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According to legend, she was the daughter of a Roman civil servant who was secretly Christian, and raised his daughter in the faith, and she became a deaconess in the church. This was dangerous, and one day the jurist Ulpian captured Tatiana and attempted to force her to make a sacrifice to Apollo. She prayed, and miraculously, an earthquake destroyed the Apollo statue and part of the temple.
Tatiana was then blinded, and beaten for two days, before being brought to a circus and thrown into the pit with a hungry lion. But the lion did not touch her and lay at her feet. This resulted in a death sentence being pronounced, and after being tortured, Tatiana was beheaded with a sword on January 12 (Julian calendar) (January 25 in the Gregorian calendar), around AD 225 or 230.
On this very day (January 25) in 1755, Russian empress Elizabeth signed a decree establishing Moscow University. Since then, this day has also become
Students' Day.
In old Russia, it used to be the noisiest day of the year in big cities. Big groups of students walked along the streets, sang students' songs, joked, drank and played pranks. Even the police respected that day and didn't make arrests of drunk students. I read someone compared the spirit of that day with the spirit of Woodstock for rock-and-roll fans in the 60's. University professors considered Tatyana's day to be their holiday too. In the Soviet period of Russian history, Tatyana's Day was not widely celebrated, but in 1993 it was revived. It is the great event for all college students and professors nowdays.
There is a belief among Russians that if Tatyana's Day is sunny, then birds will be back from the south earlier in spring; if it's snowy, then the summer will be rainy. If one hears a woodpecker on this day, then spring will arrive, and the snow will melt in March. If Tatyana's Day is cold, then June will be dry and hot.
In old Russia, people believed that a girl born on this day would be a good cook. I do not consider myself to be one, but nevertheless, I would like to treat you, my dear Blotanical friends, to one of my favorite meals -Russian piroshki. Piroshki is multiple form of pirojok.
Since our relationship is purely virtual, the only way to do it is to share my recipe with you.
You can serve piroshki as an appetizer or as a snack.
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It can also be a main dish served with soup or salad. I can not call them real Russian piroshki, because I don't make the dough myself. It takes time (read: I am a bit lazy). I was looking for an easy, fast way of making them. I replaced the dough made from scratch with store-bought dinner roll dough. It worked! I use reduced-fat dough of any brand including grocery store brands.
Ingredients:
1/2 pound of ground beef (I use lean beef, preferably organic)
1 onion (not huge) chopped fine
Fresh chopped parsley and/or dill to your taste (I use them dry if fresh are not available)
Salt and black pepper to your taste plus your other favorite spices.(I like to use Johnny's Garlic Spread & Seasoning.)
Oil (to saute onion and to brown meat)
1 package of jumbo biscuits (16.3 oz = 462 g ; it contains 8 pieces, cut them in halfs to get 16) or 2 packages of normal size biscuits
1 egg
Flour
Method:
Saute the onion in oil until it turns golden. Add ground beef and brown it, stirring. Add the minced parsley and/or dill, salt, pepper and other spices to taste. I add parsley last, trying to keep it as green as possible to save more vitamins. Get the mixture from a pan. Add 1tbs boiled water mixed with 1/2 tbs flour slightly browned in the pan to the meat mixture to make it more moist.
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Preheat oven to 400 degrees F. Roll dough pieces very thin. With a teaspoon, put cooled meat mixture in the center of each dough piece.
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Leave a border around the filling all the way round. Roll and pinch the pastry together in a neat ridge along the center of the piroshki.
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Put piroshki on a cookie sheet (I grease it lightly with organic PAM). Brush piroshki with a beaten egg (you can use only yolk, or yolk mixed with water, but I often use the whole beaten egg).
Bake for 14 minutes in the oven .
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Total time: about 1 hour 10 min.
There are many ways to modernize this recipe. You can add boiled chopped eggs or cooked rice, or sauted mushrooms, etc. to the meat stuffing, or just use eggs and mushrooms without meat.
Making piroshki can be a fun project for kids. My boys enjoy helping me. Your kids might like it too!
For those of you who have time to make pastry from scratch, here is a recipe from the book of Russian Princess Alexandra Kropotkina.
Quick Russian Pastry
2 1/2 cups sifted flour
1/2 cup vegetable shortening
1 1/2 tsp. baking powder
2 tbsp. butter
1 tsp. salt
1 egg
Ice water
Sift the flour, baking powder, and salt together. Work in the vegetable shortening and the butter til the flower is like very coarse meal, with some bits of the shortening the size of small peas. Beat the egg slighly and add enough ice water to make 1/2 cup of fluid. Mix this quickly into the flour and shortening, adding a little more ice water if needed. The dough must be very soft and light. Sprinkle over with flour. Roll on well floured board.
Enjoy!
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Copyright 2009 TatyanaS
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