Hi, foodies in the Hive!

I hope you're all feeling happy and healthy 💚

Do you have a favorite dough for your empanadas, or any other turnovers typical of your country? Traditional Venezuelan empanada dough is semi sweet and is made of corn flour, sometimes with a little wheat flour added to achieve flexibility. Making empanada dough from boiled cassava is really budget friendly around here and allows me to enjoy delicious, crunchy empanadas without any gluten 😁

For a long time I was tempted to make my own cassava dough, since cassava flour is expensive and frozen cassava empanadas and tortillas are even more so. I guess I had been a bit lazy.

I can buy 2 kilos of cassava root for a dollar at the municipal market in my hometown. Once peeled and cut, I have a kilo and a half of cassava that I can cook to make enough dough for 24 empanadas of 22 cm x 8 cm approx. Once the dough is rolled out, it is 2-3 millimeters thick, enough to support a good vegetable filling.

The empanadas with cassava dough absorb some oil from frying, so it is advisable to bake them in the oven. I didn't follow my own advice today 🙈 But I will tomorrow 🙊

Long story short, instead of paying $16 for 24 cassava tortillas, I'm making my own for a little more than $1. Sounds good, right?

Ingredients

For the cassava dough

Cassava cooked in water with half a teaspoon of salt (1.5 kg weighed uncooked)
6 tablespoons cornstarch oil (or any neutral oil) --4 tablespoons cornstarch oil for each kilo of cassava (raw weighed)
3/4 cup of cornstarch --1/2 cup of cornstarch for each kilo of cassava (weighed raw)

For the vegetable stew:

I used whatever I had available in my fridge and some spices.

1 medium size zucchini
1 medium size eggplant
1, 1/2 cups white and red onion
2 tablespoons freshly crushed garlic
1 cup yellow and red bell pepper
1 tablespoon dry oregano
1 big bay leave
1 tablespoon ground cumin
a dash of white vinegar
a dash of cane honey
a dash of annatto oil
salt to taste
enough olive oil for sautéing

Let's Get to Work!

First of all, we have to peel and boil the cassava.

When the root is fully done, we can easily remove the peel. Just make an incision lengthwise with the knife and then pull.

I made smaller pieces with my hands while the cassava is still warm. Then I use a fork to mash it the best I could.

Once I had a big bowl of mashed cassava, I divided this dough into two parts to be able to work it better. I used the oil to grease my hands as I kneaded and incorporated all the ingredients little by little.

The dough was quite sticky at first.

But it turns smooth in no time.

As you can see, it was a big ball of dough, enough for 24 tortillas/empanadas. It just need a little work. Believe me, it's not as hard as it looks. It's all done really quickly.

I used half of it for 5 big empanadas. The other half was going into the fridge.

Let's keep this dough here for a while. We need to make the filling 😁

Vegetable Stew

I peeled the onions and julienned them.

They went to the wok to be sautéed in a little olive oil. I added the bay leaf and oregano.

Then I washed and julienned the bell peppers and added them in the wok.

I also julienned the zucchini and eggplant; the latter I soaked for some minutes in water with a little salt. I crushed the garlic cloves with my old mortar and pestle.

Everything went into the cooking wok. I squeezed the eggplant juliennes before adding them.

When the vegetables began to turn tender, I started the extra seasoning of the stew. I added the vinegar and cane honey, which would make the stew a little bittersweet, and also added the ground cumin to enhance the overall flavor.

The last thing was to adjust the salt and add a little onoto oil, which gives it a touch of flavor typical of the stew used as filling for empanadas in my country.

The stew for the filling was finally done.

All Set!

To assemble the empanadas, first make a tortilla. Then place the filling and close it.

To make the tortilla, I put a small ball of dough on plastic wrap (from a reused pita bag) and covered it with the plastic wrap, so that it was covered on both sides. Then I could flattened it using my hands.