What to eat BOLIVIA 🇧🇴 Salteñas

Salteñas

Bolivian salteñas emerged from the region’s rich topography and immense diversity, the result not just of the land but of the mixing of peoples across continents over centuries. Bolivia is home to 34 different native groups, including the Aymaras, Quechuas, Chiquitano, and Mojeños – each with their own culinary traditions. Many of these indigenous groups originated with pre-Colombian societies, though there is little recorded gastronomic history. Bolivia has been inhabited for twenty thousand years.

The arrival of the conquistadores in more recent centuries meant the introduction of European animals including chickens, pigs, sheep, cows and horses to the "new world." Additional contributions they made to the local flavors include fruits (grapes, mangoes, apples and citrus), as well as grains and spices.

As the Spanish crown’s arrival and fortunes rose with colonial tides, the world’s downtrodden and poor, tired and weak – in those days namely the Roma, Arabs, Jews and Africans – were also descending on the continent, some by moxy, others by brute force, but all pushed from their homes in an old world, beginning in an imperial age before there were even countries really, let alone the modern nation-state.

In each region of the ecologically diverse country, the Bolivian diet was traditionally based on what was available locally. New flavors were incorporated through organic experimentation and welcomed as enhancements. With Bolivian cuisine fast becoming a cornucopia of exotic delights from multiple continents, in a few centuries time, salteñas would emerge from Bolivia’s rich culture of street foods and drinks to becoming the national dish.

Salteñas are not something most people make at home but instead Bolivians are more likely to procure them from stalls that set up shop in the wee hours ahead of the mid-morning rush. Few national dishes are conceived by default and even fewer are mostly consumed outside the home. Bolivia’s national dish is a poetic testament to the diversity of flavors and influences on the local cuisine, a willingness to experiment and the dearth of alternative national dishes known to the entire nation on quite the level salteñas are.

Salteñas were also concocted by an outsider, the multi-talented Juana Manuela Gorriti, recognized as the earliest novelist in what would become Argentina. In fact, the name salteñas is not Bolivian at all but rather a reference to her home province in Argentina, Salta, where a woman is known as a salteña. Gorriti was also married to the country’s mid-nineteenth century president from 1848-1855, Manuel Isidro Bellzú, though the divorce did not come until years after he was assassinated.

In between her birth in 1818 and her death in Buenos Aires in 1892 at the age of 74, Gorriti managed to develop a reputation first in Lima as an influential journalist with regular interviews in her salon. She founded The Argentina Dawn newspaper and also served as a battlefield nurse after the Spanish shelled ports on Peru and Chile’s coast. In her spare time, she established a girls’ school in Bolivia. And she is credited with creating Bolivia’s iconic national dish.

As is to be expected for such a woman in that era, the Gorriti family had means and she had privilege. Her father, a politician and soldier, signed Argentina’s Declaration of Independence in 1816 and her uncle, José Francisco “Pachi” Gorriti, was a famous guerrilla. But by 1831, fortunes had shifted and the federal caudillo, Facundo Quiroga, forced the family into exile where they remained during the dictatorship of Juan Manuel de Rosas. They relocated to Terija, Bolivia, where she met Belzú, the future president, when he was serving as a captain in the Bolivian army. The original recipe for salteñas was something she invented to help afford the family a living in their new location.

The famous Bolivian empanada is a descendent of the Galician empanada of northwestern Spain. In the Galician version, two pie crusts are placed in a round pie plate or a rectangular dish. The yeasted Galician dough would then be stuffed with fillings including bell peppers, onions, and a protein, like chicken. The Galician variant would then be sliced into little squares, similar to a Valencian coca, such as my personal favorite, coca de atún y tomate.

Salteñas are very much a food of the masses in Bolivia due to the fact that they are affordable, filling, easily transportable and readily available. They are distinguishable from other Latin American empanadas by the jigote, the gravy inside that is the result of the combination of the filling being set in gelatin first, which then melts into gravy when cooked at a very high temperature.

The confluence puts pressure on the butter or lard dough to not burst in the oven, an amateur occurrence that anyone intent on attempting salteñas at home should be aware of. Bolivians suggest keeping the dough rougher as opposed to smoother and being delicate with the water that gets added to the dough. The brilliant color of the salteñas, a crimson orange, comes from the achiote paste that is added to the dough. Glazing the salteñas with a bit of egg yolk by brushing it over before baking also assists.

Often associated with Mexican cooking, the word achiote comes from achiotl in Nahcatl, the language of the ancient Aztecs. The achiote seeds are grown in pods from a perennial shrub known alternately as the annatto tree or Bixa orellana. The seeds can vary from one to three centimeters in diameter. Soft, fine bristles grow on the exterior of the seeds which can be found inside pods of hairy green fruit before they ripen and reveal the little red achiote seeds surrounded by a white membrane. Each pod can produce a maximum of approximately 50 seeds.

