The best cook I've ever known--truly,
is my wife Sylvia making breakfast.
She's amazing.
I've had breakfasts in numerous hotels, brunch,
even on a cruise,
and I've never had breakfast like the ones prepared by Sylvia.
At some point, I'm going to convince her
to come and teach us how to make breakfast.
But today it 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...
It's time for the Venezuelan empanada!
Empanadas stuffed with pisillo (shredded fish with sofrito).
Avocado and garlic sauce.
Today we're going to make Venezuelan empanadas with cornmeal
stuffed with fish pisillo and sofrito,
served with guasacaca,
which is a delicious Venezuelan avocado sauce.
The first step to make a good empanada is to prepare the dough
which is made with this wonderful product that Venezuela gave to the world
--pre-cooked cornmeal.
This cornmeal is very easy to use because is pre-cooked
and here are the steps.
You need water --don't worry too much about how much
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 you need?
That will be up to you.
I eat low in sodium,
so mine's usually not very salty
but I like to focus on the flavor of the filling.
The water should taste the way you'd like your soup.
So it's up to your taste.
Let's try it.
Perfect.
I'm going to wet a clean kitchen towel.
What for?
Because later I'm going to leave the 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 cornmeal first and then the water
while there's another group of people
who say we should be adding the cornmeal to the water.
To be honest, for me it's the same because if you knead well this cornmeal,
you won't have any lumps at the end.
So 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 play-doh.
Do you remember playing with play-doh?
That's what we're doing here.
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.
So I have this wet towel,
we'll cover it,
and we'll let it rest to absorb the water 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 empanadas!
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The next step is to prepare an anatto-colored oil.
What is anatto-colored oil?
These wonderful seeds that 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 rice,
and we'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,
this handful that I had here,
which is like for one cup of oil,
but it doesn't have to be a precise amount.
It'll start immediately to color the oil.
Keep in mind that I'm not frying the annatto.
If you start frying it,
it'll turn bitter as it'll happen with any other 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.
What are these?
The stems and the roots of the cilantro.
You have to clean them 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 again 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.
I'll start my sofrito by cutting well everything 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 the 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'll add
garlic,
onion,
peppers.
Listen... wonderful!
We're going to stir fry it very well so that all the flavors are combined
and I'm going to teach you a great trick so that you get a very good sofrito.
Come here.
Start moving the vegetables to the sides of the pan,
and once the middle heat up very well,
add tomato paste,
tomato passata,
tomato concentrate,
canned tomatoes,
whatever you have on hand.
The tomato paste is going to overcook or toast a little
because it's being cooked at a higher temperature
than the rest of the veggies,
and you'll see clearly how it'll start to boil and make bubbles.
The flavor that is gives to the sofrito
by cooking first the tomato paste
before mixing it with the rest of the ingredients
is amazing.
You can make your sofrito with all the veggies you have
instead of throwing them out
as very often we throw away things because we don't know what to do them.
You can use this sofrito for pasta, to make a sauce,
to make empanadas, which I hope you'll make
wherever you are now.
I brought this from my kitchen
as we're now in my workshop and home
and I want to show it to you.
What I've got here is a fish that I cooked.
You can use any type of fish fillet you have on hand,
we don't have to tell you which one you need.
I'm adding garlic cloves chopped roughly,
onions,
cilantro,
and the fish which will be cooked thoroughly.
This fish stock is unbelievable.
Once you finish cooking the fish,
you strain the stock,
you can even add some of the same fish,
and you'll have a wonderful broth.
Now we'll take out the fish for the pisillo.
I'm going to show you a trick.
This is a trick that I learned
when I was on the island of Margarita, in Venezuela,
where I lived for many years.
While there I learned many tricks like the one I'm going to show you.
Get a piece of cloth that is sufficiently permeable,
add the fish, and squeeze the liquid out.
Then, take the fish and add it to the sofrito.
Come and check out
the texture of the fish -- any fish will work --
once you've squeezed the water out.
Look at how beautiful it looks!
They look like small threads and this is one of the secrets
of a good fish pisillo.
Now that we have our pisillo
let's remember
the three things that we learned when making it.
First, how to make annatto-colored oil that you can use to cook anything
and give it that yellowish color.
