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Cheap Eats:
Sheilah’s Pumpkin Empanadas
by
Cynthia Clampitt
It’s late October and I’m insanely busy, both as program
chair for HalloweeM and on the work I get paid for. So I don’t
have a lot of time for doing research and testing recipes. But
I’m guessing that, by the time you read this, the holidays will
be upon us and everyone will be busy. So I thought I’d share
something my friend Sheilah taught me, which is fun and fits well into
a busy schedule.
Sheilah is a long-time friend who is author of 24 cookbooks (with
another one coming out soon). In September, during a trip East to visit
relatives, I detoured to Potomac, Maryland and visited Sheilah for a
few days. We had a lot of fun. She introduced me to Wegmans, the most
over-the-top grocery store on the planet (imagine rolling Whole Foods
and Fox & Obel together, then putting them on steroids). We looked
at cookbooks. She tested recipes on me. We visited Ford’s Theater
and saw Lincoln’s coat with the bullet hole in it. I got to help
her do a cooking demo for an event put on by NBC-TV. And we went to an
all-you- can-eat crab place, Bottom of the Bay, a hole-in-the-wall
joint where you get newspaper, a mallet and a pile of cooked crab. Yum.
Of her two most recent cookbooks, one is Sephardic Israeli cuisine and
one Turkish, but the recipes we tested while I was there were Thai,
which suggests something of her range. While I was visiting, I got to
proofread part of the manuscript for the soon-to-be-released Upper
Crust, a collection of recipes that use bread in some form, such
as bread pudding or bread-crumb coatings. Lots of fun. But her favorite
cuisine is one of her own devising, something she calls
“fearless, fuss-less” cooking. She loves stuff you can
freeze or make a day or two ahead and reheat. She can do the very
high-end stuff, but she’s a great believer in enjoying your own
parties and tends to advocate for gourmet foods that can be prepared in
a relatively short amount of time. And she sometimes even condescends
to using ready-made products to speed things up, especially if feeding
a crowd, and even more especially if that crowd includes kids. So one
of the recipes I got to try—one of those she demonstrated at the
NBC special—was the one below, for pumpkin empanadas. These are
delicious and easy and taste like the holidays. I asked Sheilah if I
could share the recipe with you (because I knew I wouldn’t have a
lot of free time this month) and she said sure, as long as I include
her Website info. So, you can visit Sheilah at
http://www.cookingwithsheilah.com.
In her cookbook Simply Irresistible, Sheilah offers two options
for this recipe— making the dough from scratch or using flaky
biscuit dough from a can. When we did this for NBC, we used the biscuit
dough, so that’s what I’m giving you here. Have a great
holiday season. Enjoy.
Sheilah’s Pumpkin Empanadas
16-ounce can mashed, cooked pumpkin
¾ cup sugar
½ tsp. nutmeg
1 tsp. allspice
2 cans of Pillsbury Original flaky biscuits
powdered sugar (optional)
Preheat oven to 350°F.
Thoroughly combine the pumpkin, sugar, nutmeg and
spices. While biscuit dough is cold, peel apart the layers of each
biscuit into three separate pieces. Place the biscuit layers on lightly
greased cookie sheets and let sit for 30 minutes. Then put about a
tablespoon of filling in the center of each circle. Fold the circle in
half and press the edges together, sealing well. Bend the corners of
the half-circle back toward the filling a little, to create a slight
crescent shape. Bake for about 15 minutes or until lightly browned.
These can be frozen and reheated as needed.
Before serving, sprinkle a little powdered sugar over the empanadas,
if you wish.
Makes 48.
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