Rastegai with Fish

The name rastegai most likely comes from their shape: with the hole on top, the pie is “unbuttoned”, open. Hence the name. Although hardly anyone says rastegai, usually it is rastegaychiki, little rastegai. The best filling for fish pies is fresh pike and salmon. And you definitely need fish broth or ukha, which also go well with pike cutlets.

At first glance it seems like you need a lot. But look closer: the vast majority of the ingredients are always at home. You only need the fish, pike and salmon. You make an ordinary yeast dough, the simplest kind. By the way, pizza dough works just fine.

Sift 2 cups of flour (260 g). Add 2 pinches of salt, 1 tsp sugar (5 g) and half a packet of “active” yeast for dry flour. This dry “active” yeast usually comes in 11 g packets. Note that you need yeast that is added to dry flour, not the kind that has to be dissolved in water first.

Mix everything thoroughly until completely uniform. In a large bowl, pour 180 ml of slightly warm water and add 1 tbsp ordinary vegetable oil, preferably odorless. Oil does not mix with water, so just shake the mixture and pour it into the flour.

Knead a soft dough. If you are not sure about the amount of liquid, it is better to add more than needed and adjust the consistency by adding flour. If the dough starts out stiff, it is very hard to make it soft. Knead the dough very thoroughly.

Roll the dough into a ball and put it in a deep bowl, covered with a clean cloth. Leave the dough in a warm place for 1 hour to rise. After an hour, knead the dough by hand, adding flour in small portions. Put it in a warm place for another hour.

Scale the pike, remove the innards and gills. Cut off the head and fins. Cut the fillet away from the backbone, picking out the large bones, then remove the skin.

Cook ukha from the head, backbone, fins and skin in 1-1.5 l of water, following any recipe you know, for example homemade ukha. In the simplest version, boil a set of coarsely cut ukha vegetables (a potato, carrot, onion, soup roots such as parsnip, parsley and celery) together with the leftover fish, and add spices (bay leaf, black pepper and allspice, coriander seeds) and salt, all to taste. The ukha should be spicy but not salty. Strain the finished ukha through a sieve (not cheesecloth!) to filter out the fish bits, vegetables and spices.

While the ukha is cooking, prepare the filling for the fish pies.
Peel two small onions and cut them into thin strips. Fry the onion in vegetable oil until golden.

Cut the pike fillet you trimmed off the carcass into very small pieces with a knife. Alternatively, you can grind the pike fillet in a meat grinder, but with the coarsest plate. You should get a coarse-ground mince.

Fry the pike mince in vegetable oil. Do not fry it for long. Basically, as soon as the fish turns pale and starts to brown slightly, that is enough.

Cut the lightly salted or fresh salmon into cubes, one for each pie you plan to make. The dough has risen by now. Knead it lightly on a floured table or board. Roll the dough into a log and cut it with a knife into pieces about the size of a small chicken egg.

Mix the fried pike mince with the fried onion.

Roll out each piece with a rolling pin or stretch it by hand into a round 8-10 mm thick. You should get 10-12 rounds. Lay the rounds on a floured table and let them rest for 15 minutes. Cover the dough with a clean cloth so it does not dry out.

Put 1 tbsp of the pike and onion filling in the center of each piece of dough. If there is any filling left, just distribute it equally among all the pies. On top of the filling and onion on each round, put a piece of salmon.

Now comes the most important part. Preheat the oven to 180-190 degrees ahead of time so it heats evenly. Pinch the dough and shape the rastegai with the filling. What shape you give them is up to you. But a pie is a pie. Since childhood a pie is a little boat, for example, with curled-up ends. Carefully pinch the edges of the dough and shape the pie, making sure to leave a large enough hole on top where the piece of salmon is visible.

Carefully move the pies onto a lightly oiled baking sheet, so that they lie apart and do not touch. It is even better to leave fairly large gaps. To keep the pies from burning while baking, you can use a silicone baking mat, lined with a sheet of parchment paper and even greased with vegetable oil.

Break the egg into a bowl and beat it with a fork. Brush the tops of the pies with the egg.

The oven must be well heated. Put the baking sheet in the upper part of the oven. Fish rastegai bake for 40-45 minutes. It is hard to say exactly: the dough needs to bake through and brown, and the bottom must not burn.

All that is left is to pour ukha into each rastegai. Just a little, only 1 tbsp. Bend back the edge of the dough around the top hole slightly and spoon the ukha in next to the piece of salmon. The filling will soak it up right away. Let the fish pies bake for another 7-8 minutes.

Pour the ukha into a bowl, or better a cup, and sprinkle it with finely chopped parsley. While the pies are fresh and hot, start tasting and enjoy the refined flavor.

I admit, you cannot stop eating them. Fish rastegai with ukha simply blow some people away!!!