h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

I got up early this morning. On Mondays I still have the enthusiasm to keep to my weekly planned menus and today I was going to make Pirakka for lunch (I think that's what they're called - a sort of Polish pastie.)

The recipe is a yeast dough, so I wanted to get started on it early. I did exactly that, starting the yeast, chopping onions and mushrooms (the filling in the recipe I used) and hard-boiling eggs. I left the dough to rise for quite a short time (the recipe said 10 minutes) and, after kneading it for just a bit more, rolled it out like pastry, made the little triangular patties and baked them while I went up and showered.*

I brought one to work for lunch - they are absolutely brilliant!

*I was just putting them into the oven when my husband came down and announced that the heating had gone again! Damn! I had been fiddling around in the kitchen in my dressing gown, and had yet to shower and dress. Hadn't noticed the house wasn't heating because I'd had the oven on in the kitchen. But there was still enough warm water for me, thank goodness.

Hubbie called the heating firm. Last time we called them was on Christmas day. Now they were closed for Shrove Monday, which is a holiday for many round here. But they always have an emergency service and come out - they are really nice.

So, as he was expecting the men, he couldn't drive me to work. He doesn't usually, but today was extremely windy, and the storm warnings have caused the parade in Mainz to be called off. In Cologne they are risking it, but no big banners or anything that can blow over will be allowed, and no horses either. So I biked to work - it wasn't very windy at that time, but since, the wind has got up and now it's raining and .

I hope I get home all right this evening!

If you do manage to get home without being swept halfway across Europe could you post the recipe for those?

Clever you! Is this the famous British organisational ability or the famous German organisational ability? And yes, safe home!

if the house is cold, do you really want to hurry back to it?

The heating should be fixed by now.

There was a rainbow whilst I was cooking this morning - never seen one in the West before, first thing in the morning - lovely!

But the and have alternated with bright sunshine all day and now it's just gone knocking off time it's started pelting it down on the roof again. So it's get soaked or do overtime. Talk about rock vs hard place.

We've been getting slow but steady snow since dawn, and will probably have 12 more hours of it. I'm skeptical about the 9 to 12 inches that have been predicted (I think it'll be no more than 6), but the powers that be have advised people to get off the roads, so I'm staying inside for the duration.

I have tons of books to read, but 300 pages of "I, Claudius" doesn't seem like as much fun as I originally imagined. I tried to renew it, but someone else has it on request, so I have three days in which to finish it rather than the three weeks I wanted.

So - how is your prediction panning out, Paul?

Anyway - here is a rough translation of the recipe - Sorry, I've only got it in grams. This dates back to a cookery course my husband and I and another couple did back in the 70s when we were newly-weds in the hope that he might develop an interest in cookery. (I'm still waiting) On re-reading it, I was surprised at how shorthand it was. It just says "make a dough of the dough ingredients" - without referring to the fact that it is a yeast dough and you have to start the yeast off and then mix it with the other ingredients etc., etc.

That reminds me of the 1920s Christmas baking books and even older cookbooks I inherited from my mother-in-law, where absolutely no temperatures or cooking times are given. You are expected to know that sort of thing.

-------
Pirakka
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For the dough: 500 g flour, 40 g yeast, 125 g fat, 1/8 - 1/14 l milk, 2 eggs, salt.

For the filling: 30 g margarine, 500 g mushrooms, 125 g onions, 4 hard-boiled eggs, salt, rosemary, pepper, a bunch of parsley, chopped, 1 egg white, 1 egg yolk (alternatively evaporated milk)



Make a yeast dough using all the ingredients given and leave to rise in the oven set at 50° for 5 minutes and then a further 10 minutes turned off.

Roll it out and cut into squares.

For the filling, chop the mushrooms and onions very small and fry gently in the margarine, turning up to reduce the liquid. Add equally finely chopped hard-boiled eggs, season and add the herbs.

Spoon this mixture onto the squares of dough, fold over into triangles, seal with a drop of water, brush with egg yolk or evaporated milk.

Bake at 225° for 20 minutes.








This course was at the Electricity board, so they were keen for you to use the electric oven for everything.

What they don't say is how thick to roll out the pastry, how many squares you should cut or how big the squares are. I had it about 1/2 cm thick, and cut squares of about 4-5". That gave me 8 squares, but then I had some filling left over, so you could get 10 or 12 out of it, and roll out thinner. The baked bread dough was very thick - nearly an inch, top and bottom! It rose beautifully, but my husband said he was still full when I came in from work late last night, having eaten 2 for lunch!

The egg white is meant to be used to stick down the triangles, but water does perfectly well. I didn't brush the tops either - they came out a lovely colour like delicious bread rolls.

For the chopping I used this gadget, which I have decided is my favourite kitchen gadget, I use it almost daily:

http://www.shoppakistan.pk/prodimages/NicerDicer_1.jpg

It only seems to be available now in Pakistan. There is a new version out, but it's nowhere near as good (as is always the way)

Just found one on amazon. Phew!

Yum. I've added it to my recipes. Full report to follow after the first time I make them

I have trouble translating grams into teaspoons and cups and pounds.

I don't. I'm always juggling grams and imperial (from my old English recipe books and school exercise books). There are plenty of conversion tables around - e.g. http://dish.allrecipes.com/cup-to-gram-conversions/

Oh - and I'm sure you'll find lots of alternatives for the filling, Gosho - chop up any old veggies.

The things have the great advantage of a pastie - easy to carry around, especially if you're really careful about closing off all the edges so nothing leaks. The filling is very dry, so no liquids will leak out. Use very fresh mushrooms for that - old ones give off loads of juice.

I like the idea of putting the hard-boiled eggs in there

Which once again brings us around to peeling them buggers

Maybe someday a shell-less egg will be invented.....

They peeled quite easily this time. I had a bowl of cold water from washing the lettuce and I dropped them in there for a bit before peeling them, whilst I was chopping the other veg.

Cool old Guy boiling eggs with the potatos
"Keep the egg shell and your hands wet while peeling eggs.

Missed sourse of that remark. "

I've not done any real cooking in over a year... so tempted to have a go at making these too

Hard boiled eggs seem harder to peel when they're warm. Maybe getting them cold will make peeling easier?

I took one of these pasties to work this morning, I had frozen the ones we didn't eat.

I didn't want to heat it up in the microwave because I thought that would make it go rubbery, so I put it in the oven for 10 minutes to make sure it was absolutely thawed out and warm in the middle. It was OK, but I should have heated it up more slowly. There was a nice brown crust on the outside, but that wasn't really what I wanted.

In the Chinese restaurant...
Customer: This egg is rubbery!
Waiter: Thank you sir, I tell the chef.