Happy new working year everyone!
How did you celebrate New Year and Christmas? How were the holidays in general? Have you met everyone? How should you rest?
For some reason, I am sure that despite the fact that they have already ended, the whole of January will still be slightly festive, a little relaxed, and everyone will continue to invite each other to visit and "finish". There are a lot of friends and relatives, everyone wants to talk, someone traveled these days, and someone did not arrive for some reason of their own. As always. So you think, is it really bad that we still have a reason to meet on the "old New Year", no matter how ridiculous all this is perceived? I used to look for my advantages in everything. And in this too.
Friendly atmosphere and delicious homemade food is always a reason to meet. This is what creates a good mood. And they need to stock up for the whole year. It's true?
I didn't have time to congratulate you. But it's not too late. So. Let the current year be satisfying, friendly and homely.
And as a gift, I have for you a very unusual recipe for a dish that I tried in Switzerland, and I really liked it because it is tasty and satisfying, very suitable for friendly gatherings at home. Sit on the couch, share experiences and remember trips and adventures with your friends and loved ones, eat homemade pies and drink warming drinks. I propose to share these homemade recipes all January! Share your "cozy" recipes and throw off links, suddenly I want to cook something according to your recipes.
And today we have a pie from the canton of Valais - an area in Switzerland where one of the most popular ski resorts of Zermatt is located. The name of the pie is very funny - cholera, but the legend of origin is quite funny. In a period when residents were not allowed to take food out of the house, everything that people had at hand went into the pie - the products were mixed and baked in dough. Many nations have similar pies. But this cake is also interesting in combination. Onions, potatoes, cheese, pork (there are options without it) and apples. Apples in hot dishes are quite familiar to the Swiss. Consider Alpine pasta served with applesauce.
In general, the cake is very simple. I already managed to cook 4 pies for the New Year holidays. You can safely use ready-made puff pastry bought at the store for it. Just pay attention to the composition and try to choose one with the least strange ingredients. Well, if you have ever made chopped dough, then you will not have any difficulties in preparing the dough for this pie. It is prepared quickly and does not require any special knowledge and skills. A little more prep time.
Would need:
2 small potatoes (100-120g), cooked almost until tender
1 small apple (green varieties preferred), peeled
1 leek (or 1 small onion)
100-150 g of grated cheese (for example, Emmental, or better - raclette, it also comes from Valais, and we will talk about it soon)
50 g loin, brisket, boiled-smoked bacon or speck
salt and freshly ground pepper
a pinch of ground nutmeg
1 egg
for the test:
150 g wheat flour
1/2 tsp salt
50g chilled butter (remove 15 minutes before cooking to soften)
cold water
Let's prepare the dough first. Pour salt into the flour, add butter in pieces and quickly mix with a mixer until crumbs form, pour in just enough cold water so that the dough just begins to stick together and an inhomogeneous lump gathers (about 30 ml I get water). Then collect a lump with your hands, slightly compact until a ball is formed, flatten and put in the refrigerator for half an hour to rest (covered with a lid or bag).
In the meantime, prepare the filling. We chop the leek and fry on vegetable until soft (5-10 minutes, depending on the thickness and type of onion). We cut all the other ingredients into a cube of no more than 1 cm: potatoes, apple, brisket - then pour it into the onion, add salt, pepper, nutmeg and mix.
We roll out the chilled dough between two pre-prepared sheets of parchment paper into a layer 3 mm thick and cut out a circle one and a half times larger than the diameter of the mold where the cake will be baked. I recommend taking a form with high sides. Tall pies look spectacular. But, in principle, any will do, just add the height of the side to the radius of the bottom - when cutting. I also made it in disposable take-out forms. We remove the top paper, and transfer the circle to the form, turn it over, removing the second paper, carefully distribute the dough along the bottom and sides, as wrinkles appear, straighten them evenly over the entire side part. It's not worth taking too hard. This dough should not be ironed and kneaded too much, the less manipulation, the lighter and crispier it is. This also applies to mixing.
