridge and cupboard to produce these savoury pastries in a relatively short time.

As my (Spanish) Sweetie grew up with these flavours and with MIL's comida casera, cooking up a Spanish dish is always a bit tricky. No matter what I do, I'll never make things exactly the way she did. And as she sadly passed away a few years ago, I can't ask her for advice anymore neither. Nevertheless, I had to shoo someone out of the kitchen last night, who had picked up the familiar scent, trailed it back to the kitchen and was intent on stealing a few scraps out of the hot pan. I guess I can consider that a compliment :o)

So both our bento have an empanada de atún on a bed of young lettuce leaves, radishes, cucumber, tomato/mozzarella skewers and a green olives skewer. It's nice to include raw veggies again, it reminds me that sunny days are on their way and that it will soon be BBQ weather again :o)

The dessert section has grapes, cantaloup balls, orange parts, nectarine and blueberries.

Empanada de atún bento #1 - 07.04.2010

How-to speedy Empanada de Atún :

Ingredients for 8 empanadas:


* 3 garlic cloves (or less, if you're not a garlic fan as we are)
* 2 red onions
* 400g of canned tuna (I used tuna in olive oil, but on brine would work too)
* 2 (bell) peppers (traditionally you'd use green ones, but I used the two red ramiro peppers I had in the fridge)
* 1 jar (400 ml) of tomate frito (my fave brand : Solis)
* 2 hardboiled eggs
* 1 egg
* 2 puff pastry sheets


Preheat the oven to 200°C.

Dice the onions and peppers and finely chop the garlic. In a skillet, fry the onions and garlic in a bit of olive oil, and add the peppers when the onions have glazed over.

Once the peppers are starting to tender, add the tomate frito and let it simmer for a while on low heat.

Meanwhile, drain the tuna and crumble it. Chop up the hardboiled eggs and add them together with the crumbled tuna to the tomate frito. Stir all the ingredients together and let it simmer a while longer. Season to taste with salt and pepper.  Remove from heat and let cool a bit.  The filling should now be rather consistent and not watery or liquid.

Roll out the pastry sheets. The ones I had in the fridge were round ones, which aren't the easiest to use. If you make your own pastry dough you can make roll it out in a sheet, cut out round shapes, reshape the remaining dough into a new flat sheet, cut out again, etc. (empanadas are normally presented as half circles, like goyza)... But I just cut the round doughs in four, filled them and then (painstakingly) tried to close them.

Whisk the egg and brush it on top of the empanadas, before putting them in the oven for about half an hour (depending on your oven).

The empanadas are delicious hot and cold, which makes them ideal for bento.

2 comments:

Lia Chen said...

Looks so tasty! Nice skewers inside the bento. Ingrid, I would like you to pick up 2 awards from my blog here. Thanks :)

Susan B. said...

Love how colorful this bento is! Looks very appetizing. Great job!