Pies

Pies

Apple pie with semolina

There are so many things I love about autumn!

Chose a day in our rush-life-time and stop! Stop and look around! You could see many bright colors, that golden fall has brought for you. Browny-orange and fiery red leaves are falling from trees. Gloomy and gray sky. Breeze in! Cooling and lightly burning air.

What an amazing day to bake a warm apple pie! 🙂

Ingredients:

Apples (pink lady) 3

Cottage cheese 100-150g (1/2-2/3 cups)

A handful of raisins, optionally

Butter 50-70g (4-5 Tbsp), melted

Semolina 150g (1 cup)

Flour 2Tbsp

Egg 1

Sugar 100g (1/2cup), I used brown

Cinnamon 1/2 tsp, optionally

Baking soda 1tsp

Bread crumbs or crushed nuts (hazelnuts, almonds) 1-2Tbsp, optionally

I forget to put soda in the pie mixture sometimes, so don’t worry if you’ve done the same, the pie will be nice and tasty anyway! 😉

Using fine semolina makes the pie more fluffy, however, I used that time coarse-grained and the pie was none the worse.;)

Feel free to change a quantity of the ingredients to suit your own taste.

Method:

Slice the apples, sprinkle with sugar and cinnamon.

Meanwhile, combine cottage cheese and egg. Add semolina, flour, soda and melted butter, mix.

Add apples, raisins and carefully combine.

Butter the baking pan, sprinkle some bread crumbles or crushed nuts, add the apple mixture.

Bake until golden color for 30-40 minutes. 200C/400F

Enjoy!!! 😀

Kournik – Russian chicken pie

Hello, dear foodies!

In Russia we really do like pies, to bake and to eat! 🙂 And I’m not an exception. 🙂

Kournik – the festive pie which used to bake for weddings. It was shaped like a dome, interlaid with thin pancakes and stuffed with various fillings: boiled chicken, fried mushrooms, rice, eggs and etc. Nowdays, preparing of the pie is left for weekends. But there is the simplified version of it, which Russian women cook during working-days.

Hope this simple and tasty pie can turn into a family favorite!

So, we need

For pastry:

260-300 gr plain flour

150 gr sour cream

150 gr butter

1 egg

pinch of salt

For filling:

2 chicken breasts

2-3 potatoes

1 onion (big one)

a few small cubes of butter

1 egg for brushing

salt and pepper

Mix the flour, pinch of salt, soft butter, sour cream and egg together in a bowl. Then you need to work on a surface – mix together to form a soft pastry.

Shape the pastry into a ball and cover with a towel. Meanwhile, cut the chicken and onion into cubes and grate potatoes.

Divide the dough into 2 parts, one should be smaller- will be the lid (upper part) for our pie. On a lightly floured surface, roll out the pastry until it’s roughly the size of the pie dish.

Spread the potatoes in an even layer, season with salt and pepper