Leslie Makes Argentine Empanadas

Me and Leslie love Jennifer Yu's use real butter blog. She has some awesome recipes and the unrealest photography. Yesterday, Leslie tried out Jennifer's Argentine Empanadas recipe. I tried to imitate her photography, and failed miserably. I sure hope she won't think it's "assholery" of me to try and copy her.

Jennifer includes her dog Kaweah in a lot of her posts, so here's Les' Mattie.

We didn't follow the recipe exactly. Here's our version. First heat 1 c. water and 3/4 c. butter until butter melts.
Mix 2 3/4 c. flour and 2 tsp. salt in a large mixing bowl. Make a well in the center and sprinkle a pinch of paprika in the well.
Pour the warm liquid in and stir with fingertips to make a wet paste. (Les: "Ow, ow, hot, ow , hot.")
Work the flour into the dough with your hand until you get a wet, oily dough. Wrap the dough in plastic and refrigerate for at least 2 hours.
For the filling, mince 1 small onion.
Dice 1 1/2 small potatoes (1 seemed like too little and 2 too much). Jennifer's recipe says to boil them but Les didn't.Finely dice 1/2 red bell pepper.

Say, "Good boy!" to Mattie.

Chop three green onions and add to bell pepper to make for a nice picture.
Chop 8 green Spanish olives. If you made mistake and bought the kind with pimentos inside, take them out.
The spices include 1/2 tsp. each paprika, red pepper flakes, white pepper and ground cumin.
Heat oil in a large skillet over medium heat and cook 3/4 lb. ground beef/pork, the potatoes, onions, bell peppers, 1 chicken bouillon cube (that's been in your cupboard for ages), paprika, red pepper flakes, white pepper, cumin, and green onions. Actually, just throw EVERYTHING in the pan. Mix.
Preheat oven to 400 degrees. Break off pieces of dough and form into golf ball-sized balls. I think we ended up with about 28 balls.
Using a rolling pin (or a stick you bought from Home Depot for $1.59), roll out dough balls on lightly floured surface (or a floor tile you bought for 88 cents a square foot from Home Depot) into 5″ circles.
Place 3 tbsp. of filling in the center of each dough circle.
Fold over and press edges firmly to seal. Rope pinch the edges tightly. Me and Les had no idea how to "rope pinch".
Place empanadas on cookie sheet and bake until golden brown, 15-20 minutes.
Cut finished empanada in half for the final photo with your Kyocera knife.
It was SUPER ono, and Les had enough filling left to make a whole 'nada batch.