KARELIAN PIES

As some might guess based on the name of the blog, the writers have some sort of relationship to karelian pies. Since these traditional Finnish pastries are not in the selection of Kosovar supermarket nor bakery, there is not much left to do for a handy modern woman but to take a strong grip of her rolling pin and start to bake.

The process of making karelian pies is quite simple really: one cooks a rice porridge and mix rye flour with water and butter. The trickiest part is to roll the dough into pancake-like pieces that are thin enough. And of course the ruffling.

Together with Aino we decided to take up the challenge and on one certain Sunday rice porridge was cheerfully cooking in a kettle. For the pies we used the Valio's recipe (translation at the end of the text). According to tip from our karelian-pie-expert-of-a-friend, we substituted some of the milk with single cream. Not sure if it changed the composition of the porridge, to be honest, but had an impact on the taste.

The special rolling pins used for karelian pies (called pulikka) should one not look for in Kosovo. Furthermore, that is not the first thing on the list of things to be taken with when moving abroad. Empty and washed wine bottle can act as an emergency solution then. After a tiny moment of suspicious-ness, we followed the instruction very careful and were able to produce pies!

We were very happy with the results. However, for the Valio receipt we could give the feedback of not having enough salt in it. It turned out that our pies would have needed a dash of salt to bring out the flavor. But they were very delicious like this as well!

KARELIAN PIES

Dough
2dl of cold water
1 teaspoon of salt
2-3dl of wheat flour
3dl of rye flour
50g of melted butter

Filling

7dl of water

4dl of pudding rice (could not find in Kosovo but we used risotto rice instead, worked as well)

13dl of whole milk

1 teaspoon of salt

Cook a porridge preferably on the day before. Use a teflon kettle or steel one with thick bottom (please not that I used a normal enamel kettle without any problems, just needs a bit more stirring). First bring the water to boil and add the rice. Let it boil and gradually add the milk. Make sure to stir regularly. 

Prepare a dough by mixing the ingredients into water, butter as the last one. The dough should be firm and chewy. Divide the dough into 40 pieces. Roll the pieces into balls and pat the balls into  steak-shaped cakes. Pile and cover with plastic wrap to prevent from drying. Roll out these steak-shaped cakes with a rolling pin so that they are thin and circular shells. Pile, sprinkle a bit of flour in between and cover with the wrap again.

Take the shells one by one, remove the extra flours and fill with the porridge. Then you need to ruffle the edges in order to make them look like boat shaped pies (as in the picture). Place on a baking tray and bake for 10-12 minutes in an oven preheated to 270-300 degrees.

Once the pies are baked, mix a bit of milk with melted butter and spread it over the pies to make them soft and juicy. Enjoy!