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Russian Piroshkis
Fine biscuit dough for making rolls is stuffed with forcemeat, caviar, chopped eggs, all sorts of piquant fillings and baked the same as unfilled rolls. When you eat them hot you're always pleasantly surprised with the cooked-in savory stuffings. They're like gigantic raviolis. And since we've mentioned Russian Buckshot, or caviar, it is well to know that the red caviar of salmon is really cheap and everybody likes it outdoors, especially as an open-face sandwich, when rolled out on buttered black bread or pumpernickel.
The instructions here are a sketch rather than a formula: biscuit dough, a savory filling, baked as you would plain rolls. The details that decide whether they work are all unstated.
- The hinge: cook the filling firstA biscuit roll bakes in 15 to 20 minutes, which is not long enough to bring a dense ball of raw ground meat to a safe internal temperature. Any forcemeat should be fully cooked, seasoned and cooled before it goes into the dough.
- OvenBiscuit dough wants a hot oven, 425F, on the upper-middle rack until the tops are well browned. A slower oven dries the dough out before the crust sets.
- "Fine biscuit dough"Most likely a richer baking-powder dough than a plain one, perhaps higher in fat or enriched with egg or cream, though the book does not say; roll about 1/4 inch thick and cut in rounds of 4 to 5 inches. Many piroshki recipes use a yeast dough instead, which is sturdier if you are carrying them to a picnic.
- SealingFill sparingly, no more than a rounded tablespoon per round, moisten the rim, and crimp firmly. Overfilled or loosely sealed rolls split and leak fat onto the sheet. Bake seam side down and brush with beaten egg for color.
- Fillings that hold upCooked ground beef or lamb with onion, mushrooms and rice, cabbage braised with butter, or chopped hard-cooked egg with scallion all bake well. Caviar is the doubtful one: the recipe bakes it in, but roe is usually treated as a cold garnish and heat tends to toughen it.
- Red caviarWhat the text calls red caviar is salmon roe, sold as ikra or keta. Keep it refrigerated, spoon it on at the last moment, and use unsalted butter under it since the roe brings plenty of salt.
- Yield and servingA standard two-cup biscuit recipe gives roughly eight to a dozen piroshki, depending on how large you cut the rounds. They are best within an hour of baking; if they must travel, wrap them warm in a cloth inside a closed tin, and reheat at 350F rather than serving them cold.
Piroshki is the diminutive of pirog, the Russian filled pastry, and the little hand-sized versions have long been sold as street and tea food, baked or fried, with fillings of meat, cabbage, mushroom, rice or egg. They reached American cookbooks largely through Russian and Eastern European immigrant kitchens and through the general vogue for Russian delicacies. The recipe's own aside points outdoors, and a sealed, self-contained baked roll does travel better than anything spread between slices; the same logic explains the note on salmon roe, since by the mid-twentieth century sturgeon caviar was a luxury while red caviar was cheap and widely available in tins. The nickname "Russian Buckshot" is period slang rather than any established term.