Ossetian Pies

Ossetian Pies

I love Ossetian pies. Russia is a great country for pies, and Stolle has long been my favorite Russian restaurant. The wide counter has pies from one end to the other, and I always had a hard time deciding what to eat that day.

It was years later that I met Ossetian pies. My then-colleague Elena brought some to work one day, made by her mother, who is Ossetian. It was flat and round like a pancake, perhaps half an inch thick, and sandwiched a strangely delicious filling between thin layers of dough. The filling was slightly tangy and a bit meaty - it was hard to describe, but if I had to guess, I might have said it included bits of meat.

The pie in question (still my absolute favorite) was, in fact, vegetarian. The filling was made with cabbage and onions sauteed in butter, then cheese and chopped walnuts were folded in. I kept on nagging my colleague to bring more pies. Occasionally she did, some including cheese and potato, and the newspaper staff would keep an eye on her to make sure we didn't get left behind when she and the pies went for lunch.

When I left Russia, Elena's mother, Lyudmilla, gave me several pies to take on the road. I stuffed my bag full of them and arrived at JFK in a food coma.

Fast forward a year, I finally got my hands on the recipe, and forced Elena to show me how to make them. For me, everything about it was exotic and surprising - I bake a lot and make pizzas, quiche, chicken pot pies, pastries and bread, but it wasn't like anything in my repertoire. For one, the dough was exceedingly soft, sticky and wet. For another, there was no rolling out of dough.

I've tried making them on my own - the one with meat (фыдджин - fyddzhin) didn't turn out very well (I didn't know what to do with the filling) but I did make a pretty decent cabbage one. Called кабускаджин (kabuskadzhin) it is my all time favorite. I also tried цахараджин (tsakharadzhin) which is with the stems of beets and cheese. It's leaner than the cabbage one because the stems are not cooked in butter (they go in the pie raw) and there are no nuts. My pie turned out pretty pink. Elena and I made картофджин (kartofdzhin) together; it's with mashed potatoes with cheese. There are other kinds, with mushrooms, with beans, with pumpkin... most of them seem to be savory.

my first one with cabbage - kabuskadzhin

Now, I have a favor to ask - if you are reading this, and are Ossetian, or know how to make Ossetian pies, or have found good recipes on the internet, please leave a comment with links or recipes in the comment section below. I will try making Ossetian pies over the next few months, and if I succeed, I will upload recipes and photos. I want to be master of Ossetian pies and make them for parties and friends, because I think they are one of the most delicious things I have ever eaten!

my first tsakharadzhin - with beet stems

These pies are just amazing, and while I must say that they are not entirely healthy (they usually contain lots of cheese and some fillings are full of butter) but they are absolutely delicious. In Ossetia, they are made on festive occasions such as birthdays. Recipes are handed from mother to daughter, and an ideal pie is flat and thin, with no holes (see mine full of holes?) and the dough should be evenly thin, moist and soft.

Thank you again, Lyudmilla, for all the pies you gave me, and inspired me with. And much thanks to my lovely friend Elena, who patiently spent hours showing me how it is done!


And for those of you who have never seen such pies before and don't know exactly where Ossetia is on the map: (correct me if I am wrong)

Ossetia is a region in the Kavkaz (Caucasus) mountains, and while Ossetians don't have their own (internationally recognized) country, they do have their own language, Ossetic, which is part of the eastern Iranian branch of the Indo-European languages family. The southern part, South Ossetia, is within Georgian territory, but there have been tiffs there and it is still a region very much disputed over. The northern part is called the republic of North Osetia-Alania and is a republic within the Russian Federation. One of the most famous Ossetian people is Valery Gergiev, renowned conductor, who was born in Moscow but raised in Vladikavkaz. I've never been there (I actually have traveled very little in Russia or the ex Soviet states) but it looks like a place I would like - mountainous and green.

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Finnish flatbread with oatmeal

Finnish flatbread with oatmeal

What have I been up to? Taking pictures. With my new, first, "real" camera - a Nikon. 

I know my iPhone pics, heavily filtered and edited with Hipstamatic and Camera+, were far from ideal. But guess what? Having a DSLR hasn't solved all my problems - in addition to learning about aperture and shutter speed, I realized that the subject also has to look damn good because flaws show up so much better on a DSLR! I have to say this for Hipstamatic - although it looks really crummy on anything but an iPhone, it glosses over many defects, or to be more precise, it's so distorted you can't see defects clearly. 

So I'm still fiddling with my camera and food and trying to figure out a way to make everything work. It's going to take some time. In the meanwhile, I've given up and am posting a few things I took pre-DSLR. 

