A half-moon taste of the Caribbean on National Empanada Day – Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

Most every culture has an iconic street food thats easy to eat with your hands. In Mexico, its tacos; Italy is famous for its pizza by the slice. And empanada is king on the Caribbean islands of Cuba and Jamaica.

These half-moon meat pies with the crimped edges can be spicy or savory, and depending on the country of origin (they also are popular in South America and Puerto Rico), the type of pastry and filling varies. Theyre always delicious, and no more so than on their biggest party day of the year National Empanada Day, which is Saturday.

Pirata Caribbean Cuisine & Rum Bar off Market Square, Downtown, takes its empanadas seriously. So seriously, that product developer Jodie McCann spent more than a year fine-tuning the recipes for the four varieties offered on its menu.

Its all about the dough, she says. A fried, Cuban-style Beef Picadillo empanada, for example, gets its crisp from lard, while the tender pocket holding a scoop of stew-like pollo (chicken) fricassee is bound with butter, making it reminiscent of a pie crust. A vegan empanada stuffed with a medley of fresh pepper, squash and cremini mushroom is made with coconut oil and tinted red with smoked paprika. And the Jamaican beef variety perfumed with a complex blend of fresh spice and herbs is colored yellow with curry powder and turmeric.

For every version, we experimented many, many times to get the best results, says Ms. McCann, a self-taught baker who holds a degree in biochemistry and worked in a lab doing genetic screening on newborns before coming to work in 1997 for Pirata owner Ron Molinaro, who also owns the Il Pizzaiolo restaurants in Mt. Lebanon and Marshall, and Pizzuvio, a fast-casual restaurant next door to Pirata.

Before Pirata opened last fall, he said, a fresh empanada made with love was tough to find in Pittsburgh. Kaya in the Strip did a good enough job, but they arent interpreted the way I would interpret them, he says.

His favorite were the hand-made, fresh-baked ones served at Julias Empanadas in Washington, D.C. He happened to be eating them out of a brown bag at 3 a.m. back in 2011 when he came up with the idea of opening a rum bar. He also was a huge fan of the Jamaican patties stuffed with spicy ground beef at Miss Lillys Variety, a pastry shop in New York City. So when Pirata moved from concept to reality, he sent his chefs in that direction.

Ms. McCann got a hold of one of Miss Lillys unbaked Jamaican patties and carefully deconstructed it. I remember the dough, she says, tinted yellow with turmeric and super-elastic. It broke every rule it was supposed to follow, but it was magic.

Mr. Molinaro also brought chef Douglas Rodriguez, known as the Godfather of nuevo-Latino cuisine, on as a consultant from Miami.

Chef Josh Ross, who joined the staff in December, guesses the restaurant makes upward of 500 empanadas a week using a dough sheeter, and its the slow season, he adds. Each five-inch circle is hand-folded after being stuffed with a scoop of filling, and baked or fried to order.

Properly crimping the edges, or whats known as making the repulgue, is integral to the empanada-making process, says Ms. McCann, in that it serves two purposes: It keeps the juicy fillings snug inside the pastry and it also gives diners a visual clue to the ingredients. For instance, theres a scalloped edge on the chicken empanada while the Cuban variety gets a simple crimping with a fork.

For National Empanada Day on Saturday, Pirata will offer a flight of all four empanadas regularly $4 each for the special price of $12.

Gretchen McKay: gmckay@post-gazette.com, 412-263-1419 or on Twitter @gtmckay.

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A half-moon taste of the Caribbean on National Empanada Day - Pittsburgh Post-Gazette