Top Chef at Home

Tonight’s dinner guests are people who love good food and definitely know the difference. One of them is bringing the main dish and wine, but I am providing the rest.

The appetizer empanada recipe comes from an ancient set of cookbooks on regional cuisine. It calls for beef tenderloin. But in consideration for one of my guest’s vegetarian preference, I decided to substitute portobello mushrooms. My husband can’t tolerate anything spicy, so I left out the really hot pepper. They also include sauteed onions, raisins, green olives, hard boiled egg, paprika, cumin, and salt. I made the dough yesterday and assembled the little pies today. I decided to bake 3 of them so my son could try them before he heads off to the airport to go back to Hamburg this afternoon.

The trial batch turned out to be very white and somewhat lacking in taste. My first inclination was to pitch the whole lot of them and come up with a new appetizer. But then I had another idea.

I’m going to try something I’ve never done before with guests. I’m going to ask them to help me redeem the empanadas. I think they might brown better if we put an egg wash on them before putting them in the oven. While they bake, we can collectively come up with a jazzy dipping sauce.

I spent exactly 15 cents at the Safeway this morning on 4 possible ingredients: jalapeno, serrano, long green, and habanero peppers. (My husband will not be eating this sauce if we use any of these! But then he is content with bland.) In addition, I have cilantro, limes, lemons, tomatoes, curry, and a bunch of other things.

One of my favorite activities is cooking with friends, so tonight should fulfill that desire! I will report back as to what sort of sauce we concocted.