This is something my Finnish friend Elina taught me to bake - I detest porridge, especially oatmeal, but ever since I learnt how to make this, I've been stocking up on oatmeal because I use it up so quickly! There are many ways to make Finnish flatbread, Elina explained, using whatever ingredients you have on hand. There's no hard fast recipe, and I decided that I like mine with lots of oatmeal and just a bit of flour, soft on the inside and crunchy on the outside. 

So here it is.

Elina's flatbread

2 cups oatmeal
1 1/2 cups water
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon honey, molasses or maple syrup
1/2 to 3/4 cup flour plus more for dusting (you can use all purpose, what, probably rye as well, whatever you like or have)

Preheat your oven to 400F.

First, cook your oatmeal. Don't buy the "quick" kind - even the normal, "old-fashioned" kind takes just 5 minutes. Just put the water and oatmeal in a pot and stir over medium heat until gloopy and very thick, or about 5 minutes. Add salt, then some sweetener. Stir well.

Add the flour and mix with a wooden spoon. It will still be very very wet and sticky. Line a baking sheet with parchment paper, and drop 1/4 or 1/3 cup spoonfuls of the mixture, leaving plenty of space in between. Sprinkle the tops generously with flour, and constantly dusting your fingers with flour, press the dough down so that it is about a quarter of an inch thick. Poke holes with a fork, and bake in the middle of the oven at 400F for 15 minutes, or until done. The breads probably will not be browned on the top, but the bottoms may start to brown. When you pick one up by the edge, it should not bend, but come up as a whole slab.

Recipe makes about 12 to 15 flatbreads - I usually make a whole bunch, keep them in an airtight container in the fridge and pop one or two in the toaster whenever I want a bite. Makes a great breakfast!

You can put a variety of things on this, but the best is salted butter. I usually salt my butter myself, and whip it a little. Finnish flatbread with oatmeal with plenty of salted butter drizzled on it and a cup of strong coffee - my perfect breakfast these days.

Enjoy!

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Crunchy banana cake

Crunchy banana cake

I love the smell of bananas in baked goods, but there is one major drawback - banana breads and cakes tend to be stodgy. However, when I saw this recipe for "crackly banana bread" I was off to the neighboring shop immediately, looking for millet.

Alas, what I thought was millet was, on closer inspection, the ever popular and ubiquitous quinoa, but the next day I walked a few blocks more to an organic store and found millet. It's kind of like bird seed. Actually, it probably is bird seed. But the important thing is that it has a crunchy texture, and you know if there's one texture I can't resist, it's itsy bitsy bits of crunchiness in my food - figs, raspberries, sesame seeds, you name it, I love it.

I added flax seeds as well, thinking it would add to the crackle factor - and it did. I think most of my cakes are going to contain both millet and flax seeds from now on.

Here's what you need, adapted from the original recipe.

3 very ripe bananas (not pictured, because they were pretty gross looking)
1 large egg
1/3 cup virgin olive oil
2/3 cup light brown sugar
1/4 cup ricotta cheese
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1 teaspoon baking soda
1/4 teaspoon table salt
2 teaspoons spice mix (mix cinnamon, cloves, ginger, nutmeg etc.) (I used spice mix for Chai Masala; it contained some pepper in addition to the aforementioned spices and actually, the spiciness was quite welcome.)
1/8 teaspoon salt
1 1/2 cups white all purpose flour (or whole wheat flour)
1/3 cup uncooked millet

2 tablespoons flax seeds

Preheat your oven to 350F

In a large bowl, mash bananas with a fork or a potato masher until slimy smooth. Whisk in the egg, oil, ricotta and brown sugar. Beat until smooth. Add the vanilla extract.

Add the millet and most of the flax seeds (keep a little for sprinkling on top), salt, baking powder and spice mixture. Mix briefly.

Sift in the flour, and stir until just combined - do not overdo it.

Spray your pan with baking spray (I used a 4 inch by 12 inch loaf pan) and pour in the batter.  

Sprinkle with the remaining flax seeds, and bake in the middle of the oven until a long toothpick or knife inserted in the center comes out clean. It should take about 45 to 55 minutes, depending on your oven.

Take the loaf out and let cool on a rack.

The result is a moist but delectably crunchy cake. The most delicious parts of the cake were, for me, the bottom, the sides, and especially the flax seed-sprinkled top. I think this means that next time I might make this as a sheet cake, perhaps half an inch high. That will mean more room for sprinkling flax seeds. Or maybe I'll use a mould for whoopie pies. 

I have millet on the brain now. I'm thinking what else I can put it in. Carrot cake? Spice cake? Cookies? Yes, yes, yes. I didn't know we fed birds such wonderful stuff!

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New York cheesecake

New York cheesecake

After days of deliberation, I arrived at a serious decision: This would be The Cake for my birthday party.

