The historian of Russian cuisine Piskunov named his favorite lenten dish

An unusual dish for those who are tired of the monotony during Lent is ears, or kundyubki with dried mushrooms. About this in an interview withNewspaper.Ru”said the historian of Russian cuisine, brand chef of the Matryoshka restaurant Vlad Piskunov. The expert added that this dish is one of the most favorite in his arsenal of meatless dishes.

To create ears, or kundyubki, you need to take dried mushrooms, half an onion, a clove of garlic, 2/3 cup barley or round rice. You should also stock up on 300 grams of wheat flour and 2 tablespoons of red (fermented) rye malt. In addition, cooking will also require vegetable oil, fresh parsley and salt.

Mushrooms must be thoroughly washed under running water. Then you just need to fill them with water and let stand for an hour. “If the mushrooms are a new crop, so they didn’t really have time to dry out, then there is no point in cooking them,” Piskunov noted. “If you cook kundyubki in the spring, then you should boil the mushrooms a little so that they become soft.”

After the mushrooms have been in the water for an hour, you need to squeeze them through a sieve and finely chop. Then you should pass them along with finely chopped onions and garlic in vegetable oil. Salt can be added to taste here. At the same time, pre-soaked pearl barley or rice should be boiled in salted water. “Cook under the lid without draining the water,” explained the historian of Russian cuisine. “It needs to be a sticky mess.” It must be added to the pan with mushrooms and onions and mix.

To prepare the dough, you will need to mix flour with malt, add vegetable oil and a little slightly cooled boiling water. All this must be mixed. “Be sure to let the dough cool, wrap it in cling film and put it in the refrigerator for an hour to ripen and rest,” Piskunov advised.

After that, you need to roll out the dough into a thin sheet, cut into squares and put a spoonful of the resulting filling into each. Then all this must be put in a pan and put in an oven preheated to 200 ° C for 20 minutes. During this time, the kundyubki will brown.

Then the water in which the mushrooms were soaked must be poured into the pan where the dish is being prepared. Mushroom infusion should cover the bottom by 5-7 millimeters. In this form, the pan with kundyubki should be covered with a lid and cooked over medium heat for about 10 minutes, until the liquid evaporates and is absorbed into the dough.

“In fact, kundyubki are steamed with mushroom broth,” concluded the historian of Russian cuisine. – It is very important not to miss the time when almost all the liquid will disappear. Otherwise, kundyubki can fry and even burn, which is unacceptable!” According to Vlad Piskunov, it is best to cover the pan with a glass lid in order to see what is happening under it.