To prepare Karaite lamb pie - kubite you need...
Place finely chopped lamb fat, flour and salt in a blender bowl and chop until crumbly. Add sour cream, knead the dough, gradually pouring in vegetable oil. Roll the dough into a ball, wrap it in film and put it in the refrigerator for 30 minutes.
For the filling, chop the lamb into very small cubes. Mix the meat with diced onion, season with salt and chopped spices, mix well.
Divide the dough into two unequal parts. Roll out the larger one into a circle with a diameter of 30-35 cm, transfer to a baking sheet lined with baking paper, spread the filling on top, leaving the edges free.
Roll out a smaller part of the dough into a flat cake with a diameter of 25-30 cm, transfer it to the filling, brush with lightly beaten egg and pinch the edges. Make a small hole in the center and sprinkle with sesame seeds.
Bake in a preheated oven at 180C for 40 minutes.
About 40 minutes after the start of baking, pour salted water (about 1 cup) in small portions into the hole on top of the pie. After this, cook for another 10 minutes.
Remove the finished lamb pie from the oven, cover with a napkin and leave in the pan for 10-15 minutes.
1. Karaite pies - a favorite dish of all Crimeans and generally one of the culinary calling cards of Crimea. True, they are also very popular in Lithuania, where a fairly large Karaite diaspora lives. In Lithuania they are calledkibinai (or kibins). The Karaite dough is crispy, and the filling is very juicy.
Ingredients
For the test:
Flour - 650 g
Butter – 250 g
Water – 200 ml
Egg - 2 pcs. + 1 pc. for surface lubrication
Salt - 0.5 tsp.
Sugar - 0.5 tbsp. l.
Vinegar - 1 tbsp. l.
For filling:
Lamb or beef pulp - 600 g
Onion - 2 pcs.
Salt
Ground black pepper
Fat tail fat (if the meat is lean) - 100 g
Cooking method:
1. Sift the flour into a bowl. Finely chop the chilled butter or grate it on a coarse grater and combine it with flour, add eggs, salt, sugar and water with vinegar and knead into a homogeneous soft dough. You can do without vinegar, but with it the dough becomes crispier, that is, the effect of puff pastry appears. Wrap it in film and put it in the refrigerator for an hour.
Step 1. Knead the dough and put it in the refrigerator for an hour
2 . Traditionally, lamb is used for Karaite pies. The Karaites did not eat pork. Therefore, if you do not like the flavor of lamb, you can replace it with beef. Adjust the fat content of the meat to your taste. If you use lean meat, add a little fat tail fat. This will add juiciness and lamb flavor to the filling.
Finely chop or chop the meat (but do not use a meat grinder, otherwise there will be no juiciness), add chopped onion to it. Season the filling with salt and pepper and mix thoroughly.
Step 2. Prepare the filling for Karaite pies
3. Pinch off balls the size of a child's fist from the dough and roll out into thin flat cakes. Place a tablespoon of filling on one half and seal the edge. Then we wrap the edge with a pigtail, like a large dumpling. If you don’t know how to do this, go to Google with the request “pigtail on dumplings” or pies and watch one of the suggested video options. Google usually produces a large number of very intelligible short videos.
Step 3. Forming the pies
4. Sometimes in some literary sources I came across a recommendation to make “spouts” on Karaite pies - holes with a tuck for steam to escape. I DO NOT RECOMMEND doing this. Since in this case the juice flows out unsightly and remains in streaks on the pie, in addition, the filling remains dry and not juicy, and the pie itself does not inflate without exposure to steam and remains flat.
5. Before baking, brush the pies with egg and bake at 200 degrees for about half an hour. Serve hot!!! True, they are also very tasty when cold.
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2. Kashyk-ash - spoon soup
This ancient dish is found among several peoples in Crimea. Among the Crimean Tatars, kashyk-ash or sometimes another spelling kaash-kash is translated as spoon soup, among the Crimeans - syuzme, among the Karaites - khamur-dolma (literally stuffed dough), among the Azov Greeks who came from the Crimea - hashikhya. Essentially, these are very small dumplings filled with meat. They are served along with the broth in which they were boiled. As a rule, yogurt or natural yogurt is added to kashyk-ash and generously sprinkled with herbs. The size of the dumplings spoke about the skill of the hostess. There should be at least 6-7 of them in a spoon. I could fit 8 and even had some room left.
Ingredients
For the test:
Water – 200 ml
Egg - 1 pc.
