Mushroom Pie
“Oh, Babushka, what are you making?” Tatiana squealed.
“What does it look like?” Babushka Anna barked, sweaty and frustrated with her task.
Tatiana looked. There were mushrooms and onions in the pot. It could be any one of a dozen things. She had to be careful not to undermine Babushka’s efforts. She could say one wrong word and …
“My favorite—mushroom pirozhki?” Bite-sized pies with meat.
“Pirozhki? In the summertime? You’ve lost your mind!”
“Alexander and Dimitri are coming to dinner,” Tatiana said. “They’d love some pirozhki.”
“This is not a restaurant. They’ll eat what they’re given and be grateful for it. You want to stand here two hours and help me make pirozhki? Ah. I didn’t think so. Now leave my kitchen and stop bothering me. Help your mother set for dinner.”
Sighing, Tatiana left, noting that she had not gotten an answer to her simple question: “Babushka, what are you making?”
Not pirozhki, that was for sure.
Mushroom Pirog (Pie)
Use Pie Crust 1 or 2. See here/here.
Mushroom Filling
2½ lb (1.15kg) fresh mushrooms
2 large yellow or brown onions, very finely chopped
3 garlic cloves, very finely chopped
2 slices rye bread with or without caraway seeds, or 1 cup (165g) cooked white rice. Or both.
salt and pepper, to taste
oil and butter, for frying
Optional:
3–6 tablespoons very finely chopped fresh dill. (Dill has a strong taste. If you love it like the Russians do, by all means use it.)
Glaze:
1 egg yolk 1
tablespoon melted butter
2 tablespoons water
Wash the mushrooms thoroughly. Pat them dry and chop finely. Sauté in an oil and butter mixture, in four batches so they don’t steam. Place mushrooms in mixing bowl while you sauté the onions in a little butter until golden. Add garlic, sauté for 20–30 seconds more. Return mushrooms to the frying pan, reduce heat and cook for another 5–7 minutes until the liquid has evaporated. Take off heat, cool slightly. Your pirog is now ready to be assembled.
Remove the crusts from the rye bread and pulse bread in a food processor until it forms fine crumbs. In a medium bowl combine the breadcrumbs, cooked white rice and the mushroom mixture. Mix well.
Preheat oven to 400°F (200°C). Grease a cookie sheet.
On a floured board roll out the dough into a rectangle 13 × 18 in (32.5×45cm). Place onto the cookie sheet. Arrange the mushroom mixture lengthwise down the middle of the pastry. Fold the edges over the top, and seal well, moistening your fingers with milk and pressing the seal closed. Brush with the yolk, butter and water glaze. Bake for 40–50 minutes until golden.
Pirozhki
Pirozhki: little balls of yeast dough wrapped around a meat filling and baked in an oven until golden and crispy.
Many times, Babushka Anna tried to teach Tania how to make these pirozhki before the war, before even any intimation of war. To say Tatiana had no interest would be like saying a pine tree had no interest. Her curiosity extended only to science experiments. If she put in three cups of flour instead of two, what would happen to the pirozhki? If she put in four cups of sugar instead of one, what would happen to the dough? What about if she made the filling with just onion? Onion pirozhki! Now that was funny to Tatiana. No one else thought so. She got sent to bed, Babushka and Dasha made the pirozhki, and another year passed, and another. And then war came.
And now the sisters were lying in bed under the covers, whispering, shivering, waiting for Alexander to come. There was no heat, no light, no food. Everyone else was gone.
“Tania, what are you suddenly so upset about? Like you have anything to be upset about. What’s wrong with you?”
Tatiana was mouthing the words, trying to get them out, trying to find the voice.
“What?”
“Dasha … why didn’t I learn how to make pirozhki when Babushka tried to teach me?”
“Because you didn’t care.”
“That’s right. But now she’s gone, and I don’t know how to make it.”
“Tania, I hate to point out the obvious,” said Dasha, “but I think we have bigger problems than you not knowing how to make pirozhki.”
“A minute ago you said I had nothing to worry about.”
