The best cook that I've ever known is my wife Silvia making breakfast.
It's amazing.
I've had breakfasts in hotel, brunch,
on a cruise,
and so far, nobody has made a breakfast like Silvia's.
At some point, I'm going to convince her
to join us here to show you how to make breakfast.
But today will be my turn and I'm going to teach you
how to make one of the best Venezuelan dishes
typically served for breakfast:
Empanadas.
There are empanadas in Bolivia, Argentina, Chile, Galicia...
Now it's time for the Venezuelan empanada!
Empanadas stuffed with fish pisillo -- shredded fish--
Avocado and garlic sauce
So we're going to start making Venezuelan empanada with corn flour
stuffed with fish pisillo and sofrito,
served with a guasacaca,
which is how Venezuelan call this wonderful avocado sauce.
First, to make a good empanada we'll start with the dough,
which is made with a wonderful invention that Venezuela gave to the world:
Pre-cooked cornmeal.
This cornmeal is very easy to use
because is pre-cooked
and this is how you start:
Here you have water--
don't be too worried about how much water
because you'll start adding the cornmeal until you get the desired texture,
and to that water, you'll add some salt.
Here's my salt.
How much salt?
Well, that will be up to you.
I eat low-sodium,
so mine's usually not very salty
but I like to concentrate on the flavor of my stuffing.
It should taste the way you'd like your soup.
Up to your taste.
Let's try it.
Perfect.
I'm going to wet a clean kitchen towel.
Why?
Because I'm going to leave this dough to rest
and I need to cover it with a wet towel,
so I'm going to have it ready.
Here's my cornmeal--
We always have this argument
because some people say we should add the water to the cornmeal,
while there's an opposite group of people
who say we should be adding the cornmeal to the water.
To be really honest, I think it's the same
because if you knead well this dough,
you won't have any lumps at the end.
You'll start adding the cornmeal to the water
and, as you can see, I'm not measuring it,
until you get a dough very similar to a play-doh.
Do you remember playing with play-doh?
That's what we're going to do.
This dough needs to be well hydrated
because being a pre-cooked cornmeal,
if you don't let it rest,
you might get a sandy texture.
Hence, I have this wet towel,
we'll cover it,
and we'll let it rest to get the hydration it needs.
This cornmeal is gluten-free, is amazingly healthy,
and you can use it for a myriad of dishes,
which you will be learning for sure,
but today I'm going to teach you how to make Venezuelan empanada!
♪ (music) ♪
The next step for our recipe is to prepare anatto-colored oil.
What is anatto-colored oil?
These wonderful seeds you see here
known as onoto, annatto or achiote,
depending on where you are in the continent,
is the natural coloring that America gave to the world.
We use it with our food to give it
a delicious yellowish color.
Dishes with this golden color tastes better, right?
If you serve a traditional dish of chicken with rice, one white and one yellow,
they'll always say the yellow one tastes better.
How do we use it?
I start heating up some oil
but without letting it go too hot,
I'll add the seeds,
that handful that I had here,
which is almost for one cup of oil,
although it doesn't have to be a precise amount.
It'll start immediately to color the oil
but keep in mind that I'm not frying the annatto.
If you start frying it,
it'll turn bitter like any spice.
Look at the color of this.
I'm going to strain it so you can see it.
Look at it.
Annatto-colored oil.
Look at the wonderful color that it gives.
Now we're going to make the sofrito for our fish pisillo.
While this is heating up--
This is a treasure!
And you can't find it easily lately.
Do you know what is this?
Stems and roots of cilantro.
You have to clean it very well to remove all the dirt
but you can't imagine the incredible flavor
that you could add to a sofrito with these roots that you see here--
Never ever throw away the roots of your cilantro,
trust me,
as well as the stems.
Actually, if you asked me,
When it comes to the aroma,
I generally prefer, the stems and the roots than the leaves.
The leaves are almost just for decoration.
So I start my sofrito
by cutting well everything that is from the cilantro.
I'm cutting at this speed because I've been doing this for 30 years
but you should do it carefully
because I don't want you to have an accident in the kitchen.
Once we've cut everything,
we'll start with the sofrito.
I'll add the oil and we'll start making sofrito.
Add the stems and roots of the cilantro.
(sound of vegetable frying)
That's the sound of the sofrito.
It needs to make this sound, it's essential!
If it doesn't make any sound, something is not right.
Then we start adding:
garlic,
onion,
peppers.
Listen... wonderful!
English subtitles by Jenny Lam-Chowdhury