Salt - 1 tsp.
Flour - at least 4 cups, but possibly more (640 g)
Sunflower oil - 1-2 tbsp. l.
For filling:
Beef – 200 g
Lamb – 150 g
Onion - 1 pc.
Ground black pepper
Salt - 1 tsp.
For serving:
Greens (onion, dill, parsley) - to taste
Yogurt or sour cream - to taste
Ground black pepper - to taste
Cooking method:
1. Mix flour, water, eggs and salt into a stiff dough. Cover it with a bowl, film or towel and leave for an hour.
Step 1. Knead the dough
2 . For minced meat, pass the meat and onion through a meat grinder. Salt and pepper. The choice of meat was determined by religious views, since Tatars and Krymchaks do not eat pork. The proportions of beef and lamb can be any.
Step 2. Prepare the minced meat
3. Roll out a small piece of dough on a well-floured surface. The fact is that making small dumplings takes longer than regular ones, so the dough can dry out. If you have an assistant in modeling, then you can cut the dough into squares and quickly form dumplings. The dough needs to be rolled out quite thinly, but not too zealously - otherwise the dough, wet from the filling, may break through. Squares should be no larger than 3 cm in size.
Step 3. Making small dumplings
If you are making dumplings without an assistant, then you need to roll out the dough in small portions, cut it into strips, and fold the strips one on top of the other. In this case, the dough should be very stiff and dusted with flour so that the layers do not stick together. It is easier to cut strips folded together into equal squares. We stack the finished squares on top of each other - this way the dough dries out less - and form small dumplings the size of a knuckle. Some craftswomen sculpted dumplings the size of a marigold.
4. Place the finished dumplings on a floured surface and let them dry a little, and then freeze or cook immediately.
Step 3. Place the finished dumplings on a floured surface
5. Place the dumplings in boiling broth or water. Serve the porridge immediately, without allowing the dish to cool. Season with ground pepper and sprinkle generously with herbs. If desired, you can top it with sour cream, yogurt or natural yoghurt.
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3. Chebureks
Chebureks are the most popular dish of Crimean cuisine; they are prepared in almost every home. Both my mother and grandmother often cooked pasties, at least once a month - that’s for sure. This ancient dish is found among many Crimean peoples under different names. Chebureks are the Crimean Tatar name, and among the Krymchaks and Karaites they are called chir-chir (consonant with the sizzling oil during frying). Previously, they were prepared only from lamb and fried in lamb fat. Nowadays they are boiled in hot sunflower oil, and on the menu of numerous Crimean chebureks, cafes and restaurants you can often find variations of cheese filling, tomato and even sweet chebureks with cottage cheese. And all this is undoubtedly very tasty too.
The dough in chebureks is thin, very tender and slightly crispy. Hot chebureks are always bubbly and pot-bellied, and when you bite into them, a delicious juice—broth—oozes out of the filling. It goes without saying that you should only eat them hot, before the juice is absorbed into the dough.
Ingredients:
For the test:
Flour - 3.5 cups. (560 g)
Water - 1 glass.
Salt - 1 tsp.
For filling:
Onion - 1-2 pcs.
Salt
Greenery
Black pepper
Water - about 0.5 cup.
For frying:
Refined sunflower oil - at least 0.5 l
Cooking method:
1. Mix water, flour, salt and a small amount of vegetable oil into a fairly stiff dough. You need to knead it until it becomes smooth, elastic and glossy. Cover it with a bowl, film or towel and leave to rest for an hour.
2 . Add salt, a lot of herbs and ground black pepper to the minced meat. Finely chop the onion and sprinkle it with a little salt, crush it with your hands so that it becomes softer and is not too noticeable in the finished pasties. Mix the onion with the filling, add water and stir. The consistency of the minced meat should be a little liquid, but not too much so that the filling does not spread, and not thick so that it remains juicy in the finished cheburek.
3. Pinch off a ball of dough from the dough and roll out a thin circle with a diameter corresponding to your frying pan or cauldron in which the pasties will be fried. If the dough sticks to the board, lightly dust it with flour, but not much, so that the excess flour does not burn in the oil. Place a tablespoon of filling on one half of the circle, cover with the other half and seal the edge well. We cut the edge of the dough with a special knife for pasties. The Crimean Tatars called it chegyr.
