Empanada de Salmon (Spanish Pie Style)

Empanada de Salmon (Spanish Pie Style)

This is a take into the classic Spanish dish called "Empanada Gallega" (Galician Pie). Normally you will have this pie filled with meat, chicken or even tuna. I did instead salmon as that's what I had.

This recipe is going to be hack, or a recipe cheaters paradise. So first hack: the dough is store-bought pizza dough. Second hack: the sauce involves very little cooking. Third hack: jar-preserved roasted red peppers ... Let's get into it.

This recipe yields 1 big pie, that could easily feed 4 to 6 people.

Ingredients:

2 rectangular store-bought pizza dough

1 jar with roasted red peppers (300g.) (sliced into strips)

1 onion (chopped)

2 cloves of garlic (mashed)

1 table spoon of butter

600g. baby spinach leaves

250g. of cream cheese

500g. of salmon fillets

1 egg (beaten for egg-wash)

Directions:

1. Pre-heat oven to 180 degrees centigrades.

2. In a pan, add the butter, the onion, the garlic and cook for 5 minutes. Add the spinach and after welted, add the cream cheese. Cover and let it cool down. That's part of the filling.

3. In the pre-heated oven partially cook the salmon fillets, enough so you are able to crumble it.

4. In a baking tray, laminate it with aluminium foil, this to avoid the dough from sticking to the tray. Spread out the dough, add a layer of red peppers, the filling, the salmon, and the rest of the peppers. Cover with the second rectangular dough, and crimp all the boarders to enclose the filling in. With a kitchen brush, brush the top with egg.

5. Bake for 20 to 30 minutes, until fully cooked and light golden brown.

Tips:

1. Fillings can be made out of anything.. the sky is the limit, I imagine excluding the salmon would make it a pretty delicious vegetarian pie, or adding boiled eggs can make it even more protein forward.

2. If you have time, making the dough from scratch is not a difficult task: 4 cups bread flour, 1 cup of water, 50gr. butter and 10gr. dry yeast.

Enjoy!