The bottom needs to be pricked with a fork over the entire surface, then put half of the filling, sprinkle the surface with half of the cheese, then the filling again and the remaining cheese. From scraps of dough, collect a ball and roll it into a layer along the diameter of the form. Brush the edges of the dough with egg, place the second round of dough on top of the filling and pinch, folding the edges inward. Prick the top with a fork, grease the surface of the pie with an egg and send to the oven preheated to 190 degrees for 30 minutes.
With this dough, the cake keeps well for several days, so you can make it ahead of time. If you don't like pork, simply omit it by proportionally increasing all the ingredients, or add beef left over from dinner. If you decide to do it with puff, keep in mind: you don’t need to roll it out, just cut out circles, 1 pack per pie is enough. And don't forget to oil the mold to make it easier to remove the dough.
In general, during these New Year holidays, Swiss cuisine was the most popular with us. We cooked reshti, and fondue, and cake and bread. Whatever you say, Swiss cuisine is one of the most warming and satisfying. January will be "swiss made" for me. I really want to convey to you my feelings from the Swiss winter, coziness and comfort. Graubünden soup and Engadine walnut pie are next in line.
PS Thank you all for your birthday wishes, and in the meantime I'm studying my new computer, which I've been dreaming about for, believe it or not, for 15 years. So much time my computer has been updated and adapted, but over the past year I realized that it was time to part with it. Now I joined the ranks of the Yabloko. My husband did not even try to convince me, he just took and gave me a "poppy". I’m slowly getting used to the fact that now I don’t have to wait until the necessary photos are loaded)
Engadine nut cake is also called Bündner nut cake and owes its name to its place of origin - Engadine, in the canton of Graubünden Switzerland. Historians point out that the recipe has been known since 1900.
The cake is made flat from shortcrust pastry with a filling of coarsely chopped walnuts in caramel. This is the most famous specialty of the canton, belongs to the traditional cuisine of Switzerland and is a significant export. The cake is very convenient for postal parcels and keeps up to 2 months in the refrigerator without losing its taste. It is exported all over the world and has long won the heart of the Catholic Vatican.
Absolutely all Swiss families have their own recipe with “raisin”. This cake is a must in all restaurants and shops. Seeing the Swiss walnut cake in the order table, I immediately decided to present you with the real recipe, coming from first hand and from the place of origin of the cake itself, since I live in the canton where the recipe was created. I also want to show a little of the Alps, where the cake comes from. I kind of briefly told, and now consider the recipe itself and the cake. All culinary inspiration and looking forward to your feedback!
swiss apple pie
Open shortbread apple pie with pouring out condensed milk and eggs.
A modern take on the old Swiss vee pie.
Original and very tasty.
The first documentary mention of the Wähe pie dates back to 1556. There are sweet and savory options with a variety of fruits and vegetables.
Traditionally, the sweet pie is topped with a mixture of cream, eggs and sugar. During the baking process, the filling browns heavily, but does not thicken completely, which is why it is often called a quiche. It is interesting that in old cookbooks there are recipes for this pie filled with wine, flour, eggs, raisins.
Today, apple vee is very popular in Switzerland, and since Germany is very close, across the border, of course, the Germans, who love it so much, also bake it and come up with their own versions. In our recipe, the filling turns into a tender mass like soufflé.
Fill layer height is a matter of personal preference. I have a high layer of apples protruding above the filling, mainly for beauty. And it was possible to fill the apples completely, by the way, they do it more often.
For the preparation of the pie, it is more often used shortbread, puff or chopped dough.
Chopped (quick puff) dough differs from shortbread in that cold margarine (or butter) is cut into pieces with a knife, then with a fork, and not with hands, rubbed with flour and other ingredients. using a grater. Of course, it can be made with a blender. Such a dough usually crumbles slightly, but you should not knead it with your hands for a long time, otherwise small pieces of butter will melt from the heat of your hands, and then you will get the usual shortbread dough.
I made it from chopped dough, but you can make regular shortcrust pastry with the same ingredients.
