food project for the weekend: Bolivian salteñas. Two-day process and BF & I had today off. They’re not easy to get right - the dough being the trickiest part. We got the filling down yesterday, and it tasted right, better than previous attempts. It had to sit in the fridge and gel (made with unflavored gelatin) overnight. We made the dough last night, portioned, and formed into balls. Turned out stiff but also very pliable – lots of lard, no eggs, surprisingly. Achiote gets melted into the lard, which gives it that yellowish coloring. Ours looked like several of the videos we watched so we were hopeful. We used our mortar as a stone to flatten out the dough (as seen in a video.) Today we rolled the balls out - the BF made those cute little rolling pins himself! - and stuffed with the filling (onions, beef, peas, beef broth, raisins, potatoes, cumin, sugar, aji Amarillo, aji panco, paprika, s&p) a slice of HB egg, and a kalamata olive in each. BF’s braiding is much better than mine. We tried different batches at different temps, and I think the key is lower temp (400) and more broth when making the filling. Our finished dough and filling TASTED exactly right, but the texture of the dough still isn’t quite there when baked. And the filling should be much juicier. We froze a bunch uncooked.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Salte%C3%B1a
Made llajwa - bolivian salsa - too, to go with.
Work in progress….
Please excuse - lots of pics!
