We're finally "in" Russia! I've been looking forward to this for a few days now, which is why we decided to start a little early this week (and also because we're college kids...and our weekends are usually five days long!).
Pelmeni, a type of Russian dumpling, is prepared by following a few basic steps:
1) Mix meat.
2) Flour + milk + eggs = dough
3) Make dumpling.
4) Cook dumpling.
5) Eat dumpling.
The ingredients :-)
Yours Truly.
Easy, right? You would think!
Unfortunately, the dough outsmarted us and although I'm sure we were supposed to knead our way to dumpling heaven, we were left with a проклятый mess (Hint: that is the Russian equivalent for a word that starts with "f" and ends with "ucking").
Our first attempt at "dough". Modeled by Micah!
We're no cooks - we don't know how to "fix" kitchen mistakes. So we did the most logical thing: We added flour. A LOT of flour.
The flour worked so-so, and our goo was transformed into something that could be a very distantly related member of the dough family.
Meat mix + dough = dumplings?
With our pseudo-dough in hand, we moved on to dumpling making. One of us was good at making dumplings and it sure as heck wasn't me! Mostly because of my inability to wrap dough around a lump of meat, Micah was gracious enough to document his step-by-step guide on how to become a dumpling master.
My dumpling. Micah's dumpling. Enough said!
The "guardian of the kitchen" keeping tabs on our cooking progress.
Once the raw dumplings were created, they were simply plopped into a nice boiling pot of water for twenty minutes and then, voila, lunch was served!
Our finished product, complete with ketchup and sour cream!
As far as meatball-like foods, I like the Vietnamese pork balls better. This tastes a lot like German frikadellen (or like cooked hamburger meat), and generally speaking, I wish it had been more flavored of spiced. Micah really liked the pelmeni, and would definitely make them again.
Generally speaking, pelmeni are easy to make and filling. The recipe could have fed us twice over.
Next up: Stroganoff and the Nesselrode Bombe (YAY!).
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