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I never considered myself a special connoisseur of Tatar cuisine (after all, where I was born, it came in handy there). But quite recently, a Tatar woman came to visit us for my book with an autograph, even from Kazan itself (she was in Moscow on business), and I, in order to please a person, prepared kystyby - the little that I think I succeed . Ilsia Faridovna and her husband Saban Ilshatovich said that, perhaps, only Ilsia's grandmother cooked the same delicious kystyby, and without much ceremony they gratefully took the whole basket of cakes with them, blessing me and my mother goodbye. “For our friends in Moscow,” they said.
I was definitely moved. But not so much by the fact of praise, but by the fact that everything in this world is not in vain and not by chance. Once upon a time, I, still a young student, late at night to the hostel (it was closed for the night), was picked up on the street and sheltered until the morning by my grandmother Harira, who lived on Leninsky Prospekt next to our university. We talked with her all night, and she also taught me how to cook kystyby (and also belish, echpochmak, gubadia), boasting that once upon a time, right after the war, because of her kystybys, a big Moscow boss fell in love with her and took her away from Kazan to the capital.
I confess that I don’t remember this dish so often now, but in the most difficult times it helped me out many times, not only my son grew up on these flat cakes with potatoes, but also a good half of his classmates who always grazed in our kitchen, and half of the Yuzhnobutovo yard kids too.
Let me share with you Grandmother Harira's recipe (as I wrote it down), and you next weekend (or even in the morning for breakfast) try to cook this simple, but very tasty dish.
First, prepare the filling (it should cool a little and be warm, not hot).
Boil 5-6 medium peeled potatoes until completely soft, drain the water, and pour a small amount of milk into the saucepan and return it to the fire. When the milk boils, add a little salt and ground black pepper and use a wooden pestle to crush the soft but strong puree.
In a frying pan in 50-80 grams of butter, fry 3 finely chopped onions until golden brown, dusting them with a pinch of salt and a pinch of sugar. Mix the puree with fried fragrant onion and a couple of egg yolks. Wrap the puree and let it stand warm for about 30 minutes. After that, the puree can cool with the pan lid open.
While the potatoes are cooking, we will have time to prepare the dough. It is very simple, but also delicious.
A glass of very warm, but not scalding hot, milk, one egg, half a pack of butter, salt, flour. Flour (last time I took Pudoff flour) two glasses or a little more - combine in a bowl alternately. Shake the milk with the egg, add soft butter and salt, then pour the sifted flour in portions ...
The dough should be elastic, well kneaded, but not clogged, tender. We knead, divide into 16 parts (I roll the sausage-roll and cut with a knife, grandmother Harira pinched off pieces of equal size unmistakably by eye), and cool in the refrigerator for at least half an hour under the film. We dust the table with flour, roll each bun into a thin cake the size of a standard pancake and bake in a dry frying pan.
Now we quickly grease the cake inside with melted butter, fold it in half and put it in, spreading it a little, lay our cooled filling.
Lubricate the kystyby with oil now on top and bake the next cake. It usually takes me 25 minutes to bake all 16 cakes.
I confess that I cook the dough in the evening (so that a hot breakfast is already in the morning). Yes, and I can cook mashed potatoes from the night, but I don’t put it in the refrigerator. We are early birds, and until 6 in the morning (for 6 hours on the windowsill) nothing happens to the potatoes, they even manage to stay a little warm.
I don’t know what it is customary to serve kystyby with, but I like it with cold milk and hot tea-coffee-cocoa…. Have you ever tried it with juice?
If you like and use the recipe - I will be very happy.
And let her gods help grandmother Harira in the next world. She was a wonderful woman - soft, kind, wise and with a huge heart!