Ham, Pork, Chicken, Garlic, and Onions!

At my brithday party a couple of weeks ago I served a couple of dishes from recipes of my Lola, her Baked Empanadas and her Bam-I. By popular demand, here are the recipes, both of which feature the magic flavor combination of ham, pork, chicken, garlic, and onions:

Note: If making both Empanadas and Bam-I, save time by cooking the chicken for both recipes together!

Baked Empanadas
(Lola and many others have told me that traditionally, empanadas are fried, but Lola developed these baked empanadas in Cebu in the 1950s for her daughters who asked for a lighter, less greasy version that didn't have to be fried again to reheat. Basically the same filling, but using pie crust and baking 20 mins at 400F rather than deep frying in a thinner, more pliable wrapper.)

Yield: About 40 empanadas

1/2 lb (225g) pork, cubed or ground
chicken to yield 1/2 lb (225g) cooked chicken meat, cubed (~1 lb whole chicken pieces)
chicken stock spices
1/2 lb (225g) ham, cubed
potatoes to yield 1 c (240ml) cubed (~2 medium potatoes)
1/2 c (120ml) raisins
3/4 c (180ml) cooked peas
1/2 c (120ml) carrots, cubed
1 onion, diced + 1 whole onion
2-3 bay leaves
~ 8 whole cloves
a few peppercorns
3 cloves garlic, finely diced or pressed
1 large egg, raw + ~5 large eggs, hard-boiled and cut into cute little pyramid pieces with yolk tips
~ 11 c (2600ml) flour, sifted
~ 4 c (950ml) Crisco shortening (I use butter-flavored)
~ 4 tsp (20ml) salt
~ 2 c (475ml) ice water

. Pie crust: Make in batches and use a pastry blender. Keep everything as cool as possible - avoid mixing dough with your hands. I have had success putting some ice cubes in a big plastic bowl and then making the dough in a metal bowl sitting on the cubes, this may be overkill, but it's easy. Mix together 2 2/3 c (630 ml) sifted flour and 1 tsp (5 ml) salt. Use pastry blender to blend in 1/2 c (120ml) Crisco until mixture is of small pea-sized butter pieces coated with flour. Add 3 tbsp (45 ml) ice water (maybe a teensy bit more but start with just 3 tbsp especially if the climate you're in is not cool and dry) and use a fork to press the dough together into a single mass. Press the dough into a disk, wrap in plastic wrap, and put in fridge. It'll take about 4 of these dough disks to provide enough dough to make all the empanadas. One dough disk is enough to make a two-crust pie.

. Hard-boiled eggs: puncture the end of each eggshell with a pin. Prepare an icewater bath. Put the 5 eggs in a pot and fill with water so eggs are covered by one inch of water. Cover and bring to a boil. As soon as water boils, take pot off heat and allow eggs to sit in hot water 10 minutes. Transfer eggs to icewater to cool. Shell the eggs and cut them into the pyramid pieces: cut in half lengthwise, cut halves into three lengthwise sections each, cut sections into little pyramids. Try to get a yolk tip on each piece. If anyone is around, they will undoubtedly steal egg pieces. 5 boiled eggs gives you lots of extras.

. Cooking the chicken and potatoes/making chicken stock: PUt the chicken pieces, potatoes, the onion cut in half and studded with the cloves, bay leaves, peppercorns and other chicken stock ingredients you like in a stockpot and cover the chicken with water by one inch. Bring to a boil and cook until the chicken is cooked through. Remove the chicken and the potatoes, cube them to yield the 1/2 lb (225g) cooked chicken meat and 1c (225ml) cooked potatoes. Reserve 1 cup chicken stock. Find something else fun and tasty to do with the rest of the chicken stock. (May I suggest Bam-I?)

. Prepping the other ingredients (might want to do this while chicken and potatoes are cooling enough to cut without burning your fingers): steam the peas (let the size of the peas be your size guide for cubing), cube the raw pork meat (if not using ground pork), cube the ham, cube the carrots, peel and press/finely dice the garlic.

