Burns Supper leftovers: Karelian pasties or karjalanpiirakat

Burns Supper 2007 left me not only with lots of leftover leeks that I had bought for the cock a leekie soup and ended up using in a savoury leek souffle. I also had some neeps & tatties left over (that's boiled and mashed turnips and potatoes for those of you who don't speak Scots; neeps and tatties are the traditional accompaniments for haggis:) The best way to use up those vegetable mashes, obviously, is to make karelian pasties or karelian pies. Yep, you've seen these Finnish goodies on this blog before - here, served with eggy butter. Karelian pasties are small rye-crusted pastries (usually)with rice porridge or potato mash filling, although carrot, carrot & potato, turnip & potato, carrot & rice, barley porridge, etc fillings are available, too. I usually simply buy them from a local supermarket, but they aren't so difficult to make. The crust is simple and inexpensive flour and water affair, the filling is simple and inexpensive, too. Yet, the resulting pasties are nothing less than delicious, especially with eggy butter or simply buttered and eaten with a slice of savoury ham, for instance.

Karelian pasties
(Karjala pirukad)



Dough:
200 ml cold water
1 tsp salt
250 ml rye flour
250 ml wheat flour

Potato and turnip filling:
500 grams potatoes
500 grams turnips
100 ml milk
1 tsp salt
1 tsp sugar
15 grams butter
1 Tbsp wheat flour

For the dough, mix water, salt and flour by hand. Knead into a dough (you may need a bit more flour, the dough should be dry-ish and pliable), divide into dozen pieces. Press each dough piece into a ball, then flatten and roll into thin discs on a desktop dusted with rye flour. Keep the dough balls and rolled discs under a large piece of cling film to keep them moist.
Place a heaped tablespoon or two of your chosen filling (I've given a recipe for turnip & potato one here), and crinkle (?) the edges over the filling (see photo). You should be able to see the filling, as it's an open pastry!
Bake at 300°C for 15-20 minutes, until the pasties are slightly golden brown at edges.
Meanwhile, heat some milk and butter in a small saucepan, keep warm!
When the pasties are done, take them out of the oven, dip into the hot milk-and-butter mixture, drain and place in a bowl, covered with a clean kitchen towel. This is the only way to get moist and soft Karelian pasties.

For the filling, peel turnips and potatoes and boil separately until soft. Mash, add the milk, butter and flour, season with salt and sugar.

MEME: Five things you didn't know about me

Ximena of the picturesque Lobstersquad blog has tagged me for the Five Things You Didn't Know About Me meme*. Sometimes I think I've revealed too much information about me on this blog, so I've been known to sneakily remove some personal information every now and then. On the other hand, some of my friends complain that this is 'all just about food and not enough about you'. Go figure..

In any case, here are five things I don't think you knew about me.

#1 I worked as a child model for two years from the age of 4-5 (pre-school age). There are no magazine pictures of the little model, as I did stage modelling for the Tallinn Fashion House (the only one in town during the Soviet era), as well as clothes fitting. I loved the clothes fittings, as I could sit on the turn-table and swirl myself around and around. My mum still has a pay sheet for me from 1979!! That was long before I turned into a spotty teenager with thick glasses obviously..

#2 I've got a very selective memory for phone numbers. I can tell you the number of my Danish host family in sleep (I was an exchange student there in 1992/1993). Yet I cannot tell you my boyfriend K.'s or my mum's phone number (they're safely stored in my mobile as well as diary). I know my dad's and sister's by heart, however. Cannot explain it myself..

#3 I'm what you call 'upwardly mobile'. Both my parents went to a vocational school - my dad trained as a merchant sailor and my mum as a seamstress (nowadays, my dad works as a pilot in Tallinn harbour and my mum works at the City Registry). I've got a BA in Sociology, MSc in Nationalism Studies and PhD in Sociology. My parents are very proud of me. One of my grandmothers, however, was worried that I'd stay a spinster as nobody would want such an over-educated wife. Luckily, K. doesn't seem to mind:)

#4 I've lived abroad for a long time - one year in Svendborg, Denmark from the age of 18, and seven years in Edinburgh, Scotland (ages 24-25 and again 26-32). That's one quarter of my life!! I'm very happy to be back at home in Estonia now, however..

