empanadas a la rosa linda

a friend from work gave to me a great gift the other day... homemade empanadas. she's from florida originally so, yup, you guessed it, cuban empanadas. i'm going to keep her anonymous at this present time but let's just say you might see her proudly strolling the halls in her leopard print snuggie.

the empanadas where god awful! just joking, they where somewhere between really good and excellent. upon dissection i discovered ground beef, green bell peppers, capers, and raisins. spiced with, what seemed to me, only s&p which is how i would have done it so that the beefy beefiness of the beef shines through. snuggie coworker noted that the puff pastry dough she used retained too much oil during the frying process, i concur. i promised to hunt down a good empanada dough recipe but haven't yet (any of my 4 or 5 followers know of a recipe?). to accompany, i made a little side salad inspired by some recently enjoyed guacamole from Sol y Luna.

a quick summary of my thoughts on the aforementioned restaurant. primary problem, stereotypical over-the-top cheezy mexican restaurant decor. just picture fake vines and cactuses, over-carved and over-lacquered wood everywhere, and mariachi murals then multiply that image by a factor of ten. secondary problem, it's so freakin' loud in there i sometimes forget i'm at dinner and think i'm at a rave until i can't find my glowsticks and snap back to reality. okay, back to the real point; this place has decent food but there is something about their guac! you order it and a happy little old guy pushes his guac cart up to your table and mashes avocado with onion, cilantro, lime juice and salt (chile peppers if you want a little kick) right before your eyes! it's not actually that exciting and i've watched him very closely, nothing special. so then why the f is it so f-in delicious. either the avocados where grown in the garden of eden or old man ads msg or pixie dust or crack super fast blurry-armed matrix style. not sure what happens exactly but i will be back for the guac and a cadillac margarita. the entrees are not great across the board, they're barely good across the board, but there are a few winners like the pork in tomatillo sauce with a perfect mexican cheese and the arroz con pollo is my wife's favorite.

back to the side salad. chopped avocado, cucumber (thanks Pam & Keith), tomato, and sliced shallot. for the dressing i combined greek yogurt, lime zest, lime juice, s&p in a processor and drizzled in some olive oil while processing. i think next time i'll add some grilled corn and roasted bell peppers to the salad... what about some candied orange peel too? hmmmmm.

meanwhile during the prepartation of dinner this was going on.

lazy pup