Vee dough can be sweet and savory, hence the range for the amount of sugar in the recipe, choose for yourself 50, 75 or 100 grams. In my opinion, almost unsweetened dough, where 50 g of sugar, goes very well with a sweet filling, but the taste is great with sweet dough. And if the finished vee seems unsweetened to you, this can be easily corrected by sprinkling it with powdered sugar.
Please note that the recipe uses sweetened condensed milk. If you use sweetened condensed milk, which is often used for baking in Europe and America, then you have to add sugar.
And yet, about the quality of condensed milk. If you use milk based on palm oil, the result may be different. I used Belarusian condensed milk from the Rogachev plant, it is real. And yet, probably, you should beware of fakes.
So, the recipe is from my German relatives.
Total in the finished pie: 3426 kcal, proteins 61.5 g, fats 171.2 g, carbohydrates 440.5 g
The finished cake weighs more than 1 kg, unfortunately, I did not weigh it.
I baked in a rectangular pan measuring 26 x 21 cm.
1. Prepare plastic dough from all ingredients. Soak on the table for half an hour under the film. If it's hot, then in the refrigerator.
2. On a baking sheet or in a form covered with baking paper, lay out pieces of dough, distribute with your hands along the bottom of the form, always with sides, otherwise the filling will leak out.
3. Peel apples from the core. If the apple skin is tough, remove it. Cut into thin slices and put on the dough with scales, a fan.
4. Bake in an oven preheated to 200 degrees for 15-20 minutes, more precisely, until the apples are soft.
5. While the apple basket is baking, prepare the filling. Combine condensed milk, egg yolks, a teaspoon of flour and cinnamon, mix everything well.
6. Remove the cake from the oven, pour over the filling, return to the oven. Bake another 15-20 minutes until done.
7. Can be served warm or cold. In a cooled cake, the filling becomes thick, similar to a soufflé.
Good luck!
© Taisiya Fevronina, 2013.
Cholera is a vegetable pie with leeks, potatoes, cheese and apples from the canton of Valais (or Wallis) in Switzerland.
Cholera is prepared in different ways: depending on the region and personal preferences. Most recipes have the following ingredients: shortcrust pastry or puff pastry and toppings: leeks, potatoes, cheese and apples. In other versions, onions and other vegetables, pears, and bacon are also added to these products.
The dough is rolled out to a thickness of about 2 mm and placed in a baking dish. In some recipes, from dough that protrudes beyond the form, they simply form a side (not like a biscuit). In other recipes, the dough is divided into two parts, the second is used as a "lid". The baking time is about 40-60 minutes, depending on the recipe, at about 200°C.
There is no single opinion and reliable evidence about the origin of the name "cholera". One explanation is that during the cholera epidemic in 1830 there was a ban on leaving the house due to the risk of cholera infection, so people were forced to cook food from food that at that time was in the pantry or in their own garden.So, in principle, each of us, one way or another, has already prepared “Russian cholera” - a pie from food leftovers. Today I tried to cook Swiss.
I took these products (in the photo for 4 servings, I cooked only two servings):
Cut the leek into rings and fry a little in vegetable oil until soft.
Cut the ham into cubes and also fry a little.
Boil potatoes in their skins, cool, peel and cut into washers, you can (and even better) grate.
Grate the cheese.
Pears cut into small pieces.
Lastly, cut the apples into the same pieces so that they do not have time to turn black.
Unroll the finished dough. I cut it in half to get two separate servings, but you don't have to.
Put the potatoes in the first layer.
The second layer is apples.
The third layer is pears.
The fourth layer is leeks. You can also take ordinary onions or both at the same time.
The fifth layer is ham. For vegetarians, of course, without it.
And the last sixth layer is grated cheese.
We close all layers with free dough, thus forming 2 small pies.
We spread it on a sheet and coat it with yolk, you can not do this, but when coated, the dough acquires a beautiful brown color during baking.
We bake in an oven preheated to 150-180 degrees for 20-30 minutes (this is mine) until the dough is ready.
Bon Appetit!