In Ontario we have got an early winter this year. Most of the last week was snowing almost daily and temperatures quickly dived below zero. This is the earliest season snow fall that I remember. Funny as it is, I haven’t had the chance even to rake the fallen leaves in the yard!
On a positive side I started lot more to seek and enjoy home warmth and coziness. My cooking recipes preference also changed and shifted into a hearty dish territory. This week I decided to make an Armenian Piroshki recipe. The easiest way to describe it to a north American would be: a bun stuffed with a meat based filling.
Diverse Balkan cuisine of my own has a variety of meat based pies, bureks and piroshki too. Piroshki or Piroske are usually made with a yeast leavened dough and filled just about with anything, from meat to cheese, ham etc. They are usually deep fried and that is one of the reasons why I used to avoid them. I don’t like fried foods as they are usually too greasy and heavy for my taste.
Instead, Armenian Piroshki are oven baked. The filling is made with beef shank that is full of flavor, slowly brazed to perfection. It is a great winter recipe that yields about 40-45 tasty Piroshki. Please note that the dough recipe is for a half of this amount. If you decide to use all of the meat filling, double the dough recipe.
It goes great paired with either a simple cup of fresh yogurt or any sour style soup. Piroshki hold well kept refrigerated in an airtight container. You can prewarm them for 10 seconds in a microwave oven.
The recipe has been adopted from Chef Greg Easter and his book ” Cooking in Russia”.
| Prep Time | 20 minutes |
| Cook Time | 4 3/4 hours |
| Passive Time | 5 hours |
| Servings |
servings
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- 600 g beef shank, bone in
- 100 g carrots chopped coarsely
- 100 g button mushrooms chopped coarsely
- 60 g shallots chopped coarsely
- 60 ml cognac or brandy
- 60 g tomato purée (passata)
- 3/4 tsp Coriander seeds
- 3/4 tsp black peppercorns
- 1 Bay leaf
- 4 garlic cloves whole
- dill handful, no stems
- vegetable oil for browning meat
- coarse sea salt
- 350 g all purpose non bleached flour
- 75 g unsalted butter cold
- 45 g milk
- 30 g fresh yeast
- 1 tsp granulated sugar
- 1 tsp sea salt
- 1 egg yolk
- 200 ml water lukewarm
Ingredients
Filling
Dough
|
|
- "Mise en Place", have everything measured out, chopped and ready to cook.
- Using a spice grinder process black peppercorns, coriander seeds and bay leaf. Stir it into the tomato purée (passata).
- Pat dry beef shank with paper towel, sprinkle both sides with coarse salt.
- Over medium high heat (8 out of 10) preheat medium size sauce pan, add few tablespoons of vegetable oil to coat the bottom.
- Brown beef shank for about 3 minutes on one side, turn over and brown the other side for 2-3 minutes. Brown the shank sides as well for 1-2 minutes.
- Transfer the browned shank to 3 liter braising dish.
- Add little more vegetable oil to the pan if it is dry, stir in carrots, mushrooms and shallots. Maintaining the same medium high heat cook for 3 minutes, stir frequently.
- Stiring constantly add the tomato purée (passata) and cook for another 1.5 to 2 minutes. By this time quite bit of fond will accumulate at the bottom of the pan.
- Remove from heat, add cognac (or brandy) and deglaze the pan. Stir in dill and garlic.
- Transfer prepared mixture and spread over the top of the beef shank in the braising dish. Put the lid on and braise for 4 hours at 260ºC (320ºF).
- Check with fork if the meat is tender and falling of the bone. If not put it back to the oven and braise for some more time. When it is done, let it cool for an hour, with the lid on.
- Pick the meat from the bone, do not include any tough ligaments. Scrape the marrow out of the bone and put everything together in a food processor.
- Pulse the processor and grind the contents to a paste like consistency or with small shredded pieces.
- Cool completely and refrigerate in air tight container.
- In a large bowl, mix together flour and salt.
- Using pastry blender, cut in the butter until the mixture resembles a coarse meal. Cover bowl with plastic wrap and keep in a freezer for 1 hour.
- About 20 minutes before taking the flour mixture out of freezer prepare the yeast starter as follows: In a small bowl pour water, and milk and warm it up to about 32ºC (90ºF). Mix in and fully dissolve the sugar first following with the crumbled fresh yeast. Cover with wrap and let it rest for 15 minutes.
- Transfer flour mix to a new bowl. Add 150g of yeast mixture to the mixture, thoroughly incorporate and kneed just long enough to obtain a compact dough ball (do not over kneed!). Cover the bowl with plastic wrap, leave at room temperature for 1 hour.
- Keep the bowl in a refrigerator for 3 hours.
- Position a rack in the center of the oven and preheat to 190°C (375°F).
- On a lightly dusted kitchen counter roll the dough out to a thickens of approximately 3 mm (1/8").
- Using a dumpling mould cut, fill and shape each piroshki. Do not overfill!
- Put each formed piece on a parchment pepper lined baking pan. Repeat until all the dough is used up.
- Brush all the piroshki with egg yolk.
- Bake for 20 minutes.
- Shift a little each piroshki and bake for another 5 minutes.
- Let cool slightly, serve warm!
- The dough recipe is for 20-25 piroshki for which you will need about 1/2 of prepared meat filling
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