Second, how to make a sofrito which you can also freeze to use later,
and third, how to cook a fish and squeeze the liquid out
to make a pisillo that you can also freeze.
So, now we're going to the main part of this recipe
which is to make the empanada.
We'll start taking some dough and make a small ball.
Don't worry if you make a larger ball
because you'll see how we're going to remove the extra dough.
Take a plastic film--
I'm really making them as if I were on the island of Margarita
with the ladies, who are the ones making the best empanadas.
Lightly wet the paper with water to make this step easier,
take the dough,
spread it,
fold the side of the paper to cover it,
and spread the dough a little bit more.
It's very easy if you're using any plastic bag that you might have
but the best part is that what you got here
is a white canvas names Latin America.
You can stuff these empanadas with anything.
If you're in the US, let's say, in Texas,
where they love barbecued beef,
you can use this barbecued beef to stuff your empanadas
and share it with your Texans friends.
If you live in Mexico, you can stuff it with taco Al Pastor -- Mexican-style pork,
or you can make it vegetarians with beans,
in other words, this is an empty canvas.
A canvas that allows us all to seat at the table,
with our neighbors so that we can share who we are as Venezuelans,
with our friends so that we can serve and spoil them,
and this is how the empanada helps to gather us
and extend our hands to each other.
Now, for the next steps
we're going to stuff our empanada,
with the pisillo.
And I repeat, you can stuff it with anything.
We fold the empanada so that one ends covers the other
and, at the end, it's okay to have extra dough
because, at this moment, you could use a plate, for example, to cut it--
Look... look how nice it is... I'm going to cut it--
It gives me a perfect half moon shape,
an empanada--
actually, this is a very good empanda because it's very well stuffed.
As soon as you finish the empanada you need to fry it right away
because if you let it rest for a while,
it'll begin to dehydrate and the dough will start to crack--
The dought sill start cracking.
You do a small test to make sure
the oil is really hot--
You add a tiny bit of dought--
It should look like the beautiful bubbles that you might see inside a glass.
Let me tell you an anecdote.
Because the empanadas have different types of stuffing
when you eat them at the beach, for example, when we're in Venezuela,
they usually have a little mark,
like a little hole in here,
like this one that I'm making,
so the ones with one little hole are stuffed with fish,
the ones with two little holes are stuffed with beef,
and the ones two little holes, one on each side
might be stuffed with cheese, for example.
So, we're going to make carefully a little hole
and we're going to fry it.
Be careful when you're trying to flip it.
I always use two spoons to do it
so that this one here is ready to receive the empanada... do you see it?
and then you can flip it.
I wanted to make exactly like how they make it.
So they put it like this
and you know which one has the little hole, etc.
Look at how wonderful they look!
The empanadas are always served with a sauce,
so we're going to make a very simple one with avocado or palta
as they call it Spanish in some places.
Add some finely chopped garlic.
How much is up to you.
I love garlic, so I'm going to add a generous amount.
Cilantro -- the leaves -- so we've used the whole cilangro.
I'm adding some salt,
some mayo--
Any mayo that you have on hand or you can make one.
I'll teach you how to make one here one day.
A little bit of milk to give it some texture
and the avocado.
This is very ripe, which is even better.
Remove the pit,
add the flesh to the blender,
and blend it like you're making an aioli but with avocado.
And we're going to serve it as if we were in front of the sea:
we get the empanada from the lady
who made it right there, in front of our eyes,
just like we made it here,
and she always has a sauce,
which we're going to add to a container, just like hers.
Gosh, I starving,
but it's for gluttony because I love this.
Now, one of the most important things in the theory of the empanada.
What's the most important thing in the theory of the empanada?
As you can see here, all the juices from the stuffing will end up here, at this end.
The technical name is el culito -- the little butt --
remember, el culito of the empanada,
and you need to blow the empanada.
Why? Because after your first bite,
the steam is coming out,
so you need to blow the empanada.
The empanada tastes better when you blow it.
(crunching sound) Hmmmm...
The aroma that comes out of the empanada when you blow it...
And our avocado sauce, which can also be spicy.
(crunching sound)
Good heavens.
Welcome to my home.
♪ (outro music) ♪
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English subtitles by Jenny Lam-Chowdhury