Carrot and Rice karjalanpiirakka (Karelian pie)

                                        

Background of Karjalanpiirakka (from Wikipedia): Karelian pasties or Karelian pies (South Karelian dialect of Finnish: karjalanpiirakat, singular karjalanpiirakka; North Kareliandialect of Finnish: karjalanpiiraat, singular karjalanpiiras; Karelian: kalitt, singular kalittoa; Olonets Karelian: šipainiekku) are traditional pasties from the region of Karelia. Today they are eaten throughout Finland.



The oldest traditional pasties usually had a rye crust, but the North Karelian and Ladoga Karelian variants also had wheat alongside of rye to improve the baking characteristics of the available rye breads. The common fillings of this era were barley and talkkuna. The 19th century first introduced potato and buckwheat as new fillings, and later due to trade, also rice and millet.

Nowadays in the most familiar and common recipe the pasties are made from a thin rye crust with a filling of rice. Butter, often mixed with boiled egg (egg butter or munavoi), is spread over the hot pasties before eating.

Karjalanpiirakka have Traditional Speciality Guaranteed (TSG) status in Europe.

You'll need some of these:

Dough: 

Water - 3 dl

Wheat flavour - 3 dl

Rye flavour - 3 dl

Sunflower oil - 2 tbsp

Salt - 1 tsp

Filling:

Water - 2 dl

Porridge rice - 2 dl

Milk - 1 litre

Carrot - 300 gr

Salt - 1,5 tsp

Glaze:

Butter - 75 gr

Milk - 2 dl

You'll do some of these:

1) Pill and chop carrots nicely. Boil them in water, until they are soft. 

2) Wash rice and dump them into the boiling water. Add milk too, and keep steering once in a while, not to let it burn. Add some salt. Keep the heat in medium level; take the rice off the stove once all water and milk is absorbed, rice is soft and porridge like. 

                                     

3) When both carrot and rice are ready, mix them together and add little bit more of salt. End result should look like below:

4) While filling is chilling, let's move on to prepping the dough :) 

5)  Mix wheat and rye flavours in water, add salt and butter.

6)  Knead dough thoroughly until dough is soft. 

7) Make long "stick" out of dough. 

8) Cut dough into 4 pieces. And each piece to the amount of karjalanpiirakka that you want to make. I made  20 small ones, and 10 big ones. Take each little piece and roll into the ball shape.

9) Roll each dough on the desk. Size should be little smaller than the hand size.  

10) Take each piece of rolled dough and put the filling in the middle, and little closer to the edges. 

11) Pull the sides of the dough slightly upwards and pinch them slightly. While pinching them, don't raise dough too much, on contrary try to press them downwards, this way they will less likely open while baking. 

Pre-heat the oven on 275C. Place baking paper on the baking tray, and put all of the karjalanpiirakkat on it. Bake them 10-15 minutes, until filling and dough are slightly brown-ish. Don't keep them longer than that, otherwise dough will be quite hard to chew. 

12) Brush mixed butter with the milk over the ready bakery. It makes them soft and oh so nam! :)

13) Enjoy! :)