Home › Meats and Entrees › Punski
Punski
(Russia.) Chop and fry 1 onion; add the meat of a sliced fillet of veal; fry it, season it, and let it cool. Chop it fine with the yolks of 3 hard-boiled eggs and a little parsley, thicken it to a paste with some good broth. Roll out very thin some fine pastry dough, cut into circles, and by putting two together, fill with the meat. Let it rise a little, brush with the yolk of an egg, and bake until brown. Serve on a dish with a good sauce.
A compact meat pie in the pirozhki family, written for a cook who already knew how to handle pastry. The original gives no quantities for the veal, no oven temperature and no yield, so a few decisions have to be made before starting.
- Scale of the fillingA "sliced fillet of veal" in a book of this period is generally a piece cut from the leg or loin rather than a whole muscle. The recipe gives no weight and no yield, so you will have to judge: something in the region of 3/4 to 1 lb of veal suits one onion and three egg yolks, and will fill a dozen or so pies if you cut rounds at about 3 inches and pair them as directed.
- The hinge: cook the meat, then chop itThe veal is fried and cooled before chopping, not after. Chopping cooked meat with the hard-boiled yolks and parsley gives the coarse, crumbly texture that defines this filling; grinding raw veal and cooking it in the pastry produces a dense, wet plug instead.
- Thickening with brothThe broth is there to bind, not to moisten. Add it a spoonful at a time until the chopped meat holds together when pressed — a filling that is even slightly loose will steam inside the pastry and burst the seam.
- "Let it rise a little"This suggests the "fine pastry dough" may be a rich yeast dough rather than a short crust, though the recipe does not say so. If you take it that way, give the filled rounds 20 to 30 minutes in a warm place until visibly puffed. With short pastry or puff, skip the rise and go straight to the egg wash.
- Oven temperatureThe recipe says only "bake until brown." In a modern oven, 400-425F for 15 to 20 minutes suits pastries of this size. Egg-washed dough colours fast, so check at 12 minutes.
- Sealing the two circlesTwo rounds pressed together will separate in the oven unless the rim is damp. Brush the edge of the lower round with water or beaten egg white before capping, then press with a fork or crimp with the thumb.
- The "good sauce"No sauce is specified. A light veal veloute, or the pan juices from the frying loosened with broth and finished with sour cream, would both suit the filling.
Punski appears to be an anglicised rendering of the name for one of the small filled pastries of the pirozhki family, baked or fried and stuffed with meat, cabbage, egg or rice, though the spelling here cannot be traced to a single Russian word with confidence. The pairing of chopped cooked meat with hard-boiled egg yolk and parsley, bound with a little broth, is a familiar Russian meat filling and turns up in similar form across Eastern and Central European cookery. What the recipe does preserve is the technique: cook the meat first, chop rather than grind, bind only just enough, and let the dough puff before it goes into the oven.