“Certainly not this!”
“Tell me how to make it, Dashenka, milaya,” whispered Tatiana.
“That’s what you want to talk about? Making pirozhki? Pastry with meat?”
“What do you want to talk about?”
And as heavily as she could muster under the scratchy woolen blankets, Dasha sighed and rolled her head from side to side to show her exasperation at her impossible sister.
Pirozhki
Yeast Dough Pastry:
2 teaspoons dried yeast
4 teaspoons sugar
⅔ cup (150ml) lukewarm milk
1 cup (225g) butter, melted and cooled to room temperature
1 egg, beaten
3½ cups (450g) all-purpose (plain) flour
¾ teaspoon salt (if you’re using salted butter, reduce salt to ½ teaspoon)
Combine yeast and sugar in a large bowl, blend in milk, let stand 5–10 minutes until frothy.
Pour in butter and egg, beat with a wooden spoon.
Sift in flour in several batches, stir well. Knead dough for at least 10 minutes on a floured surface until soft and smooth. At first it will be lumpy. Keep going. Get comfortable, look at it as great exercise for your arms and knead away until it becomes like elastic.
Shape into a ball, cover lightly, let stand in a dark place 15–90 minutes. You don’t have to let it rise for 90 minutes. It’ll taste great even after 15 minutes of rising. You can make the dough first and while it’s rising, prepare your filling. But, if the dark place you choose is the inside of your oven, don’t forget to remove the dough before preheating the oven to 425°F (220°C). (Tatiana says this as someone who speaks from bitter experience.) You can make the pirozhki either with a mushroom filling (recipe below), or with the meat filling here.
It’s hard to go wrong with this pastry recipe; it’s forgiving of all mistakes.
Mushroom Filling:
20oz (570g) fresh mushrooms
1 large yellow or brown onion, very finely chopped
1 garlic clove, very finely chopped
1 slice rye bread
½ cup (80g) cooked white rice
salt and pepper, to taste
oil and butter, for frying
Optional:
4 tablespoons very finely chopped dill
Glaze:
1 egg yolk
1 tablespoon melted butter
2 tablespoons water
Wash the mushrooms thoroughly. Pat dry, and chop finely. Sauté in an oil and butter mixture, in four batches to let the steam evaporate. Set aside while you sauté the onions in a little butter until golden. Add garlic, sauté for 20–30 seconds more. Return mushrooms to the frying pan, reduce heat and cook for another 5–7 minutes until the liquid is gone. Take off heat, cool slightly.
Remove the crusts from the rye bread and pulse bread in a food processor until it forms fine crumbs. In a medium bowl combine the breadcrumbs, cooked white rice and the mushroom mixture. Mix well.
While nearly a pound of flour sounds like a lot it’s not really that much. This recipe will make you two cookie sheets of pirozhki, if you make them small, possibly sixty in all.
Preheat oven to 425°F (220°C). Lightly grease cookie sheets. Break dough into pieces, roll thinly, cut with a cookie (biscuit) cutter or with a glass into 2½in (6cm) rounds. Spoon a teaspoon of filling on one-half of the round, brush the inside with a little milk, fold over, pinch with your fingers to close tightly, or use a fork dipped in milk. Arrange on the cookie sheets. In a small bowl, combine an egg yolk, 2 tablespoons water, and 1
tablespoon melted butter, and brush the pirozhki with the yolk glaze. It will make the pirozhki golden, shiny and buttery. Bake 17 minutes, check after 15. Enjoy. With soup. To warm up, you can wrap the pirozhki in a paper towel and nuke (microwave) for 10–15 seconds per pirozhok (singular); be careful not to overheat, easy to do. The microwave will make the dough soft.
Blinchiki
Babushka Anna was not as patient as Babushka Maya, that is to say, not at all. In July of 1941 she was making soup after standing in line for beef bone and being lucky enough to get one with some meat on it.
Tatiana walked into the kitchen, but she wasn’t bubbly tonight. “Are you making blinchiki, Babushka?” she asked tiredly.
