(no subject)
Instead of finishing my grading, I have been 1) writing fic, and 2) making an ASSLOAD OF MANTI. NO JOKE.
What's a manti? This, basically. When speaking of them in Russian, manti is taken as the plural, manta singular; in Kazakh, however, manti is singular and the plural is mantiler.
Anyway!
To start with, if YOU want to make this at home (boys and girls!) make the dough. That's because it's got to sit for at least 30 minutes before you roll it out--it's not leavened, but the flour needs time to hydrate.
This is, incidentally, the nicest, stretchiest, least sticky dough I've ever worked with, and I was totally making it up as I went along.
-2 cups of all-purpose flour
-A palmful of salt. ~1 tsp, I guess, but you have different palms.
-1 egg (it doesn't have to be left over from the last bake sale but it might help)
-~1.5 TBS vegetable oil
-~0.5 c water.
You might have to adjust the amounts of flour and water depending on humidity, etc. It will form a rock-hard lump; just cover it with a damp towel and let it hang out.
Now, where I actually started was:
-~1lb stew beef, which is not actually optimal for several reasons, but I'm in grad school, what do you want?
-0.5 friggin' ginormous onion. Like, bigger than a baseball. The other half is still in the fridge.
-<0.5 lbs mustard greens, because I have lost the ability to eat cabbage in manti (seeing as they were the only kind my host mother, Tyotya Valya, let me eat after one unfortunate incident.
-some leftover brown rice, just because.
-salt, a sprinkling.
The beef and the onion both have to be minced fine--not ground, minced, dammit! It should also be fairly fatty beef, because Kazakhs like fat. I just chopped the greens up and then wilted them in a saucepan until they were about half their original volume. Mix everything and throw in some salt to taste; I mean, I guess you could add cumin or something, you know, if you're being Uzbek about it.
Now, roll out the dough as thin as you can manage. The recipe I copped this from said it was supposed to make 24 manti; I got 32 and I still have filling left over. Roll the dough out, cut it into squares and stuff them with a generous mound of filling; fold the corners to the center, and then pinch pairs of adjacent corners together to get a kind of figure-eight on top.
How big are the squares? Well, again, the recipe said 3", and I went to more like 3.5" (or however long my index finger is) but either way, I ended up rather small manti...so 4" or even 5" might work better. Manti are supposed to be significantly larger than pelmeni, the official Russian dumpling, and these aren't that much bigger.
This is where the rice cooker comes in, or any other steaming technology you care to deploy. (Big, multi-level bamboo steamers are common in KZ.) I managed to get eight manti into the basket, filled it up with water according to the official product guidebook, and am now waiting for it to beep.
THEY SMELL SO GOOD YOU GUYS.
(The other 24 manti are probably going into the fridge for now. Because the only thing more exciting than manti is MOAR MANTI.)
Tomorrow: Stuff, annoyingly timed. I am trying to finish my incomplete from last semester, and I have a doctor's appointment and also a "new product orientation" at The Restaurant. This is going to involve BROWNIE MILKSHAKES YOU GUYS. ::flails::
What's a manti? This, basically. When speaking of them in Russian, manti is taken as the plural, manta singular; in Kazakh, however, manti is singular and the plural is mantiler.
Anyway!
To start with, if YOU want to make this at home (boys and girls!) make the dough. That's because it's got to sit for at least 30 minutes before you roll it out--it's not leavened, but the flour needs time to hydrate.
This is, incidentally, the nicest, stretchiest, least sticky dough I've ever worked with, and I was totally making it up as I went along.
-2 cups of all-purpose flour
-A palmful of salt. ~1 tsp, I guess, but you have different palms.
-1 egg (it doesn't have to be left over from the last bake sale but it might help)
-~1.5 TBS vegetable oil
-~0.5 c water.
You might have to adjust the amounts of flour and water depending on humidity, etc. It will form a rock-hard lump; just cover it with a damp towel and let it hang out.
Now, where I actually started was:
-~1lb stew beef, which is not actually optimal for several reasons, but I'm in grad school, what do you want?
-0.5 friggin' ginormous onion. Like, bigger than a baseball. The other half is still in the fridge.
-<0.5 lbs mustard greens, because I have lost the ability to eat cabbage in manti (seeing as they were the only kind my host mother, Tyotya Valya, let me eat after one unfortunate incident.
-some leftover brown rice, just because.
-salt, a sprinkling.
The beef and the onion both have to be minced fine--not ground, minced, dammit! It should also be fairly fatty beef, because Kazakhs like fat. I just chopped the greens up and then wilted them in a saucepan until they were about half their original volume. Mix everything and throw in some salt to taste; I mean, I guess you could add cumin or something, you know, if you're being Uzbek about it.
Now, roll out the dough as thin as you can manage. The recipe I copped this from said it was supposed to make 24 manti; I got 32 and I still have filling left over. Roll the dough out, cut it into squares and stuff them with a generous mound of filling; fold the corners to the center, and then pinch pairs of adjacent corners together to get a kind of figure-eight on top.
How big are the squares? Well, again, the recipe said 3", and I went to more like 3.5" (or however long my index finger is) but either way, I ended up rather small manti...so 4" or even 5" might work better. Manti are supposed to be significantly larger than pelmeni, the official Russian dumpling, and these aren't that much bigger.
This is where the rice cooker comes in, or any other steaming technology you care to deploy. (Big, multi-level bamboo steamers are common in KZ.) I managed to get eight manti into the basket, filled it up with water according to the official product guidebook, and am now waiting for it to beep.
THEY SMELL SO GOOD YOU GUYS.
(The other 24 manti are probably going into the fridge for now. Because the only thing more exciting than manti is MOAR MANTI.)
Tomorrow: Stuff, annoyingly timed. I am trying to finish my incomplete from last semester, and I have a doctor's appointment and also a "new product orientation" at The Restaurant. This is going to involve BROWNIE MILKSHAKES YOU GUYS. ::flails::