Kulebyaka

Baking tool:

• 40×35 cm baking tray,
• lined with non stick baking paper

 

Dough:

• 350 g strong white bread flour, protein about 12 %
• 6 g easy-blend/easy-bake dried yeast
• about 200 ml luke warm milk
• 1 egg yolk
• 2 x 50 g soft butter
• 6 g salt

Filling:

• 2 x 1 tablespoon butter
• 100 g buckwheat
• 1 egg
• 150 ml water
• 300 g white pollack fillet (instead of sturgeon)
• 1 minced onion
• 8 tablespoons minced dill leaves
• salt
• 350 g salmon fillet
• 200 g white pollack fillet

On top:

• 1 egg yolk, milk

In  the 19^th century this pie was an indecent rich pastry with 12 layers of filling: meat, fish, mushrooms, roosters, eggs, game and in between buckwheat pancakes, described aptly by Anton Chekhov: ‘the Kulebyaka.. must lie there before you, naked, shameless, a temptation … the butter drips from it like tears’ (The Siren). Elena Molokhovets kept it more frugal in her famous cookbook A gift to Young House wives (1861). After having heard about the book of his contemporary the same Chekhov seems to have made fun of Helena’s soberness. But here you can taste how right she was in leaving out the meat and most of the tears.

• Mix flour and yeast in a bowl. Knead with milk, egg yolk and 50 g butter. Add salt and if necessary some more milk. Knead an elastic dough. Cover the bowl with a damp cloth and let trise at room temperature for an hour.
• On a floured working surface roll out the risen dough to a rectangle. Spread the other  50 g butter on it. Fold in three two times. Cover and chill for an hour in the fridge.
• Sauté the buckwheat in a dry non stick frying pan. Add the egg,  stir until the grains are loose again.
• Bring the water to the boil with 1 tablespoon butter. Cook the buckwheat stirring constantly for 10 minutes.
• Sauté 300 g pollack with minced onion in 1 tablespoon butter until dry and done. Mix with buckwheat, dill and salt.
• On a floured working surface roll out the chilled dough to 2 rectangles measuring 25×30 cm.
• Put one of the rectangles onto the lined  baking tray. Cover with 1/3 of the fish mix, 15 cm wide. Lay thereupon thin slices of salted salmon and pollack. Repeat this. Finish with fish mix. Put the other dough rectangle over it. Press with fingertops alongside the filling. Cut away the unfilled dough.
• Garnish with the trimmings. Prick with a fork. Cover and let rise at room temperature for ½ hour. Meanwhile preheat the oven to 160˚C/325˚F/gas 3.
• Brush the dough with egg beaten with some milk. Bake about 40 minutes on the oven shelf just above the lowest.  Eat warm or cold. Reheat  sprayed with water 20 minutes at 200˚C/400˚F.