Empanadas

Marlene and I have a lot of things in common including that empanadas are in our top five favorite foods. While I'm personally a meat empanada girl, Marlene's favorite empanadas are tomate, queso, y cebolla (tomato, cheese, and onion).

RECIPE: Here's what you need to make tomate, queso, y cebolla empanadas:

1/4 cup shredded mozzarella cheese

1/4 cup shredded gouda cheese

1 tomato (seeded) and finely chopped

1/2 white onion finely chopped

1 red chile pepper finely minced

1 tsp salt

1 tsp oregano

1/2 tsp black pepper

12 empanada shells

1 egg

Here's how we make them:

Preheat oven to 350F.

In a pan on medium heat, sauté onions, tomato, and red chile in a little olive oil. Don't add too much, you don't want your ingredients to be too wet.

Meanwhile, shred your cheeses into a bowl. Add in your seasonings. Let your onions, tomatoes, and chile cool then add to the bowl. Mix together until thoroughly combined.

Then take a little more than a tablespoon and start scooping the filling into the empanada shells. You want them to be full, but not so full that they explode in the oven or can't close nicely.

Fold your empanadas over into a semi- circle. Now you have some options fo how to close these. You can use a fork and press them down, pinch them with your fingers, or "braid" them. We chose the braiding method. It's a fancy way of saying we folded the dough over itself along the edges.

Then we brushed these with an egg wash. poked a whole in the top of each and stuck them in the oven for fifteen minutes.

Marlene and I are obsessed with Grazianos, a restaurant near our houses. They have tons and tons of empanada options, and while they're a little overpriced for us, we 're usually willing to splurge because they are so good. We cheated a little bit with this recipe and bought our empanada dough from Grazianos and in the long run our empanadas were just as good and cheaper than what we would normally buy in the restaurant. Now, filling for empanadas is really up to you. You can put what you want, but we opted for a really yummy vegetarian option here.

Catch me and Marlene eating empanadas til we die. Kinda. Just kidding, because for the next couple of weeks we'll have some delicious non-dairy/ gluten free options up on the blog. Stay tuned to hear all about my gut problems. In the mean time, enjoy these photos of our empanadas and message us on @maddieandmarlymake on instagram with any comments or questions!