plain flour for dusting
good-quality, shop-bought puff pastry 400g
egg 1, beaten, to be used as egg wash
filling of your choice:
For the cumin and paprika-spiced chicken and spinach
olive oil for cooking
1 tsp sweet smoked paprika
1/2 tsp ground cumin
50g baby spinach leaves
120g cooked chicken meat, shredded
Squeeze of lemon juice
sea salt and black pepper
For the ricotta, peas and mint
120g ricotta
50g frozen peas, defrosted
10 fresh mint leaves, roughly shredded
extra virgin olive oil
zest of 1/4 lemon
sea salt and black pepper
Preheat the oven to 180C/gas mark 4. Sprinkle some flour on a clean work surface and roll out the pastry to a 3mm thickness. Cut out discs from the pastry about 12cm in diameter and transfer onto a floured tray. Repeat the process with the leftover pastry: you should end up with 12 discs of pastry. Transfer to the fridge to chill.
Prepare your filling. For the cumin and paprika-spiced chicken and spinach, heat a sauté pan over a low heat and add a lug of olive oil. Add the paprika and cumin and cook gently for 1 minute. Add the spinach, season and cook until fully wilted. Drain the spinach, cool and roughly chop. Mix with the chicken and lemon juice.
For the ricotta, peas and mint, mix all the ingredients together and check the seasoning.
When the pastry has chilled, remove from the fridge and place a heaped teaspoon of filling in the centre of each disc, leaving a 2cm border around the edges. Brush some egg wash on one half of the border and pull the other half over the top of the filling to meet the eggy side.
Press down and seal the pastry, ensuring there are no gaps. You will have a half moon shape with a bulge of filling in the centre. The pastry is quite robust but will become warm with too much handling, so you should work fairly swiftly. Crimp the sealed edge with a fork to give the classic empanadilla finish. Brush all over with egg wash and pop in the fridge for at least 15 minutes.
Bake the empanadillas on a floured, non-stick oven tray for 15-20 minutes until the pastry is golden brown and the filling is piping hot – a knife inserted into the centre of the empanadilla will come out hot.