While Latin America accounts for 60% of achiote production, achiote can also be found in the Caribbean and Africa. Peru is the largest producer, followed by Brazil, Kenya, Mexico and Jamaica. The origins of the plant are disputed, but it likely originates in the northern part of Latin America, Mexico’s Yucatán peninsula or somewhere in the Caribbean. In Trinidad and Tobago, it is known as roucou; in the Philippines, locals call it achuete; in the Dominican Republic, it’s simply bija and worldwide, it may be called annatto seed.

Other defining characteristics of salteñas include the braided closure, achieved with a double pinching method, and the fact that they are baked upright as droplet-like pockets as opposed to half-moons on their side. The jigote or gelatin gravy also sets the salteña apart. While the crust may be harder and dryer than other forms of empanadas, the juice of the contained jigote is unlike anything else around.

Recipe

Ingredients:

For the jigote (filling):
6 eggs, four hard-boiled (two for dough)
2 small of 1 large red or purple onion
1 shallot or clove of garlic
1 green bell pepper
Olive oil
2-3 chicken breasts, boneless and skinless preferred
1 tablet of Knorr instant chicken stock or a similar product
3 small potatoes
1 bay leaf
1 tablespoon of spicy pimentón
1 teaspoon of oregano
1/2 teaspoon of cumin
5 habanero peppers
Half a dozen olives
Dr. Oetker gold extra gelatin sheets

For the dough:
5 cups of flour
Half a cup of white sugar
1 teaspoon of sea salt
200 grams of butter at room temperature
2 eggs
3 teaspoons of achiote paste
100-150 deciliters of water at room temperature
Corn meal

Step 1: Hard boil four eggs and allow to cool in refrigerator.

Step 2: Dice two small purple or red onions, shallot or clove of garlic and the green bell pepper. Sautee in a pan with olive oil.

Step 3: Add a teaspoon of achiote and stir in. Then add the chicken and cook until golden brown on both sides. Add half liter of chicken stock and cover and reduce heat.

Step 4: After fifteen to twenty minutes, when chicken breaks apart easily with minimal effort using a fork, turn off heat and shred chicken in the pan using two forks. Add three small potatoes, cubed after all chicken is shredded and return to a low heat. Add a bay leaf.

Step 5: When potatoes are soft on the outside and still a little crunchy inside, pull from the stove. Remove the bay leaf. Add one tablespoon of spicy pimentón, one teaspoon of oregano and half a teaspoon of cumin. Stir and allow to cool.

Step 6: Add habanero peppers to mixture when cool.

Step 7: Add gelatin, stir gently and allow to cool in refrigerator for several hours. The freezer can be used in a pinch, but be mindful that frozen gelatin is not very good gelatin.

Step 8: Approximately 5-7 hours later, when the gelatin is set, we turn to the dough. Combine flour, sugar and salt. Create a well in the middle and add your eggs, yolks first, keeping the whites for later, if needed. Knead together, adding bits of the butter as needed as you go. Add egg whites last and water, only as needed. When dough is set, cover with a moist cloth in the refrigerator for 20 minutes.

Step 9: Turn oven on to preheat. If it is possible to heat your oven 350-375, this is ideal but mine only goes to 275.

Step 10: Make small balls of the dough approximately 7-9 cm in diameter and place on a parchment-covered tray covered with a damp cloth for 10-15 minutes.

Step 11: Lay out parchment paper on a clean, dry surface. On a second clean dry surface, take about a fistful of dough at a time and pound into circles using your knuckles and palm. Place onto parchment and cover with damp cloth.

Step 12: Grease a cookie sheet for the oven with olive oil.

Step 13: Peel and slice eggs and green olives.

Step 14: When it is time to begin making the salteñas, remove the filling from the fridge as the gelatin should have set.

Step 15: Place the gelatin mixture in the center of the flattened dough balls, add chopped olives and eggs and pinch the edges to seal it. Then, fold the edges twice for the distinct braiding that seals the salteñas. Stand them upright on a parchment-covered tray covered with corn meal (to avoid sticking), if you can, as teardrops with the braiding seal on top. Place in the refrigerator for 10 minutes.

Step 16: Bake for 30 minutes keeping a careful eye, especially if any dough bursts and jigote juices spill onto the greased tray.

Tips, tricks and notes:

The dough is really the existential aspect of this style of empanada. I fumbled twice before getting it just right on the third attempt. I did not build to success alone, nor was I without wise words of wisdom from Laura, my high school friend from Chicago who is Mexican-American:

"Treat sugar like a wet ingredient. Butter is dry – add to flour in very chilled state chopped up. Add water last and sparingly. Some people add a tablespoon of vodka to the dough. Water is kind of the enemy. You want it mixed in until it begins to bind/get dough-like. People use food processors so they don’t warm the butter. Lard is more forgiving."

Also as far as spice goes, the salteñas’ dough will mute much of the fire of your jigote, so do not be afraid to really crank up the heat with the habaneros. But one word of caution: if you like to try the stuffing before you add the gelatin – and I recommend you do – keep some plain yogurt or milk on hand to kill the spice.

Lastly, for achiote paste, try El Maiz Mexican grocery in Zürich, conveniently located near the train station at Josefstrasse 23.

Learn where to eat Bolivian food in Switzerland.

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