#5 I don't drive, as I'm a wee bit afraid of it. My dad is a former rally driver (and a very good one at that) as well as a driving instructor (that was after quitting the seas after my sister was born); my sister happily goes go-karting and racing (despite surviving a very bad car accident at the age of 18). I reluctantly got my driving licence at the age of 26, and since then have only sat behind the wheel twice - on suburban roads. We're currently in the process of buying a new car for me. That means I find a car I like, K. test-drives it and asks all the necessary questions, while I sit next to him on the passenger seat. I guess I need to talk to my dad about taking some driving lessons before I actually hit the roads in a few months..

That's enough, I think - there are some details I better keep to myself:)

I'd love to read what my georgaphically close bloggers have to share, so I'm tagging Anne (done!), Dagmar, Clivia (done!), Antti, Zarah Maria and Deinin (done!) (participation is strictly optional, obviously).

* UPDATE 7.3.2007 - I rather embarrassingly only realised, that Michelle had tagged me for this meme already on New Year's Eve, but I must have overlooked this back then. Sorry, Michelle!

Waiter, there is something in my ... salmon kulebyaka

For the first round of Waiter, there is something in my ... ! I made Anthony Bourdain's boeuf bourgoingnon. For the second round of this new foodblogging event - in February focusing on pies and hosted by CookSister's Jeanne - I made something from the Russian cuisine: kulebyaka. Kulebyaka should have been on my 2007 list of foodie resolutions, as I had been thinking about making it for months, but somehow it slipped my mind when I wrote the post. But better late than never, and now was my chance to make that festive Russian pie. Kulebyaka is a high and oblong closed pie with different types of fillings. When looking for the perfect recipe, I came across kulebyakas stuffed with fish, mushrooms, meat, cabbage, even apples. Some recipes used puff pastry, some yeast pastry. I realised that it is the shape of the pie (enclosed, high, long) that distinguishes kulebyaka from a pirog (that's simply a 'pie' in Russian). However, to me kulebyaka has always meant - first and foremost - a fancy puff pastry pie filled with salmon and rice. At the end, puff pastry, sliced fresh salmon, rice, dill and dainty quail's eggs were my chosen ingredients. For those of you from the British Isles - think of Beef Wellington, just with salmon and rice instead of beef and mushrooms.

Salmon kulebyaka
(Lõhekulebjaaka)
Serves 6-8



500 grams puff pastry
500 grams salmon or trout fillet, thinly sliced
150 ml rice
12 quail's eggs
fresh dill, chopped
salt
freshly ground black pepper
lemon juice

(egg for brushing, black peppercorns for decorating)

Season the salmon slices with salt, pepper and lemon juice.
Cook the rice in salted water until al dente. Drain and cool.
Boil the quail's eggs in simmering water for 2-3 minutes, then cool quickly under cold running water. Peel and put aside.
Roll out the puff pastry.
Place the smaller pastry sheet on a baking tray. Cover with 1/2 of the rice, then dill and 1/2 of the salmon slices. Place the quail's eggs over the salmon.
Sprinkle with dill, then cover with the rest of the rice, top with salmon slices (see right) and sprinkle any leftover dill on top. Season with salt and pepper and a squeeze or two of lemon juice.
Cover with the larger pastry sheet. Decorate with small cut-out fish figures (optional - I used black peppercorns for eyes:). Make a couple of insertions into the pastry with a sharp knife, so the steam can evaporate during cooking.
Brush with egg.
Bake at 200C for 20-30 minutes, until kulebyaka is golden brown.
Serve hot, either with a good bouillon (traditional way) or a dollop of mayonnaise.

Here's a cross-section of the finished pie - I really liked the way those quail's eggs looked: