Guest Author - Marianne Gibson

Viktoria Gladunova’s pirozhki are something of a legend with her friends and family. Light, fragrant buns, 3 mouthfuls at most, filled with cabbage, or potato, or summer fruits, and fried to a perfect golden finish. Every time we came to her house, or set off on a journey, the pirozhki appeared. Sitting in their Moscow kitchen not long ago, Viktoria and her daughter Jenia showed me how to make these most traditional and best-loved of Russian snacks.

This recipe makes forty pirozhki. This may seem a lot, but believe me they go down fast! Yeast dough is happiest when made in quantities at least this amount, and made in a warm place, in a warm (not hot) bowl.

For the dough
1kg plain flour or strong bread flour
1 dessert spoon of sugar
10ml oil (something light – sunflower is good)
5-8g yeast
300ml water

Sieve the flour into a large, warm mixing bowl. Mix the dried yeast with a little of the water, warmed, and some of the sugar, whisk and leave to stand 5 minutes in a warm place then whisk again. Add all the dough ingredients to the flour, mix, and knead for a couple of minutes.

Now cover the bowl with a tea-towel, and leave it to stand for 30 minutes, or just the time it takes to make the filling – this isn’t an exact science! With today’s fast acting yeasts this will be plenty of time for it to rise.

Cabbage filling
Take a white cabbage and, discarding the very outside leaves, finely shred it, avoiding the thick core near the root. Let it soak in well-salted water for a couple of minutes, then rinse.
Fry very gently in sunflower oil, until the strips grow tender and tasty, usually between 5 and 10 minutes. Viktoria often adds fresh dill to the prepared cabbage. Other possible extras are; fresh parsley; ground black pepper; one carrot, peeled, halved and cut into fine slivers, and added with the raw cabbage; one white onion, sautéed first; some lemon peel, added while the cabbage is cooking; a little vinegar and sugar added during frying. Experiment to find what suits you. Leave the filling to cool a little.

Next, return to your dough. Make balls of about 5cm across, lay them on a floured worktop, and. roll each piece out into a circle, 1/2cm or less in thickness. Many pirozhki are made bigger than this, but Viktoria insists that smaller is tastier, and I agree!

Carefully spoon the filling into the centre of each circle. There should be enough space left for you to bring up the edges to make one seam line down the middle. Lightly press the seam down so the pirozhok is flattened on the top side as well the bottom, making a rough lozenge shape. Ensure they are left to stand on a well-floured surface.

Now you can start the final cooking. Pour up to ½ cm of sunflower oil into a good frying pan and heat it at a medium temperature, until dough sizzles lightly when added. Now place a comfortable amount of pirozhki in the pan, seam down. They really only take a few minutes to cook, turn them once you get a nice brown colour on the underside. Once you have this all over, they’re ready. Leave on paper while you do the rest, so they drain off any excess oil. Altern atively, the pies can be brushed in egg-wash and baked.
Pirozhki can be served warm or cold, as a snack, with soup, or however you want.

Priatnovo Appetita! Bon Appetit!