Today at 6:39 PM
Forget fusion cuisine. This week I dragged out a KrautenSnouten aus Russland recipe and decided to play with some Bessarabian favorites in honor of my father's paternal lineage.
Bessarabian cuisine has some very core precepts. Just as the Inuits have many words for gradations of snow, and the British Islanders have many different words for drunkenness and its degrees, the KrautenSnoutens from Russia have many words for fried dough.
When *you* think of strudel, you think of a nice, tasty pastry with perhaps a fruit filling between the layers. When a Bessarabian descendant thinks of strudel, they think of the original dish which consisted of cutting up and frying potatoes in lard or some other fat, adding a little water, and placing coils of thin sheets of dough on top to absorb the lard and water. I have cousins who love it; personally, I'd rather go out and see what leftovers were on order for the chickens and pigs. There is always room for one more at the trough. The pride of Bessarabian cuisine is something known as a Bluchenda or plachenda, made with pumpkin, sometimes with apples, and today referred to as "Blow Gents" by some of the English-only descendants of the Krauten Snouten. One of various pie doughs was wrapped around a pumpkin and pepper filling and deep fried in the ever present lard. At that point I used to wonder just how edible that old wool blanket on the couch might be. Nothing says wonderful like a lard flavored deep fried peppered pumpkin pie. (I don't mind them done in oil and I actually like the oven baked variant.) I believe some more heretical relatives were caught using a bread type yeasted dough in the oven version.
I decided to make Bierishki, which is the oven baked version of Fleischkuchel. Fleischkuchel consists of a dough heavy in soured cream, wrapped around ground meat or perhaps ham, with perhaps some potato, carrot, or turnip, and sauerkraut. Basically it is a Kalte Ende sort of dish from what I can tell. (Cold Ends - translated badly into English as Cold Duck, it was originally a blend of what was left in the wine glasses and carafes in the tavern at the end of the night, mixed together and drunk by the family and servants of the innkeeper. Who knows what is in it now - but I won't get near it.)
The version I made was pretty tame: wrappers from homemade bread dough, ground beef, onions, and shredded green cabbage with black pepper and garlic. Try it with the red or purple cabbage sometime and you'll learn why green cabbage is traditional. Blue food, anyone? Krauten Snoutens like to cook apples with the darker cabbages as blue food is not considered traditional Bessarabian cuisine.
So, today I decided to try something completely different. First, I mixed up a batch of focaccia dough. Focaccia dough made with the traditional Italian flour gives the baker a sensation akin to that of trying to knead a slug. Slimy, slick, dubious. Into the dough went a generous level of Italian herbs, Oregano, and enough Garlic for an organic farmer to try weaning 1,000 sheep.
Then, into the sauté pan went olive oil and a bag of Trader Joe's fire roasted peppers and onions, a scattering of my homemade dried tomatoes, and a couple of cups of Costco's Kirkland marina sauce. This was topped with national guard cafeteria levels of oregano and garlic, and one pound of exceedingly lean ground beef that had been cooked in the microwave and drained and then ground fine in a food processor - something that would ruin the texture for many dishes, but helps it to mingle thoroughly with the other ingredients. A can of olives from Costco, drained, rinsed, and sliced with the food processor and the meat mixture is has gone into the refrigerator while the Foccacia dough is allowed to do a full rise, in hopes that flattening it down and rolling it out will reduce oven spring.
Then, mozzarella cheese will be finely sliced in the food processor, mixed with a dab of really cheap Kraft parmesan, and mixed thoroughly into the meat mixture. The focaccia dough will be rolled out into what are intended to be 6" - 8" circles, and placed on parchment covered baking sheets and popped into a pre-heated 350 degree F oven for 20 minutes or so.
Nothing like Focaccia Bierishki Pizza for a picnic, right? WRONG. Epic fail. Focaccia dough doesn't have the strength to be lifted after being filled. I decided after managing to make one solitary Bierishki that I was able to lift by cutting out the section of parchment and placing it on the baking sheet that is was perhaps not the best way to go. So I patted the remaining dough out on a pizza pan, put a bunch of filling on it, and baked it as a focaccia with pizza filling. .
**Edited by Staff**
