The Argentinian-born founder of St. Paul, Minnesota-based Quebracho Empanadas serves up a smattering of meal and snack ideas.
“WHAT’S IN YOUR POCKET?”
“WHAT’S IN YOUR POCKET?”
All by Lauren Allen
The Argentinian-born founder of St. Paul, Minnesota-based Quebracho Empanadas serves up a smattering of meal and snack ideas.
Today, Belén is the founder of Quebracho Empanadas, a St. Paul, Minnesota-based Argentinian empanada brand. When she first founded the company in 2018, she sold empanadas, other savory pies, and charcuterie at local farmers’ markets and pop-up shops. But when the Covid-19 pandemic hit in 2020, she quickly pivoted her business to focus on selling wholesale, frozen empanadas through grocery stores and co-ops—a step that anyone in the consumer packaged goods industry will tell you is far from easy, pandemic or not. But for Belén, working the food industry runs in her blood.
Back to the kitchen I went, determined to make a solid gluten-free empanada dough that didn’t break and baked well since I don’t have enough oil to fry masa-based dough. After playing around with this trusty King Arthur Pie Crust I finally figured out how to adapt it to have less ingredients to suit what was in my pantry and still be malleable enough to crimp (be sure you’re using the measure-for-measure flour). The delicious solution was simple, add more butter and let the dough warm up a lot (you can be pretty slow with these unlike with standard pie crust).
We hopped (eventually waddled) around downtown Flushing, Queens on a sunny April day, traveling all over China through the dumplings we ate. Eddie Mao’s walking dumpling crawl is perfect for a Saturday adventure or a day trip on a long weekend. In about 5 hours, we hit 10 dumpling shops, and even stopped for a fruit tea refresher.
I love homemade pop tarts, but I really love these more than others. These berry pop tarts are simple, full of stuff you probably have in your fridge and pantry, and bring back childhood memories of sitting on the floor in my oversized-dad-t-shirt-turned-nightgown watching Saturday morning cartoons and munchin’ on a pop tart.
The best pocket pal is a salad. I love salads. Mack loves salads. We even love boring salads because we love our veggies, but crunchy, juicy, tangy salads are where our salad-loving selves thrive.
The new year always brings a slew of new health trends (with an unhealthy dose of shame, tbh): intermittent fasting, keto diet, CBD everything, health wines. Some of these seem a lot more reasonable than others, but we decided to start 2019 with a focus on a classic wellness concept: balance.
2018 marked our second year here on the internet. Whew! We took an exciting new direction last year, with a deeper commitment to looking at food history and culture through the lens of a pocket. Our mission at The World in a Pocket is to better understand the world through the lens of a dumpling (err, any pocket food!). Last April we met in Durham, N.C. to revisit our mission and keep us on track. It’s always a good idea--even (especially!) with passion projects--to check on your goals.
In 2015, Cecilia Polanco wanted to start a scholarship fund for undocumented students, but needed a sustainable way to monetize the fund. She founded So Good Pupusas to raise money and use the revenue to support her non-profit, Pupusas for Education, which provides the scholarships.
Homemade chocolate pop tarts started to resonate more with every minute that I thought about it. Because I was tight on time with my holiday baking schedule, I decided to make a quick and easy puff pastry recipe that packed a fiery surprise.
Pumpkin empanadas are a South Texas delicacy and finding them in the local panaderias in North Carolina is near impossible. This fall, I had an insatiable craving for empanadas de calabaza and my now not-so-secret dulce de leche pockets. With brisk autumn weather blowing in and holiday baking ideas swirling around in my head, pumpkin hand pies that you could serve for thanksgiving and empanadas de calabaza y cajeta that you can serve for merienda was my new recipe challenge.
The weekend before I had bought a dozen Autumn Queen peaches from Costco. I tried my hardest to use them all up before they went bad, knowing peach hand pies photographed with a late summer color palette was the perfect distraction from the news. I wanted to add a nuanced layer of sweetness, so I dug into my homemade cardamom and vanilla simple syrup, a mainstay in my fridge for fancy coffee, tea, cocktails, and compotes.
