Across the globe, deep-fried hand pies are not only popular street fare but also comfort food. Now that the stockpiling of flour and yeast due to the coronavirus pandemic has slowed down, home cooks can get their hands busy making savory pockets of the Eastern European variety.
Piroshki, also called pirozhki or pyrizhky, are baked or fried yeast-leavened boat-shaped buns stuffed with savory or sweet fillings. One of Tatyana Nesteruk’s piroshki recipes in her newly released “Beyond Borscht: Old-World Recipes From Eastern Europe: Ukraine, Russia, Poland & More” (Page Street Publishing Co., $21.99) is especially appealing for quarantine cooking because the filling calls for dairy aisle staple cottage cheese.
This hands-on project is a good one for those who enjoy the rhythm of repetition: kneading dough, wringing out the cheese until it’s dry and crumbly, rolling dough, adding filling, sealing the savory pockets and frying them in batches.
If you are the type to experiment, consider upping the quantity of fresh dill or green onion in the filling. My taste testers even proposed adding finely chopped spinach for more greenery. I’d also reduce the salt in the filling by half.
The prescription for that soft, airy dough? Don’t mess with perfection.
Cottage Cheese and Dill Piroshki
Reprinted with permission from “Beyond Borscht” by Tatyana Nesteruk (Page Street Publishing Co., 2020).
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