SALTEÑAS FOR BREAKFAST
Thought I’d share with you all my favorite breakfast food here. I go across the street and get “Dos salteñas picante, por favor.” For less than a dollar. I think Two Sisters Bakery should make them in Homer. They are a good tasty nutritional calorie fix that will keep you going for hours. The filling is savory and the dough kind of sweet. Although after watching the Utube video of someone making one, it seems kind of labor intensive. Two Sisters would have to charge more.
Leave it to Wikapedia to have the scoop on the name and origin!
Salteñas or Salteña are a type of
empanada sold throughout
Bolivia, although they are also available in some other countries (such as the USA, Argentina, Brazil and Chile). They originated in the southern department of
Tarija.
Salteñas are savory pastries filled with beef, pork or chicken mixed in a sweet, slightly spicy or very spicy sauce, and sometimes also containing peas, potatoes and other ingredients.
Typically salteñas can be found in any town or city throughout the country, but each area has its variations;
Cochabamba and
Sucre claim to have the best version of this snack, and many will go out of their way to try the variation from
Potosí. 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 are sold 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 lady to create the current version of this product. This lady 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 product, nicknamed "salteña" (the term for a female citizen of Salta), became very popular. (from wikapedia)
Below is a recipe. I don’t think they use the gelatin here as the gravy is runny as all get out. Anyone can tell if you are a true Cochabambiño if you can eat your salteña neatly!!
Bolivian Recipe for Salteñas
Its better if you make the dough and filling one day before and keep in the fridge. Wrap the dough in a damp towel and keep the filling covered to stop it drying out.
The dough:
6 cups flour
6 tablespoons lard
2 egg yolks
1/2 cup milk
1 tablespoon sugar
1 1/2 cups cool water
1 teaspoon salt
Sift the flour into a bowl, add salt and sugar. Melt the lard and add to the flour, add the remaining ingredients and mix well and knead for 5 mins.
The filling:
3 tablespoons lard
2 cusp white onion, chopped
1 1/2 cups gelatin
1/2 cup of red chile sauce
salt and sugar to taste
cumin and oregano to taste (2 - 3 teaspoons of each)
1 pound finely chopped meat
1 cup cooked peas
1 cup cooked potatoes cut into medium-sized cubes
1/2 cup raisins
2 hard boiled eggs, chopped
5 black olives (watch out for the pits)
Gently fry the onions and when soft add the cumin, oregano, salt and sugar. Stir and fry for a couple of minutes then add the meat and continue frying. When the meat is browing add the chile sauce and cook a little while longer then remove and let cool. When cool mix the gelatin, potatoes and peas into the mixture. Refrigerate until the next day.
Making the Salteñas:
Roll out the dough into a sausage and cut into pieces large enough to roll into circles about 7 to 10 cm (2 1/2 to 4 inches) in diameter and 1/4 cm (about 1/8 inch) thick.
Add filling to each circle, top with raisons, egg and olives as desired. Brush the edges of the circle with egg or milk and fold over to seal the Salteñas shut. Make an edge by pressing your fingers along the seal.
Place onto a well greased baking tray and glaze the Salteñas with milk or egg.
Cook for 20 to 30 minutes in a oven pre heated to 300C/572F- until golden.
Leave standing on a cooling tray for 10 mins before eating. Keep refrigerated if not eating that day.
The girls built this little christmasy spot in the hostel the night before christmas.
Un Milagro! We got a kick out of this nativity scene in front of the bank in Mollendo, Peru. There was no baby until christmas morning, and then, complete with white fuzz, which perhaps depicts the miracle, baby jesus appeared!! we had fun looking for the change as we walked by it everytime we went back to the hostal.