4 . Pour a lot of oil into a cauldron or deep frying pan so that the pasties float and do not touch the bottom. We heat it very well, so that when lowering the cheburek it boils. Fry the pasties until golden brown. It is important that there are no holes in the dough and that the edge is well formed, otherwise during frying the juice will leak out and the oil will smoke heavily. Turn over and remove the chebureki with a slotted spoon.
We serve the pasties right there! Immediately!!!
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4. Yantyki
Essentially, yantyki are pasties fried in a dry frying pan, without oil.. Once cooked, they are generously greased with butter and covered, this makes them soft and very tasty. The result is a completely different dish from chebureks. It's hard to say which one tastes better, you have to try both!
Ingredients:
For the test:
Flour - 3.5 cups. (560 g)
Water - 1 glass.
Vegetable oil - 2 tbsp. l.
Salt - 1 tsp.
For filling:
Minced lamb or beef - 200-300 g
Onion - 1-2 pcs.
Salt
Greenery
Black pepper
Water - about 0.5 cup.
For lubrication:
Melted or softened butter - 100 g
Cooking method:
All stages of preparation before frying, that is, kneading the dough and preparing the filling, are no different from pasties.
Then we take a frying pan, preferably with a thick bottom, preferably cast iron, heat it over medium heat and fry the yantyki without using oil, that is, in a completely dry frying pan. A couple of minutes on one side and the same on the other. If you are not sure that the dough is fried, you can turn the yantik over again and let it bake for another minute.
Grease hot yantiki with butter and cover with a lid or plate so that they steam a little and soften. Served hot, of course!
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5. Jewish stuffed fish (gefilte fish)
I learned about this dish from my grandmother, who lived for a long time in the same yard with a Jewish family. The peculiarity of this dish, traditional for Crimean Jews, is that the whole fish is skinned, stuffed and then boiled with beets, onions and carrots. It is probably appropriate to mention that in the 20s of the twentieth century. A large number of Jews moved to Crimea and they even wanted to make the peninsula a Jewish autonomy.
This is a very difficult dish, both in terms of preparation technology and its significance, which is simply enormous for Jewish culture. Translated from Yiddish, gefilte fish can be translated not only as stuffed fish, but as a filled, rich fish. It is served on the holidays of Passover and Rosh Hashanah, and is also ideal for the Sabbath, since, cooked on Friday, it contains no bones, which means it does not violate the Jewish prohibition against removing bones on the Sabbath.
When cold, stuffed fish is a very tasty dish. It is served in different ways. Some are served with broth as a cold first course, while others allow the broth to harden and serve as aspic.
I learned the intricacies of cooking from my friend and colleague Evgeniy Melnichenko, who simply expertly prepares gefilte fish. By the way, Evgeniy is an amazing artist, a master of wood carving, many of his products are dedicated to Jewish art.
Ingredients
For fish:
Pike or pike perch – 1.5 kg
Onions - 2-3 pcs.
Matzo – 100 g
Dill - 0.5 bunch.
Raw eggs - 2 pcs.
Boiled eggs, peeled, whole (small) - 3 pcs.
Salt - to taste, but a little more than usual
Ground black pepper
For the broth:
Raw beets - 2 pcs.
Raw carrots - 2 pcs.
Onions - 1 pc.
Yellow and red onion peels
Bay leaf - 3-4 pcs.
Black peppercorns
Brown sugar - 0.5 tbsp. l.
Salt - to taste
Water
Cooking method:
1 . First, let's focus on the choice of fish. I consider pike perch to be the ideal fish for this dish, although pike or carp are considered traditional for stuffed fish in the world. A bearing is also quite suitable.
We clean the fish from scales, remove the gills, cut off all the fins except the tail, remove the gill bone, but try to ensure that the head remains attached to the body along the back. Then we go under the skin with our fingers and separate it from the meat. In the place of the dorsal fin under the skin, we trim the bones with scissors, being careful not to damage the skin. So we reach the tail, gradually turning the skin inside out. Finally, we use scissors to separate the ridge from the tail, again, being careful not to damage the skin.
2. Before you start preparing the minced meat, collect the cut off fins, ridge and scales (discard only the gills), add a liter of water and cook the clear broth over very low heat, adding a little salt to it. Strain the broth.
3 . Cover the matzo with water and let it soften completely. In supermarkets you can find many variations of matzo, from classic unleavened to delicious salted with onions, poppy seeds and other fillings.
Finely chop the onion and sauté half in vegetable oil, leaving the other half raw.
