Have you already started planning a trip to the “Tatar country” that I recently wrote about? If so, then treat this post as a quick guide… If not, I’ll try to convince you through your stomachs 🙂 Let me invite you to a Tatar lunch, dinner and obviously the dessert… You know that something sweet is the essential part of every recommendation.
But let’s start with the dinner… Tatar cuisine is very nutritious, filling and perfect for cold winter times, when we need some extra energy after a long walk in the snow. Lots of tasty potatoes in different combinations and lots of meat (with no pork however, as it is forbidden in Islam). One vegetarian travelling with us had particular problems finding something to eat, but don’t worry, there are some veggie dishes as well. Let’s start then!
The hosts chose the first lunch for us, bringing their best of the best. We got several different dishes to share and try a bit of everything, which was a great idea.
We started with babka ziemniaczana, served with fantastic, homemade garlic sauce. Its recipe is a secret…
babka ziemniaczana, or hoe to “recharge” batteries in winter
A very potato kryszonka turned out to be delicious as well. It was a potato and meat casserole, served with sauerkraut…
Then something more usual – pyzy, a bit similar to Lithuanian cepelinai, that we usually eat in Lithuanian Consulate in Sejny. Those here were served different, in a chicken broth.
pyzy
a beef version for meat eaters…
meat version
and a vegetarian spicy one with cottage cheese and garlic…
vegetarian version
Another treat we tasted was belysz – a layered pastry with meat, eggs and mushrooms. Some of us liked it a lot, I missed the potatoes though…;)
belysz: a layered pastry with meat, mushrooms, rice and egg
baked dumplings with meat…
last but not least: second option for vegetarians – kartoflaniki:
pouch-like dumplings with potatoes, hard boiled eggs, onion and parsley
And manty… Sweet dumplings that I instantly fell in love with. Steam-cooked, with delicate cottage cheese, delicate pastry and served with cream and raspberry sauce. So delicious!
yummy – a perfect dessert or dinner
If you’re more into a traditional (smaller?) dessert, try a cake – listkowiec. It’s a layered yeast pastry with cottage cheese and raisins, served hot. The portion is gigantic, so we took one for six persons. It was gone in seconds.
unusual yeast cake
We also managed to see how tolkysh (a kind of “shredded pastry” made from caramel) is made in Tatarska Jurta. Tołkysz is similar to Turkish pismaniye (little “hairy” sweets, very popular in Turkey). The preparation process is divided into a few phases, engages the whole family and looks quite magical:
first phase: the caramel is laid on a huge table
long process of stretching the caramel into all directions…
adding butter and teamwork makes the caramel turn into…
….lots of “shredded pastry” or in other words: tolkysh
Coffee and tea is also delicious at Tatarska Jurta. Tea is infused with lemon and fresh mint leaves – we drank litres and kept asking for more pots. Coffee lovers will surely like the coffee with cinnamon…
One more thing – pierekaczewnik, that I wrote about before. That’s something that you just can’t miss here as the owners are the only persons allowed to serve it (they have an EU certificate). So, who wants to go to the Tatar country this weekend?
traditional and extremly time-consuming pierekaczewnik
0 Comments