In Russian pelmeni looks like this: пельмени.
Visually it looks like this:
The word itself may be completely bizarro, but as you can see, пельмени is nothing more than a dumpling. The same type of dumplings that you have eaten many times at your Norwegian grandmothers house, or Swedish, or German, or Chinese (but not the delicious looking soup dumplings).
The contents of the dumplings are really basic: 1 part ground beef to 1 part ground pork and then spiced however you like! I diced up about three cloves of garlic, poured in some Worcestershire sauce, some red pepper flakes, salt and pepper then mixed it all together by hand until everything was well incorporated. After which, I placed it back in the refrigerator, covered to work on the pelmeni dough.
In our St. Petersburg cooking class, Chef Tsvetkov Oleg divided the tasks for the pelmeni making by sex: the men did all of the tasks pertaining to meat and mostly dough, whereas we women performed all of the vegetable prep work (for the solyanka). We took a number of breaks throughout our class where Chef encouraged us to take shot after shot of vodka, which we did. So when we returned to the kitchen to work with sharp knives I think I moved slower, not only from the alcohol, but because I was really mesmerized by the way in which Chef was making dumpling dough. He took approximately three cups of all-purpose (I assume) flour, added a pinch of salt for flavor and then eyeballed an amount of oil, vegetable or olive perhaps. He then just kneaded it in a plastic container until it became dough.
I wanted to take the same idea and use it at home. Unfortunately, I was overcome by a simple noodle recipe (though I used All Purpose Flour instead) involving four eggs, went with it, and then ran it through my pasta machine to flatten the dough out to long sheets.
Oddly, this cookie cutter did not suffice. I had to use a drinking glass to cut out the dough and then at times a knife to cut it away and in to rounds. This occurred – I believe – not due to the dough recipe, but due to the fact that I ran the dough through the pasta roller too many times, the dough got pretty tough (as evidenced later when I ate the meal). Curses! So beware…
The rounds weren’t much larger than 2.5″ across.
To seal the pelmeni, I did nothing more than use the tines of a fork; no water, egg wash or other goop to glue it together. The super great thing about pelmeni is that it keeps so well in the freezer. I made up a huge batch of these one afternoon, just in order to have on a rainy/snowy/lazy day, put them on a cookie sheet in a single layer, froze them and then bagged them up before I again threw them in the freezer, just like the Siberians.
On Russian Dinner Night, as we were starting to eat our solyanka, I pulled out a large pot to boil water in. I now realize how lovely it would have been to put some chicken broth in as well. Luckily I still have a gallon bag full of pelmeni in the freezer to try that idea out on.
I boiled them for about 15-20 minutes – because there is frozen, raw meat inside, It is necessary to ensure it’s actually cooked through. After pulling the dumplings out, I poured a bt of live oil on them as well as some salt and pepper. After a quick stir, they were served! Because the soup was so hearty, we needed only a few dumplings to satisfy our need for savory before we had dessert…
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