Empanadas

The dish

Three empanadas. The pastry is corn-flour-and-wheat (the Mexican blend, not the Argentine all-purpose-flour version), hand-folded with the rope edge, fried in clean oil until the colour says crisp.

Default filling: picadillo beef (ground beef, raisins, olives, almonds — a Northern Mexico classic). Other options: tinga chicken, rajas-and-cheese.

Pickled onion + a smear of fresh salsa on the plate.

Why we make it this way

The corn-flour blend matters; pure-wheat empanadas brown too uniformly and miss the texture. Mama’s Northern Mexico recipe calls for raisins and olives in the picadillo, which sounds wrong until you try it — then you get it. The fold is hand-done; machine-folded empanadas leak.

House rule

The first empanada plain. The second with the salsa. The third with both the salsa and the pickled onion stacked on top.