. Cooking/combining the filling: Saute the pork over medium-high heat until cooked. Remove pork from pan, leaving enough lard to saute the onions, garlic, and carrots. Saute the onions and garlic until they start to soften, add the carrots and saute for a few more minutes. Add chicken and pork, add ham cubes, add potatoes, when mixture is cooked and heated through, add raisins and remove from heat. Filling can be refrigerated or frozen and empanada assembly/cooking completed later.

. Empanada assembly and cooking: Heat oven to 400F (204C). Crack the remaining egg into a small bowl and beat it for brushing over the top of the empanadas for a shiny cooked appearance. On a floured work surface with a floured rolling pin, roll an approximately ping-pong ball-sized lump of dough out into a slightly elongated circle. Put about 1/4 c (60 ml) of filling in the middle. Top with an egg piece. Fold the long side of the dough over and press the empanada shut. Cut away dough in excess of ~1/2 inch (1 cm) and use the tines of a fork to press a pattern into the edge of the empanada. Do not combine the cut-away scraps of dough with the unused dough, combine the scraps until you have enough to make a whole empanada with a crust made completely with scraps. The less you touch pie crust dough while assembling your creation, the less the butter suspended in the dough will melt before going into the oven and the flakier the crust will be. With empanadas, super-flakiness can be a detriment because it can make them crumbly and difficult to eat as finger food, so you don't have to be super-paranoid about touching the dough. However, using a pastry spreader (a thin flat spatula about 1.25x6" (3x15cm) will make peeling the dough off the surface and moving the empanadas to the cookie sheet much easier. Place the empanadas on an ungreased cookie sheet (all that shortening in the crust is grease enough!), brush tops with egg, and bake for 20 minutes at 400F (204C).


Bam-I

Yield: Will fill a platter about 9.5x12x2 inches (24x30x5 cm).

Ingredients:

Chicken Stock:
1 whole chicken, cut into pieces
1 onion
~ 8 whole cloves
2-3 bay leaves
a few peppercorns
1 cube chicken boullion (I used Knorr)

cellophane noodles: 200g Safoco rice vermicelli
Cantonese noodles: 250g Crane Pancit Canton

Saute:
200g pork sausage, sliced into ~ 1/5"/1/2 cm slices - original recipe calls for Chinese sausage (fatty red sausages about 3/4"/2 cm in diameter), I used Pampangas Best Skinless Tocino, which really didn't hold in slices but became little lumps but was still yummy!
chicken from stock (cooked meat of 1 whole chicken), cubed
150g ham, cubed
1 onion
6 scallions (or 1 more onion if scallions are not available)
8 cloves garlic
salt and pepper to taste


. Cooking the chicken/making chicken stock: Put the chicken pieces, potatoes, the onion cut in half and studded with the cloves, bay leaves, peppercorns and other chicken stock ingredients you like in a stockpot and cover the chicken with water by one inch. Bring to a boil and cook until the chicken is cooked through. Remove the chicken and cube the meat.

. Cooking the noodles:
Cellophane noodles: Bring a pot of water to a boil. Pour boiling water over the cellophane noodles and leave them in the water for 5 minutes. Pour out the water and replace with cold water to stop the noodles cooking.
Cantonese noodles: Bring a pot of water to a boil. Put the cantonese noodles in a bowl of cold water for 2 minutes. Transfer the noodles to the boiling water and boil for 3 minutes. Transfer the noodles to cold water to stop them cooking.

. Saute and final assembly: Over medium-high heat, saute the sausage until cooked through. Remove the sausage, leaving the lard for cooking of the other ingredients. Add the onions, scallions, and garlic to the lard and saute until the onions soften and become translucent. Add the chicken and ham and saute until warmed, then add back the sausage. Add chicken stock as desired. Add the noodles. Warm through and remove from heat. Add salt and pepper to taste (may not need any due to salt and pepper from stock, ham, and sausage). Serve.