The Cake is a New York cheesecake, adapted from Smitten Kitchen's New York Cheesecake. I'd bookmarked this recipe at least a couple of years ago, but buying five bricks of Philadelphia cream cheese in Moscow would have been prohibitively expensive, not to mention, who was going to eat a cheesecake weighing 5 pounds or so?

I eventually made a few adjustments to the recipe, substituting a fifth of the cream cheese with ricotta for a bit more lightness. I love cream cheese but I didn't want a cake weighing like a ton of bricks. But if you prefer a denser cheesecake, go ahead an use all cream cheese!

4 bricks cream cheese (32 oz.)
8 oz. ricotta cheese
5 large eggs
3 egg yolks
1 1/4 cup brown sugar (you can use white sugar here)
1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract
3 lemons (the zest of 3 lemons and the juice of 1 1/2 lemons)
4 tablespoons flour

8 oz. graham crackers
4 oz. (1 stick) butter
1/4 cup brown sugar (I highly recommend brown sugar here, to get a caramelly crust)

Preheat your oven to 550F - but if you have a pan with Teflon coating or something that says safe up to 475F or something, then, obviously, follow those directions. And you cannot use silicone for this recipe. Nope.

Basically, you will be baking it at very high temperature at first until the top of the cake cooks, then at a much lower temperature until the whole cake is baked. This supposedly prevents cracks. I got a crack anyway, but I don't mind cracks, really.

Let's do the crust first. In a food processor, reduce the graham crackers to a sandy texture. You can also put the crackers in a sturdy plastic bag (a large ziplock, let's say,) and beat it with a stick. But my mother assures me this is extremely tiresome to do. I'll take her word for it.

Pour the cracker crumbs into a bowl, add the sugar (make sure there are no lumps) and mix with a spoon. Melt the butter (in a microwave if you like) and pour it over the dry ingredients. Mix quickly with a spoon until the crumbs are sort of moist.

Dump the whole contents into your pan. Smitten Kitchen uses a 9 inch springform pan (at least 3 inches high, please) but I didn't have one, and I used a large gratin dish (about 9 by 12 inches), which worked out fine.

One important, important thing: Don 't be like me (see picture above) and make the crust go all the way to the top. Leave some space the width of your finger, because when you bake this, the cheesecake will expand considerably and carry the crust up with it - and the crust will crumble and fall out over the sides of the pan.

Push the crust into place - using the bottom and sides of a glass could help; I also used a triangle shaped measuring spoon to get the corners. When everything is more or less in place, put it in the freezer while you make the batter - or, the fridge for an hour.

Bring your ingredients to room temperature (cold cream cheese is a tough one to mix!) In a large bowl, measure in the sugar, ricotta cheese and cream cheese. Blend well with a mixer (making sure to wipe down the sides) and add the eggs one by one, then the yolks. After all that is very well blended, add the lemon zest, lemon juice and vanilla extract. Mix well (and make sure there are no streaks of cream cheese stuck to the sides or anything).

Sift in the flour and mix until incorporated.

Pour in the batter..... it goes almost all the way to the top! I would put the whole thing on another pan or something, because some of it might spill over - mine didn't, but better safe than sorry.

Pop it in the oven - blast away at 550F at first, for about 12 to 15 minutes or until puffy.

Reduce heat to 200F and continue baking for 45 minutes to an hour - it depends on how tall your cake is - the deeper the batter, the more time you need. When you shake the cake, the middle should appear a little jiggly. Don't worry.

Now, leave your cake in the oven for half an hour more, with the heat turned off and the oven door open an inch or so.

And no, that is not a picture of a pillow, that's my cheesecake.

Take it out and let it cool to room temperature, then refrigerate overnight.

Smitten kitchen says this cake can keep up to 2 weeks, well covered. I don't know - who would let a cheesecake like this alone for two weeks?! I made mine two days in advance of the party, and everyone was very, very, happy.

I would say this cheesecake will feed 12 to 16 people comfortably - less if some people want seconds, more if you also feed them tons of cauliflower and egg pilaf and fill them up with wine and cheese beforehand.

One last tip: if you are afraid of the graham cracker crust sticking to your pan, leave it out for half an hour before serving. The colder it is, the more likely it will be stuck to the bottom and sides.

Enjoy!

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Fig challah

Fig challah

Because the wind is howling and it's raining... because it feels like autumn in Russia... because there's nothing as cheerful as the smell of freshly baking bread - you should make this today.

You see from the name of this blog that I wasn't going to leave a recipe like this alone. I've been pretty faithful to her recipe (not something that can be said of me often) but I would leave out the sea salt on the top from next time. I'm not against the mixture of sweet/salty flavors, but this fig-rich bread is one I'd personally like on the sweeter side.

