Showing posts with label Pastries. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Pastries. Show all posts

Tuesday, November 24, 2009

Piroshkis!


Piroshkis are like Russian empanadas. I've seen it spelled all sorts of ways, but this is how the recipe spelled them and I'm going to stick with it! There's a Russian bakery near where I live that has really good (and cheap) piroshkis, but they always taste a little bit stale. I especially like the one with pickled cabbage- I've yet to find a recipe for the cabbage. It's so good!

I found this recipe via google-searching piroshkis. I think I make mine too big, because the full recipe only makes me about 30. The trick is to roll out the dough really thin because it puffs up when you cook them. I've made this three times in the past 6 weeks so you know it's good. I've also made it with strawberry jam on the inside and dusted with powdered sugar- mmmm kinda like doughnuts.

This filling is ground beef, onions and mushrooms (and a lot of dill).

I've also made it with Silk soymilk when I ran out of milk and it tasted the same. And I've baked it (at 450 and brushed the top with vegetable oil) and deep fried and they're both great. Obviously the deep-fried is crunchier and more oily, but the baked version gets crispy too because of the baked version is also crispy because of the oil in the dough and the oil brushed on top. I like to bake them though because I always have leftovers and they taste the same the next day.

I added way way way more dill to the filling, it was pretty much green by the time I was finished. I also added some hot sauce (sriracha!) and some chicken boullion. Also... I don't know what sort of shape piroshkis are supposed to be, so I made them into dumpling shapes because that's all I know how to do. Be sure you pinch the edges shut, I had a few blow up during the deep frying.

Monday, April 13, 2009

Mixed Berry Galette




This recipe comes from one of my favorite blogs, Use Real Butter. Especially check out the recent kitchen tours.

Here is the recipe for the mixed berry galette. First some definitions:

Galette- "a general term used in French to designate various types of flat, round or freeform crusty cakes" (from wikipedia)
pâte sucrée- "A French term for a rich, sweetened short pastry used for desserts such as pies, tarts and filled cookies." (from epicurious)
how to "cut" butter into flour- I found a great link here... AFTER I made it. ):


Rolling out the dough.

So this was my first time "cutting" butter into flour and I sort of mushed it around so there were small bits of butter in the dough. I also made 3 instead of 4 galettes. It was really good although I think the pastry dough could've been better if I'd done it correctly. The berries were so warm and bursting with flavor when they came out (the butter probably helped...).

about to go in the oven