Kapusta

Alissa Timoshkina · Kapusta

I usually don’t play favourites with my food, but I am afraid I have to say that Slavic piroshki stand no chance against their Ashkenazi siblings – knishes. I have to confess, as someone who grew up eating piroshki, it never crossed my mind to make knishes. However, once I did, my heart was won over. Very quick and relatively easy to make, these little bundles boast the most perfect flaky buttery pastry and can be filled with anything from mince meat to mashed potatoes, sauerkraut, mushrooms and buckwheat; some recipes also offer sweet alternatives of twarog and jam. Consumed as a snack or a side to a soup, knishes are usually baked but can also be deep-fried. Knishes hail from the Ashkenazi diaspora in Ukraine, Belarus and Poland, where they are known as knysh or knysz (the word’s etymology goes back to German knitschen to ‘crumple’), and they were popularised worldwide by the Ashkenazi immigrants to the USA in the early 20th century. New York is their hometown and if you happen to b

Alissa Timoshkina · Kapusta

This delightfully simple dish is a staple in the cuisines of the Volga Tatars as well as of the Chuvash people, a fellow Turkic ethnic group residing in the Eastern European part of Russia. These flatbreads would be the identical twins of the Turkish gözleme were it not for the filling. They are traditionally filled with rice or millet porridge, but mashed potatoes are sometimes used instead. This recipe was kindly given to me by Firuza Yusupova, a pastry chef of a Tatar-Jewish origin, whose family story spans the area between Bashkortostan and Samarkand, and is written through recipes and food memories passed down from one generation to the next, preserving and celebrating their Tatar heritage.