Here's the list of ingredients, with my slight adjustments:

2 teaspoons active dry yeast
1/4 cup (85 grams) plus 1 teaspoon honey
1/3 cup (80 ml) olive oil, plus more for the bowl
2 large eggs + 1 egg for the egg wash
1 teaspoons flaky sea salt, such as Maldon, or 3/4 teaspoon table salt
4 cups (500 grams) all-purpose flour (yes, that's bread flour in my picture - I made a mistake)

Fig Filling
1 cup (5 1/2 ounces or 155 grams) stemmed and roughly chopped dried figs
1/8 teaspoon freshly grated lemon zest, or more as desired
1/2 cup water
2 tablespoons lemon juice
Few grinds black pepper

In a small bowl, warm up 2/3 cup warm water (slightly above body temperature but not too hot to the touch) and stir in the active dry yeast and a teaspoon of honey to get the yeast going. Let stand a few minutes until a froth starts forming on the surface.

In a large bowl pour in the olive oil, honey and egg, then the yeast mixture.

 Measure in the dry ingredients and start mixing with a spoon.

The dough shouldn't be too hard to mix, as it is rather wet. However, it's not sticky because there's plenty of oil in it. When the mass is more or less in one piece, roll up your sleeves and start kneading. Work up a good sweat - some 10 minutes will do. Or you can do it by machine.

Coat the bowl and dough with a few drops of olive oil and let rest covered in a warm place for an hour, or until doubled in size.

While that's going on, remove the stems from the dried figs. Go and find them - they may be half buried in the flesh, but they're hard, so you don't want to leave them.

Roughly chop them up and put into a small pan with the water, lemon zest and lemon juice.

Simmer, covered, for 10 or 15 minutes, or until the figs are completely softened. Take off the heat, let cool for a bit, and puree in the food processor. You should have about a cup of the stuff.

And, by the way, this stuff is so good, I'm going to make this separately and have as jam. It might not keep long since it has no added sugar, but that's not going to be an issue - I started sneaking increasingly large spoonfuls "just to taste." But you know I have this thing about figs.

Take your doubled-in-size dough and cut in half. Roll out each piece thinly into a rectangle, more or less. It doesn't really matter if it's not a clean shape - but mine was roughly about 12 inches by 18. Don't worry, this isn't pizza dough; it's easy to roll out and won't spring back.

Slather half of the fig paste all over the dough. Roll it up tightly so that no air is trapped inside, but not so tightly that you push the fig paste out.

Now comes the fun part - stretch that long log of dough as long as it will go. It's not as delicate an operation as you may fear - I found that it stretches easily if I lift the dough up in one place - its own weight will start stretching the rolled dough.

I think mine turned out to be about 3 feet long - then I cut it into half. You will have four ropes about a foot and a half long.

Now you're going to weave this into a round. It's easier than a braid, and prettier, I think. (And it's easier than it looks or reads.)

Take the four ropes and lay them out so that each rope goes over another and goes under another. That's a clumsy explanation, but I hope the photo helps.

Then, take a rope that comes out from under another one, and put it over the one to the right (the one it's coming under from.) This means you will be crossing the ropes four times at this step.  It will look like the picture below.

Take another rope from underneath and cross it over the one to its right.  Repeat until all the strands are used up.

Don't worry if the dough stretches too much and reveals the figs paste in some places. In my experience, it won't burn in the oven or look ugly. 

When you have woven all the ropes, just tuck the loose ends underneath the challah and make a nice round shape.

Put it on a gratin dish or two layers of baking sheets with a piece of parchment paper. You want a thick bottom to bake it on, because this bread contains a lot of sugar and browns easily. 

In a small bowl, beat an egg with a fork. Give your challah a good egg wash.

And psst, if you don't have a brush, you can just smear with your hands. It won't make a difference to the bread, and it will make you feel delighted as if you're five years old.

Preheat your oven to 375F.

Cover and leave in a warm place for an hour - it will nearly double in volume again.

Just before baking, give it another good egg wash. It's the egg that gives challah its lovely dark and shiny color. 

I didn't have any on hand, but if you do, you could also sprinkle a little pearl sugar on top. That would be pretty and delicious!

Bake in the middle of the oven for about 40 minutes. If it starts coloring too quickly on the top, just put a sheet of aluminum foil over it and that should stop it from getting any browner. As smitten kitchen says, the very best way to check a bread for doneness is to insert an instant-read thermometer - the center of the loaf should be 195F.

Enjoy. I had thick slabs for breakfast for several days, and now that it's gotten dry, I'm going to make French toast. It will be lovely.

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