Sometimes Failed Recipes are a Success!

It all started with a great idea, how about making mushroom, roasted pepper, cheese croquetas? I sauteed the mushrooms and the roasted peppers with onions separately. When the onion/roasted pepper mixture was nearly donel I added garlic and sauteed for a few more minutes.
Then I made bechamel by melting butter, sauteing a good amount of flour, and adding milk, mixing constantly until it thickened on a low flame. Then I added the roasted vegetables and blended with a hand mixer and added 125 grams of grated cheese. Then I poured the mixture into a dish and allowed it to cool.Normally once the croqueta mixture is cooled you can shape them with your hands like clay and then cover them in flour, dip them in egg and cover them with bread crumbs and fry them. However, I had a problem! The croqueta mixture didn't thicken enough! I know now in retrospect it's because I didn't add enough flour to the bechamel. The filling was way too delicious to waste so I tried to think, what can I do with it? Then it hit me EMPANADAS!

You can find empanada dough frozen in the grocery store. You can either buy mini-empanada dough which is called empanadillas, or regular empanada dough. Regardless of which you use, the way of making empanadas is nearly the same. With empanadillas you add the filling, paint raw egg around the borders, fold over and close pressing around the edges with a fork as you can see above. With a regular empanada you roll out the dough, fill it, cover it with another sheet of dough of the same or slightly smaller size, and roll up the edges. Then you poke a few holes in the top with a knife or a fork so that the empanada won't fill with air and blow up in size. With both, you finish by painting the outside with raw egg. This will make the empanada glossy. Stick the empanada in the oven and bake until brown. With the small ones you can flip them over halfway through and paint the other side with egg.
Here is the finished and cut large empanada.

Conclusion: if you have an idea and try to make something and it doesn't go well, use your imagination and think of what else you can do with it! You hardly ever need to throw out the food midway in a recipe due to it going badly. There is always something you can do with it! These "croquetas" EHM empanadas came out great! Enjoy!