Bon Appetite. Pelmeni

Who was first?
There are many versions of the origins of pelmeni. According to one version the pelmeni appeared in Russian after the Mongolian conquest. Long preparation and quick cooking of the dish is not peculiar to Russia as well as to cook dishes with many spices. However the Chinese ravioli (yui-pao) perfectly "settled down" on the table of the Siberians. The pelmeni can be kept during the whole winter at Siberian frosts without losing their taste and nutritious qualities and the meat, rolled into dough and mixed with spices, is less attractive for animals than a plain piece of meat.

If we express a version relying on the origins of the word "pelmeni", then it turns out that pelmeni came to Russia from a side opposite to Mongolia. Long ago, the Ugro-Finns who set out from Altai to the West stopped in Ural for a little while and shared with the local inhabitants the secret of cooking a dish the idea of which lied in the joining of the dough cover with meat. The inhabitants called this dish "pelnyan" which means "an ear made of bread". The original shape of the dish determined its name. However the pelmeni were widely spread in the European part of Russia only by the end of XIX century.

What lies underneath the dough?
Pelmeni had a ritual significance for the ancient Uralians. They symbolically embodied the sacrifice of all the types of cattle which were owned by man. This is why the traditions Uralian meat filling consists of 3 types of meat - beef, mutton and pork. All this types are mixed according to a strictly defined proportion. In order to obtain 1kg of meat stuffing one must use 450g of beef, 350 g of mutton and 200 g of pork. Then some pepper, thinly chopped onions, fresh cabbage, some grated radish and potherbs are added. The addition of vegetables makes the meat filling finer. If other ingredients are used for the meat filling there will be no harmony in taste with the dough. Tatars, Maris and Russian learned to make pelmeni from the Uralians. However their taste was changed. The Tatars replaced the filling by plain mutton and the Russians - first to beef, than pork. Lithuanian dishes of pelmeni type are adopted from Eastern cuisine since the period of Middle Ages. They do not differ in the cooking technology and appearance from the dishes of ancestors.

Which shape is better?
Usually the rolled out sheet of dough is cut into squares in order to avoid wastes and to economize time. The squares may be folded diagonally or plainly in half. Look at the photo to see what kind of pelmeni are produced. Some diligent housewives cut out circles with the use of a glass from the rolled out dough. With this method some off-cuts of dough remain which can be rolled up into a lump but the dough will be tough and it will be difficult to roll it into a sheet. But then the shape of the pelmeni will be in the form of a beautiful crescent. However the real skilled craftsmen consider even the cutting out with a glass inadmissible. They cut the "sausage" from dough into pieces as large as cherries, and then they roll each piece for each pelmen individually. No off-cuts! Most importantly - the pelmeni are all different! The ready pelmeni may be boiled straight away, thrown into boiling vegetable oil (the Uzbek method) or frozen.

Still the fantasy of restaurants has no limits. Some restaurants make pelmeni as large as a saucer and invent names for them: "Tri bogatirya" (3 heroes), "Gulliver's pelmeni" and so on. The correlation of dough and meat perfected through centuries which creates an ideal taste is broken in the large pelmeni. As a result we get something resembling a boiled cheburek* but much worse. This is why we offer you to make pelmeni guided by our advices.