Good Food From Bolivia

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This journal feature is about something I truly love - FOOD! And what better dish to talk about than one concidered to be a delicacy in Bolivia, a real treat, the delicious salteña!

A salteña is a type of Bolivian baked empanada. Salteñas are savory pastries filled with beef, pork or chicken mixed in a sweet, slightly spicy or very spicy sauce, and sometimes also contain peas, potatoes and other ingredients. There are also some vegetarian versions available for sale at certain restaurants.

Typically, salteñas can be found in any town or city throughout Bolivia, but each area has its variations. Those who live in Cochabamba and Sucre claim their cities to have the best version of this snack. However, many folks will go out of their way to try the variation from Potosí. In La Paz, it is a tradition to enjoy salteñas as a mid-morning snack, although vendors often start selling salteñas very early in the morning. The pastries can be purchased anywhere from 7AM to noon. What is astonishing is how quickly they are sold! Many outlets are sold out by mid-morning.

Historian Antonio Paredes Candia states that during the early 1900s, Juana Manuela Gorriti was the first person to create the current version of the salteñas Bolivians enjoy today. Juana later married Presidente Manuel Isidoro Belzu. Gorriti was born in Salta, Argentina and was exiled to Tarija, Bolivia during the Juan Manuel de Rosas dictatorship. The Gorriti family endured extreme poverty, and they came up with the recipe in the early 1900s in order to make a living. A variation of these pastries was known at the time throughout most of Europe.

The pastry, nicknamed "salteña", became very popular. Candia states that it was common to say to kids: "Ve y recoge una empanada de la salteña" ("go and pick up an empanada from the woman from Salta"). In time, most folks forgot the name Manuela Gorriti, but not the nickname. Eventually salteñas left Tarija and became a Bolivian tradition.

Other ingredients included in a salteña are eggs, olives, or raisins. Another characteristic is that they are juicy, like a stew in a pastry. They are more football shaped than flat like empanadas. The trick to eating them is to hold them upright, nibble the top corner and work your way down without spilling any of the hot juices. The juiciness is achieved by making a stew out of all the ingredients and adding gelatin, so that the stew hardens in the refrigerator, and then slowly melts when they are baked. This ensures that the dough does not get soggy even while providing a very juicy filling.

Recipe - Makes 50 Salteñas


FILLING

Ingredients:

1 cup lard or margarine
1 cup ground spicy red pepper (cayenne) mixed with water
½ tablespoon ground cumin
½ tablespoon black ground pepper
½ tablespoon crumbled oregano
1½ tablespoon salt
2 cups white onion, cut into small cubes
1½ cups green onion, finely chopped
3 pounds lean meat, cut into small cubes
1 cup potato, peeled, cooked, and cut into small cubes
½ cup cooked green peas
¼ cup granulated sugar
½ tablespoon vinegar
½ cup parsley, finely chopped
2 spoonfuls unflavored gelatin dissolved in 3 cups water
½ black olive per salteña
3 raisins per salteña
1 slice of boiled egg per salteña

Preparation:

In a casserole add the margarine and the spicy red pepper. Set to boil over high heat until the margarine separates from the pepper. Next add cumin, ground black pepper, oregano, and salt. Let cook for ten minutes over low heat so that the mixture does not stick. Stir constantly. Next add the white onion and let it cook for five more minutes. Finally add the green onion.

Remove the casserole from the heat, add the sugar, vinegar, parsley, potato and cooked peas.

In another casserole add the three gelatin cups. Let it cook over high heat and as soon as it starts to boil, add the meat. Mix quickly and remove from the heat.

Mix the first preparation with the gelatin and meat. Let it cool in the refrigerator one night or until it thickens. If wanted, add the olives, raisins and egg before it thickens or add them directly on the dough when preparing the salteñas.

DOUGH

Ingredients:

12 cups flour
1½ cups lard or margarine (boiling)
6 whole eggs
½ cup sugar
3 teaspoons salt
2¼ cups lukewarm water (more or less)

Preparation:

Sift the flour in a bowl and add the boiling lard or margarine. Mix quickly with a wood spoon. Let it cool for a few minutes and add the eggs, the sugar and lukewarm water with salt. Knead until getting a dry dough. Cover the dough with a kitchen towel  and let it rest for ten minutes.

Divide all the dough into fifty small balls and thin them out one by one with a roller, until getting round-shaped pieces (about ¼ of an inch thick by 5 inches of diameter).

On each round-shaped piece put a spoonful of the filling with the olive, raisins and egg, if these ingredients were not mixed before.

Dampen the edges of each piece with water, fold each one and join the edges very well so that each salteña is closed perfectly. Leave the closing on top.

Put the salteñas on a backing sheet sprinkled with flour. Place each salteña separate from the next one.  Bake them at a high temperature (preheat European oven at 300 C, American oven at 572 F) between seven to ten minutes. Serve them warm.

NOTE 1: If desired, paint salteñas before baking them. In a frying pan add 6 spoonfuls of lard or margarine, 2 spicy red peppers (ground), 4 spoonfuls of water and a teaspoon of salt. Mix the ingredients and cook them over low heat until the water evaporates. Remove the mixture from the heat and paint each salteña with a kitchen brush.

NOTE 2: If desired, you can substitute meat with chicken, or you can combine both.

NOTE 3: You can use real farm butter instead of margerine for a nice North American taste. However, for a really authentic Bolivian flavour, I recommend that you use fresh rendered and purified pork lard.

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Blessings and good karma to all.
© 2011 - 2024 slowdog294
Comments53
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Kjherstin's avatar
I really have to try this. Thank you for sharing.