Recipes
Plov
500 gramme of goulash made from beef (or even better would be lamb)
2 cups of rice
2 carrots
½ of celeriac
2 onions
some cloves of garlic (unpeeled)
oil
salt, pepper
paprika, jeera, dried herbs, Barberries, pimento seeds, bay leaves or 2 mixed plov spices from the market and some tomatoes
Fry the goulash to seal with plenty of oil in a heat resistant tin. Add onion rings, carrot pieces and celeriac cubes, shortly sear everything together. Flavour it well, then add the rice and fill the tin up with water that is hardly covered. Stick the garlic cloves into the rice. Bring everything to the boil and slowly cook it in the pre-heated stove (180°C) for about 45 minutes. Check after half an hour, if sufficient moisture is still available. Turn the plov out the tin on a big plate and serve it.
Piroshky
For the dow you need:
1 egg
¼ litre of milk
¼ glass of oil
30 gramme yeast
About 500 gramme of flour
Dissolve the yeast in lukewarm milk and knead it with the remaining ingredients. Add the flour bit by bit until the dow does not stick to your hands anymore. Let the dow rise in a warm place. Knead it again and form little balls out of it (ca. in size of an egg), flatten them, cover them with the filling and fold them up. Put the piroggen with the "seam" down on a fattened baking tray and bake them for about 15-20 minutes at medium temperature.
Fillings:
- Potato filling: mix some mashed potatoes with roasted onions, plenty of dill and carrot slices.
- Cabbage filling: Roast white cabbage with onions and carrot slices until they turn a little bit brown.
- Minced meat: Roast minced meat with onion, add salt, pepper and dill.
Borshtsh
400 grammes of beef
1 small or half of a white cabbage
400 grammes of beetroot
3 carrots
2 onions
1 red paprika
1 small stick of leek
Four each juniper berries, clove or pimento seeds
1 bay leave
1 tablespoon
2 tablespoons of tomato purée
1 teaspoon of sugar
Salt, pepper, cumin
1 bunch of dill
Sour cream
Give the meat a quick rinse and slowly boil it in two litres of cold water together with cloves, pimento seeds, bay leave and salt and let the mixture stand for about two hours. Don´t let the water bubble away and skim the foam off.
Cut the cabbage into slices, the leek and onions into rings and chop up the remaining vegetables.
Slightly steam onions and carrots in a big pot, add the cabbage bit by bit until everything went down a little. Add the other vegetables and fill up the pot with consommé. Then give tomato purée, vinegar, sugar, pressed juniper berries and spices into the pot, bring it to the boil and let it simmer for ca. 30 minutes.
Finally add the sliced meat and the minced dill. Decorate the borshtsh with a blob of sour cream.
Hint:
- Fresh beetroot is very colourfast! You can also use canned beetroot, but add it only at the end and let it stand shortly.
- Borshtsh tastes best, when you cook it already one day and eat it the next day, when it sufficiently drawed.
- You might also find traces of potatos, mushrooms, celeriac, red cabbage or even vodka in a borshtsh. What could now be called the "original", that´s a moot point...
