• Capital: Santiago
• Population: about 17.6 million
• Area: 756 093 km²
• Currency: Chilean peso

For my Chilean recipe, I made empenadas de pino and a salad. Empenada de pino is a pastry containing ground beef, spices, egg, olives and raisins. The salad is simple but beautiful and yummy! Here are the recipes.

Empenada de pino

Ingredients:

For the dough:

• 2-3 cups flour
• 1 egg yolk
• 1 cup dry white wine
• 1 teaspoon salt
• 2 teaspoons olive oil

For the filling:

• 1 pound ground beef
• 1 onion
• 1 clove garlic
• 1 1/2 teaspoon cumin
• 3 teaspoon paprika
• 1/2 teaspoon chili flakes
• 1 teaspoon sugar
• 1 teaspoon flour
• Salt and pepper
• 1 hard boiled egg
• 1/4 cup raisin
• 10 black kalamata olives

Directions:

First, measure all the ingredients for the filling and chop the onion, the olives and the garlic.

In a pan, heat some olive oil and brown the meat, add the onions and cook until translucent. Once the onions are ready, add the paprika, the sugar, the cumin, salt and pepper. Cook for about 8 minutes and add the flour. Mix well and cook for an additional 2 minutes. Set aside and let completely cool.

Preheat the oven to 350F.

In the meantime, prepare the dough. In a large bowl, sift 2 cups of flour and add salt. Add the egg yolk and the olive oil and mix together.

Warm the wine until luke warm.

Gradually add the wine to the flour and mix together with your hands. After you have added all the wine the dough should be wet but not sticky. If the dough sticks to your finger add more flour.

Once the dough is made. Cut it in 4 and roll it until you get 4 thin dough circles (about 1/4 inch thick).

On one half of the dough circle, put  some meat, hardboiled egg slices, olives and raisins.

Fold the dough over the filling and tightly seal the edges. Repeat this 4 times.

Beat an egg in a bowl with a little bit of cold water and brush over the empenadas.

Place on parchment paper on a baking tray and bake until golden brown (about 20 minutes).

Serve with a salad.

Chilean ensalada

Ingredients:

• 3 tomatoes
• 1/2 red onion
• 1/2 a lemon
• Olive oil
• 1/4 bunch cilantro
• Salt and pepper

Directions:

Cut the tomatoes and the onion in slices. Chop the cilantro.

Put the tomatoes slices on a plate. Add the onion slices on top. Drizzle with olive oil and the juice of 1/2 a lemon. Add salt and pepper to taste. Finish with the chopped cilantro on top.

Buen provecho!