Saints, Feast, Family
- Traditions passed down with Cooking, Crafting, & Caring -
January 2
Saint of the day:
Saint Seraphim of Sarov
On the 9th Day of Christmas....
Nine ladies dancing were the nine fruits of the Holy Spirit-----
Charity, Joy, Peace, Patience [Forbearance], Goodness [Kindness], Mildness, Fidelity, Modesty, Continency [Chastity]
Saint Seraphim of Sarov's Story
Russian monk and mystic who received the high honorific title of starets (meaning in Russian, spiritual teacher). Born to a middle class family at Kursk, he was originally named Prokhor Moshnin, changing it to Seraphim upon entering a rnonastery at Sarov in 1777. Ordained in 1793, he soon embarked upon an eremitical life in a solitary hut in the forest near the abbey, resided for a time upon a pillar, and later was walled up. After twenty-five years, he once more entered the world owing to a mystical vision which he attributed to the Virgin Mary. He soon attracted disciples and followers who came from far and wide to receive his counsel and to partake of his spiritual program of contemplative prayer, monastic-like austerities, and rigorous self-discipline. The Russian Orthodox Church canonized him in 1913, and his teachings have been the source of many books, making him well-known in the Western Churches.
Prayer:
Visit:
Diveyevo Convent
Holy Trinity-Saint Seraphim-Diveyevo Monastery
ул. Советская, 11, Diveyevo, Nizhny Novgorod Oblast, Russia, 607320
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Recipe:
Tetyorki – cookies from Russia’s North
Ingredients:
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400 g rye flour
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3 tablespoons oil
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2 tablespoons honey
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3 tablespoons papaver (poppy seeds)
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1/3 teaspoon salt
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250 ml warm boiled water
Directions
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Sieve the flour into a bowl, add salt and papaver. Make a hole on the top of the flour. Pour oil, honey and some water into the hole.
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Start kneading the dough, and pour water by degrees. When you get a solid batch of dough, cover it with a cloth to prevent from drying, and wait 10 minutes.
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Cover the baking pan with cookery parchment paper. Now it’s time to form the cookies, laying them out onto the paper. Roll up the dough, making straps (about 5 mm in diameter), and form images of birds, twirls and suns. Feel free to indulge your fantasy.
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Note: If you decide to make your cookies with a complex shape, form them on a wooden cutting board, and freeze for 10 minutes before placing on a pan – that will help to retain their shape.
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Oil the cookies and bake them at 180° C (i.e. 356° F) for 20 minutes. Next, turn them over and bake for 5 minutes more. After cooling them, tetyorki can be served.
Russian Kolobovy pie
Russian Empress Catherine the Great enjoyed this round pie
Russian cuisine has many pies of round shape - for example, the karavay and the kurnik. One of these round pies, the kolobovy, was popular exclusively in the 16th-18th centuries.
Empress Catherine II mentioned kolobovy pie as a present in her 1772 comedy ‘The Front Room of a Noble Boyar’. A peculiarity of the pie was the way the puff pastry was made - each layer was rolled with beef lard.
In his cookbook ‘Russkaya Povarnya’ (1816), Vasily Levshin describes such a recipe: “When the pastry is rather rubbed (with fat), make a round pie of it… with the following stuffing: chop beef in coarse cuts, with lots of onions and pepper seasoning, fry in beef fat and then chop very finely. Fill the pie with all these crumbs, make the lid from the same pastry, pour the meat broth or put a piece of ice; cover and seal it and bake in a pan in a hot oven.”
The name of the pie - kolobovy - is a relative of the words ‘kolobok’ and ‘kulebyaka’, which means “round bread”. The word ‘kolobok’ appears in documents from the 16th century, but, by the 19th century, it had fallen out of use, giving way to the word ‘kolobok’.
Russian Kolobovy pie
Ingredients:
Pancakes (12 pieces):
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250 ml Water
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200 ml Milk
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4 eggs
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70 ml Vegetable oil
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35 g Sugar
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2 g Salt
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150 g Flour
Stuffing:
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300-400 g Chicken leg
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600 g Butter
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70 g Champignons mushroom
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70 g Onions
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Vegetable oil for frying
Pie:
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2 layers Puff pastry
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30 ml Milk
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1 Egg
Creamy soy sauce with vegetables:
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30 g Garlic
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30 g Parsley
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30 g Shallots
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100 ml Wine
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100 ml Soy sauce
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1 l Cream
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Green (herb) oil for decoration
Directions:
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For the pancakes, combine water, warm milk, eggs and vegetable oil in a bowl and stir with a whisk until smooth. Then gradually add the mixture of flour, sugar and salt. It should be a liquid batter, from which you need to bake thin pancakes.
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Pepper the ham, salt it, pour the melted butter and let it stew for 35 minutes at 170°C.
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Take the chicken out of the oven, remove the meat from the bone.
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Cut mushrooms and onions into small cubes, fry in vegetable oil and add the stewed chicken.
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Lay out for baking puff pastry, stuffing, place the pancake on top, add the filling again and cover with puff pastry.
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For the egg glaze, lightly beat the milk and egg and grease the pie. After 10 minutes, take the pie out and grease again with the mixture. Bake for 15 minutes at 180°C.
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For the sauce, peel and finely chop the vegetables, fry in vegetable oil, pour white wine and steam. Then add cream and soy sauce.
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To serve, pour the sauce into a plate and place the pie in it, garnish with green oil.
