Cheeseburger Empanadas/Calzones

My sister has been wanting me to recreate these cheeseburger empanadas we had one night at Essex. I didn’t want to go grocery shopping, so I had to make use of what I had on hand.

I ad-libbed a cheese sauce (butter, flour, garlic, beer, wine, cheddar) using mostly beer and white wine as liquids since I had no milk in the fridge. To get rid of the distinct beer taste, I boiled off as much as I could, mixed water with the liquids, and added mustard to counter and mellow out the beer flavor. Ground beef was sautéed with garlic (no onions in house). And I used leftover foccacia dough as the wrapper. So I guess this would be more of a cheeseburger calzone. I tossed the ground beef with some of the cheese sauce, pat out little circles of dough, filled, topped with shredded cheese, and sealed.

Have to say, the end result was not half bad. The cheese sauce kind of mellowed out with the further cooking in the oven. The sauce also seemed to have been partially absorbed by the dough, so the next batch could do with more cheese sauce and shredded cheese.