Filipino style beef empanadas

Inspired about 6 weeks ago by a delicious Filipino style beef empanada bought at West End markets, I tried making them myself this weekend.

There are a lot of difference versions of how to make the dough in particular, and very often with non metric measurements.   For my future reference, this worked fine for a fried empanada (don't know how they would go baked, but frying does make for a more interesting texture, I reckon.  Basically, it's this recipe, although it took a bit more water:

3 cups plain flour

115 g unsalted butter (cold and cubed)

1/2 teaspoon baking powder

1/2 teaspoon salt

2 tablespoon sugar (although I only used one)

1 egg

3 (maybe more?) tablespoon ice water 

You can guess how this is made:  mix the dry ingredients, rub in the butter, beat the egg with water and add to made a pretty firm dough.  Wrap in cling wrap and put in fridge for 15 min before using.

As for the filling:  I just followed an amalgam of a few recipes, but yeah, using 500 g of mince makes more than you can use with that much pastry.   Fried one medium onion, about 4 or 5 garlic cloves, in with the small cubed potato and carrot, then mince.  A substantial amount of tomato paste.  Add raisins (I thought I was overdoing it with 1/3 cup, but no), about half a cup of beef stock, lots of pepper, a half cup of peas, let it simmer and liquid reduce, check seasoning.  Oh, I used a couple of tablespoons of soy too, and maybe a tablespoon of worcestershire sauce too. Sounds a lot of saltiness, if you included the tomato paste, but it was 500 g of mince.

I also put a baton of cheese in the middle of the filing in the empanadas, which doesn't appear in any recipe, but was in the ones I bought at the markets.

They were nice, but not as nice as the market ones.   I have to have another and examine its contents more carefully.