“I might, sunshine. If you help me, I might. What say you?”
“I think I’ll be fine with just the soup,” said Tatiana.
“I’m not asking you to make them, God forbid, Tatiana Metanova!” boomed Babushka. “Just to help me.”
Oh, how Tatiana regretted asking. To come into the kitchen and to ask the cook what she was making, why that was simple politeness. To walk by would have been rude. And yet …
Anton, her friend, had asked her to go to the roof tonight. She had just worked ten hours at Kirov, making flamethrowers; she still smelled of nitroglycerin. She had also walked four kilometers with Alexander by her side before he finally saw she was exhausted and they caught a tram back home.
“Okay,” said Tatiana. “What do you want me to do?” It was said in the tone of one saying, “Would you like me to pick up these twenty bricks and walk twenty kilometers with them in bare feet over rusty nails?”
“That’s the spirit,” said Babushka. “First, let’s make the batter. Because it’s got to rest while we make the meat filling.”
“OK.” She wished she could rest.
“Go get me some rice.” “Can you take the meat off the bone and put it through the meat grinder?” “Can you chop an onion?” “Tatiana! What are you doing? You’re holding that knife as if you’ve never chopped an onion before.”
“Um—I’ve never chopped an onion before.”
“Oh, for God’s sake! Here. Give me that.”
Tatiana gave her that—gladly. She boiled some eggs, watched the water boil, and the rice simmer. She ground the meat, twice—both times badly. Anton was already on the roof. She hadn’t even changed from work yet. And was she mistaken, or did Alexander, as he was reaching over to grab the strap on the tram, let his hand slow down as it was traveling past her hair? It almost seemed like he was—
“Tania! Are you paying attention? Look—the rice is burning at the bottom. You had one thing to do, and you can’t even watch the rice?”
Tatiana tried to separate the eggs but couldn’t, running through three precious eggs in the process. Babushka’s loud imprecations made it impossible for Tatiana to daydream effectively, but when her hands were dry, she did touch the back of her head, to see how her hair might feel to someone who perhaps wanted to linger on it a moment or two.
When they were making the thin pancakes, Tatiana was unable to flip them over. They were too thin. They kept breaking.
“Tatiana.” Her grandmother spoke slowly, as if controlling the imminent implosion. “We have enough batter for twenty-four blinchiki. No more, no less. If you ruin three blinchiki, we will only make twenty-one. Who’s going to have three fewer blinchiki because your head is in the clouds?”
“I guess me, Babushka.”
After they cooked the pancakes, Tatiana had to assemble them, put meat filling inside each one and fold it over. That took another half hour.
“Are we done?” she said. She was too tired now even for daydreaming.
“Go away,” said Babushka. “I still have to fry them. You go away. I can see you’re not up to this. Go set the table.”
Tatiana went, set the table. But by the time the blinchiki were ready, just fifteen minutes later, she had fallen asleep, in all her clothes, on top of her bed. No one woke her, and the next morning when she got up to go to work, all the blinchiki were gone.
I will never make these as long as I live, Tatiana said to herself. I’d rather make bullets and tanks all day.
But they were her favorite food. They were everyone’s favorite comfort food. Blini without yeast: French crêpes into which you spoon a meat filling, traditionally made to accompany beef bouillon, with ground meat from the soup.
To make blinchiki is a labor of love. To make twenty-four takes Tatiana two hours. If Tatiana is also making soup, or doubling the recipe, it takes even longer. Blinchiki are a special-occasion-only king of meals. But maybe worth it if you’re trying to get the man you love to love you back, or perhaps if you want to tell him you’re pregnant. Or perhaps when your firstborn child is nominated to become Chairman for the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Make them once, feed your family, and then decide if they’re worth it.
