Tuesday, February 21, 2012

Pie on the Fly




In lieu of proper blogging, I'm posting pictures of Russian pies this week. That's cabbage pie, a cheesecake-like pie called vatrushka and mushroom pie. My mom made these, I don't have the recipe, nor do I plan to recreate them myself since I'm not that into Russian baking these days. (I couldn't find many reliable-sounding recipes for Russian pies, so if you know of any, please share.)

However, to make this more of a proper blog post, I will share a few cultural factoids about Russian pies:

  • You may know about pirozhki (пирожки, plural; пирожок, singular), which are small, pastry-like pies.
  • A pizza-sized pie like the one above is called a pirog.
  • The Russian word pirog (пирог) stems from the word "pir" (пир), which means feast.
  • Popular pie fillings for Russian pies are cabbage (sauteed with onions and mixed with hard-boiled eggs), mushrooms, fish and rice, and for pirozhki, potatoes, ground beef, or fruit. I once blogged about making mushroom pie.
  • A vatrushka (ватрушка) is a pastry filled with farmer's cheese (also known as tvorog/творог). I made vatrushki (ватрушки, plural) back in the day.
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