Сашні or Potato pyzy

Food trip is in Belarus and todayś recipe is Potato pyzy or potato dumpling filled with minced meat filling.

Recipe I got from here, but I also made some changes in recipe:

https://www.belarus.by/en/about-belarus/cuisine/potato-pyzy

Ingredients for dough:

250 g cottage cheese

100 g flour

4 grated potatoes

salt to taste

Ingredients for filling:

100 g pork and beef minced meat

onion, chopped

25 g egg
1 tbsp flour

salt and pepper

Combine the cottage cheese, grated potatoes, flour and salt, mix them well until you get soft and flexible dough. Keep it in the bowl for a while and make the filling meanwhile.

For the filling, add finely chopped onion, the raw egg, salt and spices to the pork and beef mince and mix it.

To make pyzy, form a round flatbread 1 cm thick (length ca 7 cm and wide 4 cm) , put the filling inside, cover it with a second flatbread and fix the edges.

Fry the pyzy in hot vegetable oil at 190 C from both sides (4 minutes from each side) until they get a beautiful golden color. 

Serve hot with sour cream.

Pасстегаи с мясом or small pastries with meat filling

Pасстегаи- this is dish from Russian cuisine. In fact these are open small pastries, what can be filled with meat, fish vegetable or etc. filling. This open pocket leave the possibility to add stock or melted butter to the pastrie, so after it will especcialy juicy and tasty. These pastries are made from yeast dough. As you allready understood Foodtrip 2019 is in Russia. 

Recipe I got from here:

https://www.alizy.club/vypechka/pirozhki/solenye-pirozhki/rasstegaya-s-myasom.html

Ingredients:
Yeast dough:
200 g kefir
480 g flour
2 tbsp sugar
25 g fresh yeast
0,5 tsp baking soda
1 egg
0,5 tsp vinegar
3 tbsp vegetable oil
50 g warm water
1 tsp salt

Add to warm water yeast.

Add yeast mix to kefir. Then add salt and sugar. Mix well.

Add 1 egg to mixed ingredients.

Mix baking soda with vinegar and add it to the other ingredients.

Add vegetable oil to dough and half of flour  and mix into even mass. Cover with food film and let it stand for 30 minutes. After this time you should see the bubbles in dough. This shows that "yeast" is working.

Add other half of lower and knead it for 5 minutes until dough is elastic.

Cover with food film and let it stand for 90 minutes. Now the dough is ready for use.


Filling:
6 eggs
60 g butter
400g chicken 
2 tsp salt
1 onion
0,5 tsp grounded black pepper
100 g rice
handful chopped dill
80 g flour
2 tbsp vegetable oil
200g mayonese

Boil rice and let it cool completely.
Boil the eggs and let these cool down. Chop egg to small pieces.
Put 30 g of butter to pan, then add chopped chicken meat and onion. Add 1 tsp of salt and a little black pepper, then mix carefully. Cook until meat is done and then cool it down.
Mix dill with chopped eggs. Add minced meat, rice and mayonese.
Season with 1 tsp salt. Mix well.

Put dough to the flowered surface and divide it into 10 equal pieces. Roll pieces into rings and do not roll the rings thin as thin can be broken in time of baking.

Cover baking pan with baking paper and add 2 tbsp of vegetable oil to the baking paper. Spread it over the baking paper.
In the middle of dough ring add 1-1,5 tbsp of filling and close the edges and leave in the middle hole.
Put pastries to the paking paper. Take egg yolk and spread egg yolk over the pastries.

Take 30 g of butter and cut small cubes from it. Add to each pastry (to the hole) one cube of butter.

Heat oven to 180 C and bake pastries 20-30 minutes until these are golden brown. Let them cool about 25 minutes.

Varenyky

Food trip is in Ukraine. Today we are making Varenyky.

Varenyky is a popular dish made of boiled dough with difference fillings, such as meat, mushrooms, vegetables, fruits, cheese etc. 
Varaniki or vareniki were made with usual for Ukrainians cottage cheese, sauerkraut, mashed potatoes, boiled beans, mushy peas, fruits and even flour. Flour fillings were especially popular in Poltava. The dough for varenyky was made of fermented milk products with buckwheat, rye or wheat flour.

Recipe I got from here:
http://proudofukraine.com/ukrainian-varenyky-history-recipe-interesting-facts/

Dough ingredients:
1 egg
400 g flour
250 ml water
salt

Put half of flour into the deep bowl. Add salt. Warm up water till 30-35 degrees and add it to the bowl. Beat up one egg.  Mix all ingredients thoroughly.

Add the second part of flour and place the mixture on surface covered with flour. Knead the dough with your hands. If it is sticking add some flour.

Continue kneading the dough until it becomes elastic (it takes about 10 minutes). Cover kneaded vareniki dough with a bowl or damp cloth and leave it for the “rest” for 40 minutes.

When the dough is ready, roll it out and using the special round shape (diameter 7 cm) or a cup cut out circles. Then place the filling in the center of each circle and tight up the edges. Put vareniki to the boiling water and boil for several minutes. 

Meat filling ingredients:

500 g chicken fillet
100 g sour cream 
1 onion, chopped
1 tbsp vegetable oil
100 g mayonese
chopped parsley
salt, pepper

Boil chicken fillet. Chop boiled meat with a knife or using meat grinder and add salt with pepper, sour cream and mayonese. Chop onion, fry it with vegetable oil, and then add to filling. 


Serve with sour cream.
Optional: Add burned butter sauce for serving.

Chak-chak

Chak-chak is now still one of the most popular sweet snacks in Kazakhstan and can be bought ready made in supermarkets. The simple dough is always more or less the same. After the dough is fried until it is crunchy it is mixed with a sugary honey syrup. Then it has to be formed quickly into a big dome. 

Recipe idea I got from here:
http://kazavida.blogspot.com/2009/01/chak-chak.html

Ingredients:
Dough:
3 eggs
2 teaspoons brandy
1/2 teaspoon salt
240 g flour
1 tbsp poppy seeds

Syrup:
330 g honey
1 dl sugar
2 tsp lemon juice

Vegetable oil for frying

Break fresh eggs into a bowl, add brandy, poppy seeds, salt, flour and make soft dough. Divide dough into pieces, roll them out using your hands, about 0,2 cm thick and 5 cm lenght sausages.  Fry dough pieces in vegetable oil. 

Mix honey with sugar and boil the mixture in a separate bowl until all sugar dissolves. Add lemon juice.  Pour still boiling mixture into the fried dough pieces and mix everything. Shape chak-chak as you wish, Use cold water to wet your hands so you won't get burn and and the mixture won't stick to your hands.  Chak-chak is ready to eat when it cools down. Enjoy!