Blinchiki:
The Batter:
(for 24)
2 eggs, separated
½ teaspoon salt
½ teaspoon sugar
2 tablespoons unsalted butter, melted
3 cups (675ml) milk
2 cups (250g) all-purpose (plain) flour
In a stand mixer, process the yolks with the salt and sugar. Then beat in the butter. Alternate adding the flour and milk to the batter, then leave the mixer on for 10 minutes. This makes the batter very smooth, like heavy cream, and the blinchiki come out tender when cooked. Cover and let rest for an hour while you prepare the meat filling, or your soup, or both.
The Meat Filling: (also use for pirozhki with meat)
1 cup (165g) cooked white rice, add a little extra butter to the rice
2 hard-boiled eggs, cooled
1 large onion, coarsely chopped
1¼lb (570g) ground beef sirloin
salt and pepper, to taste
A couple of teaspoons of chicken stock if you have it on hand, or light cream if you don’t, or both if you feel like it. It’s all good.
In a large frying pan, fry the onion on medium-high in a little butter until lightly golden. Add the ground beef, fry on medium-high, until cooked through. Lower heat. Add salt and pepper to taste. Add the cooked rice, mix thoroughly, continue cooking on low, for 5–10 more minutes, adjust seasonings.
In two batches, add the meat filling into the bowl of your food processor fitted with a standard blade, add the chicken stock and/or light cream, add the eggs one at a time, replace cover and pulse carefully, maybe 3–4 times. Do not overpulse, or you will be eating pâté on crackers instead of a chunky, uniform meat filling.
To make the blinchiki crêpes:
Preheat an 8-in (20cm) non-stick frying pan on medium, grease with a little butter. Tatiana learned how to grease her pans from the Russians—they cut a raw potato in half, dip the potato in a little melted butter and rub it over the pan. This method greases the pan just enough and no more.
Pour a small ladleful of batter into the pan and swirl around to spread evenly. Cook for 30 seconds or so. Flip the pancake and cook for 10–15 seconds, until just barely set, then lightly and carefully slide out onto a wooden board, the more cooked side up.
Grease and pour another ladleful onto the frying pan. While the second pancake is cooking, assemble the one on the wooden board. Put a tablespoonful of filling in the middle and fold it over four times like a present. Place the assembled blinchik (singular) on a cookie sheet lined with aluminum foil or wax paper. Don’t forget about your cooking pancake. It’s ready to be turned out.
Continue in this fashion, until all the blinchiki are cooked and assembled.
One caveat: be careful not to talk, to turn away from the stove, to get a drink, to yell at the kids, to use the facilities, to change the CD in the player, and especially not to answer the phone. There is not a second for mistakes, and no extra batter to spare. You’ve slaved over a hot stove too long and too hard to chat with your girlfriends now. Don’t think you can leave the frying pan empty while you attend to y
our other life either. If you leave the pan empty, it will get too hot and burn your next pancake. If you turn it off, it will get too cold and your next pancake will be glue. Perfection demands attention.
You’re almost done. After the blinchiki are on cookie sheets like little packages, get out a few more frying pans, and prepare to fry the blinchiki. Heat the pans to medium, perhaps even medium-high, for 2–3 minutes. Add a few tablespoons butter. Make sure the butter sizzles but does not burn; the blinchiki will taste horrible cooked in burned butter. If this should happen wipe the pans clean and start again. Fill the pans with the blinchiki, and cook for a minute until golden and crisp on the bottom. Brush a little melted butter on top of each one right before you flip them over so the topside can get golden crisp. Flip, lower the heat, and cook for 2–3 minutes longer.
Set your crisp golden blinchiki on large plates and serve immediately, with soup or with a light tomato and cucumber salad, and a little sour cream on the side if you wish. Tak vkysno! So delicious!
What’s for dessert?
Babushka Maya’s Russian Napoleon
“You know what I feel like right now?” The girls were lying in their bed, staring up at the ceiling. It was night.
“What?” It was winter.
“Napoleon. Babushka’s Napoleon. God, it’s so delicious. That’s what I want.” There was snow outside. A moon perhaps—or flares from rockets? The flash of blue light reflected the snow into the windows, allowed them to see the contours of things: dressers, chairs, cracks in the ceiling, barely breathing mouths.
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