Date I made this recipe:
March 19, 2015
Russian Cooking
by Vladimir Usov; Translated by Irina Avdeyeva
Published by: Planeta
Publishers
© 1996
Purchased at Eat My
Words bookstore, Northeast Minneapolis
("Nordeast")
Recipe: Pelmeni (Pasta Pouches with Filling) with Meat
Filling – p. 154-156
So. Tuesday was St.
Patrick's Day, a day I would normally "celebrate" – in a cookbook way
- by making something Irish. This year
though, I decided to go rogue and make something completely different because:
1) I'm
not Irish. Not one tiny drop.
2) My
collection contains only two Irish cookbooks and I've used them.
3) My
best friend, Carol a/k/a "Tall" died three years ago on St. Patrick's
Day and that changed everything.
So I decided to honor her memory by making something from a
Russian cookbook because:
1) Although
she traveled the world, she especially loved Russia and visited there twice
before she died.
2) In
fact, shortly after her last trip, a church near her house changed hands and is
now a Russian museum. Coincidence? I think not! (By the way, I still have
trouble imagining a Russian museum in a very Mexican-looking building but real
estate is real estate so....)
3) The
night before I flew to NJ to attend an aunt's funeral, I got together with two
former Calhoun-Isles Community Band band members at a fabulous St. Paul Russian restaurant, Moscow on the Hill. Carol was a founding member of my community
band and she loved that restaurant.
'Nuff said.
4) Speaking
of band, I bought this book last year at this fun bookstore – Eat My Words – while attending a book
signing. The book – Ride Minnesota – was written by another former band mate, Cynthia
Sowden. Cynthia's book is a (travel)
guide for 23 great motorcycle rides across Minnesota .
If you like "bikes" (as in motorized ones), you should buy
it. Anyway, Cindy's daughter, Beth, was
at the signing. Beth lived previously in
Russia . Years back, Carol and Beth spent some time
chatting about Russia . Small world, right?
5) Per
Beth, this cookbook is very representative of "real" Russian food. So
I bought it. And after sharing a huge
bowl of today's featured recipe, Pelmeni, with my friends at Moscow on the Hill, I decided that this
was going to be my St. Patrick's Day dish.
6) Except
as these things go, I made this dish on a Thursday instead of St. Patrick's Day
which was on Tuesday. Oh well.
So that's the long and the short of how I came to make my
non-St. Patrick's Day meal.
As to the cookbook, most of the recipes were relatively easy
but a few posed challenges mostly because of ingredients, for example, a soup
with nettles (Shchi with Nettles – P. 40); Rassolnik with Poultry Offal – so
NOT going there – as well as several dishes for goose. I don't really like goose plus where would I
find it at this time of year? A few of
the dishes also called for pork fat and while I supposed I could have rendered
a couple of slices of bacon, that was too much work.
Other recipes though, appealed such as salads, some beef and
pork dishes (without the pork fat) and the pastries. There's a Russian Orthodox Church at the end
of my block that hosts two bake sales per year and honestly, I about bought out
the place the last time I went.
But. I had my heart
set on the pelmeni and there it was.
Except, of course, that there was no way I could duplicate at home what
I ate at the restaurant. None. At one point, when Andy and I were trying to
seal up these little pouches, I jokingly threatened to bring everything over to
Moscow on the Hill so they could do
it for me! I'm sure they would have been
thrilled.
None of the recipes gave a serving size and had I realized
how many this made, I would have halved the recipe as we still have a bit
leftover. In fact, this book seems very
Russian – no narratives, no helpful hints, just straight-up recipes,
ingredients and cooking times. Beth
wasn't kidding when she said it was very authentic!
And because the recipes were light on the tutorial, it took
us a while to figure out just how big and how thin the dough should be for
these dumplings. And even then, we ended up with some that were a bit doughy
that might have been better served by boiling them longer...or not. Hard to say.
So be en garde for inconsistent dough thickness.
As to the filling, I froze the leftover filling as the yield
on that was also large. I liked the
filling but wished it had just one more ingredient for balance. I'm not sure
what but honestly, I kept thinking "parsley!" Maybe that's where the St.
Patrick's Day green could have come in?
I also probably got a bit carried away "mincing" the meat
mixture in the Cuisinart as it ended up to be more paste than minced and that
might have also thrown the filling-to-dough ratio off. In the end, I ate more filling than the dough
but honestly, I do the same to ravioli as well.
And cupcakes. I love the
frosting, love any filling that's included but not so much the cake
itself. I am sure I am not alone in these
preferences.
Now ever since I started this blog, I decided that in order
to even attempt to make my way through my cookbook collection, I would need to
limit my recipe selection to one per book.
And I make each recipe faithfully according to the directions. Andy's only issue with my "one and
done" method for cooking for the blog i.e. making the recipe once only, exactly
as directed, is that I don't allow for tweaking which may (or not) vastly
improve the outcome the next time around.
But as he knows, if I were to rework all the recipes I've tried out for
this blog, I would never make my way through my collection even though I am
already ridiculously behind, having cooked from only 527 of my 2,060 book
collection. But when the goal is to keep
cooking and keep collecting, well then it hardly matters that I've only sampled
a quarter of my cookbooks.
Prep time for this dish is estimated at 1 hour and 30
minutes and I don't think it took that long but you will need to reserve enough
time to make the dough, roll it out and fill it. The filling itself took minutes!
Pelmeni (Pasta Pouches
with Filling) – serving size not listed
For the dough
2 cups flour
½ cup milk
1/3 cup water
1 tsp vegetable oil
1 egg
Salt to taste
For the filling (meat)
10 oz beef
10 oz pork
1 onion
2-3 cloves garlic
2/3 cup milk
Salt and pepper to taste
Sour cream (optional) for garnish
Ann's Note: it's
unclear whether the beef and pork should be pre-ground or not. I bought it (raw) already ground.
Optional fillings (untried)
Pelmeni with Fish
1 lb filleted fish
1 onion
2 tbsp butter
Salt and pepper to taste
Pelmeni with Mushrooms (untried)
5-6 dried mushrooms
½ cup rice (cooked)
1 onion
2 tbsp butter
Salt to taste
To make the dough:
Heap the flour on the table, make a hollow on top, pour in
the egg, water and milk, work into a dough. At the end, add the vegetable oil.
Roll the dough out thinly, cut out small rounds (about 2
inches in diameter), or divide the dough in three even portions and roll each
into a plait about an inch thick, then cut crosswise to the size of a walnut
and roll out the rounds from individual pieces.
To make the Meat
filling:
Mince the beef, pork, onion and garlic in the food
processor, season with salt and pepper, add the milk and mix well.
Place a teaspoonful minced meat on each round, fold over and
pinch the ends together to make a half-moon.
Set the prepared pelmeni aside on a floured board as you go along. Pelmeni can be stored frozen in the fridge,
if not used immediately.
Lower the pelmeni one by one in salted boiling water; serve
as soon as they surface, with butter or sour cream.
To make the other fillings:
Fish - Wash and mince pike, cod
or other fish fillets in the food processor together with the onion, twice; add
salt and pepper, spoon over the butter and mix well.
Mushrooms – Soak
the mushrooms beforehand; cook, chop finely and fry lightly. Add salt, the previously sautéed chopped
onion and cooked rice. Mix.
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