Tuna Empanaditas (Page 37)

RECIPE #933

• Date: Thursday, January 22, 2009 -- 7:30pm
• Location: Bloomington, IN
• Kitchen: My Apartment
• Fellow Chef: Matty
  
• Dining Companions: Tom M, Chuck, Paul K, Beth, Kent, Sue, Allan, Ann E, Jim, Vladimir, Muriel, Chris C, Prudence, Kate, Marlies, and John B
  
• Recipe Rating: C-
  

I wanted to make a few savory things for a party we had a few weeks ago. I chose this recipe because it sounded promising: little puff pastry crescents filled with tuna and olives. These appetizers were very disappointing though. To make them I started by preparing the filling. I cooked chopped onion in the oil that the tuna was canned in. Then I mixed it together with tuna, chopped pimiento-stuffed green olives, and chopped capers. I then seasoned with salt and pepper. To assemble the empanaditas, I rolled out sheets of frozen puff pastry, then used a cookie cutter to cut the sheets into circles. I put a small amount of filling in the center of each round, then moistened the edges and sealed the rounds into semicircles. I pressed the edges with the tines of a fork to reinforce the seal. Then I baked the empanaditas until golden. In theory these should have been delicious -- I like all the ingredients. I even like them together. But the filling of these really wasn't good. It was so intensely briny from the olives and capers that even the not-at-all subtle flavor of canned tuna was masked behind the brine. It was terribly overpowering. Even the pastry crust did little to temper the intense briny flavor. I love capers, but I wouldn't want to eat them by the spoonful, which was what these bites tasted like. This recipe was not a winner.

Here is the recipe.

My apologies for the long blog silence. This weekend my parents and my special gentleman's parents all came to visit. They were meeting for the first time! We had such fun. On Friday night my special gentleman and I made a big dinner, so we ate a nice meal, then sat around talking and playing some games. On Saturday my mom, Karen, and I went up to Indianapolis for my first wedding dress fitting. I am having my wedding dress made, and Saturday was the first time I got to see it. I was a little nervous that I wouldn't like it, but I loved it! It was exactly as I had envisioned it! So that was very exciting, and it was fun to have my mom and Karen there with me. We headed back to Bloomington in the early afternoon. Saturday evening we ate Indian food, then went to the opera. The Indiana University opera presentations are generally very impressive, and this one did not disappoint. It was Massenet's Cendrillon (aka Cinderalla). The sets were gorgeous, the voices were wonderful -- we had a great time! All the parents left this morning, and I immediately took a nap!

The rest of the day I spent working hard, getting ready for what is going to be a very busy week!