We separate the meat from the bones and pass it through a meat grinder along with the matzo. Add sautéed and raw onions, salt, pepper, chopped herbs, and two raw eggs to the minced meat. Mix everything.
4. We fill the fish with minced meat, but not too tightly, but so that it takes on a natural shape. Sometimes boiled eggs are placed in the middle of the fish to make the fish slices look more impressive when cut. By the way, I noticed that with eggs inside, the fish retains a more rounded shape when cooked and does not become flat.
5 . At the bottom of the pan we place onion peels, peeled and cut into slices beets and carrots, a whole peeled onion, bay leaf, and peppercorns.
6. Then we place the fish belly down, back up and fill it with hot broth. It's okay if the fish is completely uncovered. Salt the broth well and add a couple of teaspoons of brown sugar. If you don't have brown sugar, you can replace it with burnt sugar: hold half a tablespoon of sugar over the fire until it caramelizes and turns light brown. Cook the fish with the lid closed for about two hours, skimming off the foam at the beginning. We wait for it to cool completely and only then take out the fish, trying not to let the head come off.
Strain the broth, heat it up and add gelatin according to the instructions. Place the fish on a dish, pour in a small amount of jelly, let it harden well and decorate with lemon, beets, and herbs.
Pour the stuffed fish with hot broth and cook for about 2 hours.
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Another recipe for chebureks from the book “Karaite Cuisine”:
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Our blog has already published posts with recipes from seasonal Crimean products and Crimean recipes.
Baking is by no means the last place in the culinary life of any nation. Probably, not a single culture can do without baked goods. And the recent interest in cuisines from around the world has enriched housewives’ recipe books with a host of interesting recipes. We propose to include Karaite pies there as well. Anyone who traveled through Crimea or Lithuania probably remembered this tender, airy and juicy pastry. And since making Karaite pie is quite simple (compared to most dough products), why not treat your family to it. Believe me, it will be grateful to you beyond measure.
The right dough
Once upon a time, the Karaites used puff pastry for their famous pies, made using a rather complex technology. However, over time, they began to look at the world more simply, and offered such a framework as an alternative.
A kilogram of the best flour is sifted in a heap. A third of a kilogram of interior fat taken from a young lamb is cut very finely. You can grind it with a meat grinder. The fat is added to the flour along with a teaspoon of salt, a tablespoon of any vegetable oil, but not refined, and one and a half glasses of water. The liquid should be neither hot nor cold. The dough is kneaded to medium density - neither soft nor hard. It is covered with a cloth and left to rise for about forty minutes. It is believed that Karaite pies made from it are the most delicious and authentic.
Modern version of the test
Residents of megacities, and most villagers, simply have nowhere to get lamb fat. In addition, not everyone takes kindly to the smell of lamb. Therefore, those who once tasted Karaite pies and were impressed by them found a completely worthy replacement. The modern dough recipe looks like this. For the same kilogram of flour, take 450 grams of good margarine. It should be cooled very much, finely chopped and thoroughly ground to obtain fine, fatty crumbs. Three eggs are beaten into the base, a glass of sour cream is poured in, the dough is added with salt and kneaded - this time, quite soft. It is wrapped in film or tied in a bag and hidden in the refrigerator for half an hour.
There are certain differences among different cooks regarding which dough works best in Karaite pies. So, some advise melting the margarine, and before adding it to the flour, pour cold salted water into it instead of sour cream. Moreover, eggs are completely absent from such a batch. You can prepare Karaite pies using both recipes and choose the dough that seems best to you. In any case, it should be kept in the refrigerator.
Meat selection
A real Karaite pie - with lamb. A recipe that not everyone will approve of (remember the specific smell). Therefore, in principle, you can put any meat into the filling. However, pies experts assure that Karaite pies “sound best” with turkey (naturally, for opponents of lamb meat). Beef lovers can cook with it, but you need to choose fatter pieces or add a little lard. What spoils the baking experience the most is chicken. And if the legs are even more or less acceptable, then the dry breast simply kills the Karaite. As for pork, the approach should be the same as when choosing a slice for any other dish. Unless you choose, unlike beef, a leaner piece, since the dough is already fatty.
Creating the filling
If you want to get not a primitive belyash, but a Karaite pie (with lamb or other meat), the main component must certainly be chopped and not ground. When exposed to a meat grinder, a lot of liquids are lost, and Karaite pies are famous for the presence of aromatic meat juice inside. Second condition: there should be a little more onion than meat. It is allowed to be ground, although finely chopped is approved. Third: don’t overdo it with spices. Traditionally, they are limited to pepper and salt, and seasonings are replaced with fresh chopped herbs.
