Market Pie · Galician Classic

Empanada Gallega

📷 Closely related photo — Photo via Pexels/Unsplash — free for commercial use

A glutton biting into what is thought to be an empanada appears among the damned on Santiago de Compostela's 12th-century Pórtico de la Gloria — often called the earliest image of one.

A large, flat savory pie made of two sheets of bread-like dough sealed around a filling of slow-cooked onions, peppers, and tomato mixed with tuna, cod, or pork, then baked until golden. Bakeries and market stalls across Galicia and beyond sell it by the thick slice, wrapped in paper for eating on the move.

Why it's made this way: The pie's onion-and-pepper base — sofrito — dates back centuries as a way to stretch small amounts of preserved fish or meat into a filling meal that traveled well for farm workers and pilgrims on the Camino de Santiago.