How Karaite pies are made
In principle, you can simply roll out the dough, but this will not be quite the same. The mass is divided into pieces, rolled into strands, from which the likes of snails are rolled up. These are the bundles that are rolled into flat cakes. The dough begins to resemble the original, puff pastry. It is advisable to keep individual pieces in the refrigerator so that they do not heat up too much while waiting in line. The principle by which Karaite pies are made is similar to the creation of dumplings or pasties: the filling is placed closer to the middle to one of the edges of the flatbread, covered with the other half, and the edges are pinched, after which they are turned over and slightly pressed with the seam facing up. The creation of a “string” at the pintuck site is considered a special culinary chic. The finished pies are laid out on a baking sheet covered with parchment. There is no need to coat it - due to the fat content of the dough, the baked goods will not stick. Standard heating to 160 Celsius, half an hour of waiting - and we have a simply delicious delicacy.
Adaptation for multicooker
The preparation remains the same. Subtlety in finishing. The finished pie does not sit on the “butt”, but is left on its side. In this form it looks a little like a cheburek. Oil is poured into the bowl to the very bottom (or it is coated with a piece of butter), and the Karaite pies are fried on both sides in the baking mode for a quarter of an hour. However, don’t let the frying upset you: the taste is no worse than those cooked in the oven.
- Lamb or beef pulp - 600 gr
- Onion - 2 pcs.
- Ground black pepper
- Fat tail fat (if the meat is lean) - 100 g
Preparation:
1. Sift the flour into a bowl. Finely chop the chilled butter or grate it on a coarse grater and combine it with flour, add eggs, salt, sugar and water with vinegar and knead into a homogeneous soft dough. You can do without vinegar, but with it the dough becomes crispier, that is, the effect of puff pastry appears. Wrap it in film and put it in the refrigerator for an hour.
2. Traditionally, lamb is used for Karaite pies. The Karaites did not eat pork. Therefore, if you do not like the flavor of lamb, you can replace it with beef. Adjust the fat content of the meat to your taste. If you use lean meat, add a little fat tail fat. This will add juiciness and lamb flavor to the filling.
Finely chop or chop the meat (but do not use a meat grinder, otherwise there will be no juiciness), add chopped onion to it. Season the filling with salt and pepper and mix thoroughly.
3. Pinch off little balls the size of a child’s fist from the dough and roll out into thin flat cakes. Place a tablespoon of filling on one half and seal the edge. Then we wrap the edge with a pigtail, like a large dumpling. If you don’t know how to do this, go to Google with the request “pigtail on dumplings” or pies and watch one of the suggested video options. Google usually produces a large number of very intelligible short videos.
4. Sometimes in some literary sources I came across a recommendation to make “spouts” on Karaite pies - holes with a tuck for steam to escape. I DO NOT RECOMMEND doing this. Since in this case the juice flows out unsightly and remains in streaks on the pie, in addition, the filling remains dry and not juicy, and the pie itself does not inflate without exposure to steam and remains flat.
The dough should hold its shape well and be quite dense.
Divide the dough into 4 parts and roll out each part thinly.
Melt margarine and grease the rolled out layers.
The spread I had was soft margarine (a butter substitute), so at room temperature it was very easy to spread it over the dough layer with a knife, which is what I did.
Roll the greased layers into a roll and place in the refrigerator for 15-20 minutes.
Prepare the minced meat for the filling. Fatty meat (if it is beef, then add a small amount of fat, in the original fat tail, but it can be replaced with lard) finely chop with a knife - a meat grinder is not needed here. Cut the onion into small cubes and mix with the meat.
To make the pies more juicy, pour half a glass of water into the minced meat and mix thoroughly. Salt and pepper, add a little chopped parsley.
We cut the dough in the roll into pieces 10 cm long, flatten them and roll them into flat cakes with a diameter of about 15-17 cm. The main thing is that they are not very thin.
Place a heaping tablespoon of minced meat in the middle of the flatbread, pinch the edges tightly and we do along the edge of the pie there is a “rope”. To do this, bend the corner of the dough slightly with your thumb and press the dough towards the middle of the pie. As a result, a new corner is formed, which we bend again. And so on until the end of the pie.
