I remember eating Piroshki when I worked at a Russian owned cafe in the De Baliviere area of St. Louis. Ironically it was called The American Cafe. I hate beets, but fell in love with Borscht. Another item served up was a delightful hand sized meal pastry called Piroshki. I thought about them the other week, read a few dough recipe's then thought about the big cresent rolls in my refrigerator. I had purchased a couple of packages on sale, simply because, who does not like crescent rolls. I decided to utilize them with a Piroshki recipe I had floating around up in my head.
Instead of spending a few hours making a flaky pastry crust, I decided to make a shortcut and use the crescent roll dough to make my Peroshki's. Purchase the large or jumbo crescent rolls. One package of crescent makes eight Peroshki.
1 lb very lean ground beef
1 medium sized onion diced
3 palm sized potatoes diced
1 cup mixed vegetables
2/3 cup frozen seasoning blend aromatic veggies
generous turns of fresh cracked pepper
seasoning salt
onion powder
garlic powder
1 teaspoon better that bullion beef paste
1 pat butter
about a 1/2 ounce of water
Brown the ground beef chopping as you go. Remove beef to a mixing bowl. You should only have about a tablespoon or so of beef fat left (if the meat was quality). Add a little drizzle of oil or a tiny pat of butter, add and saute onions. Microwave the mixed vegetables with a paper towel at the bottom of the bowl to absorb any water from the veggies for 2 minutes only. Add to meat mix. Strain onions with a slotted spoon and add to meat mix. Add diced potatoes and cook till they begin to turn crispy add the seasoning blend and continue to saute. Season the potatoes with seasoning salt, pepper, onion powder and garlic powder. Strain potatoes and season blend adding it to the meat mixture bowl. Add one pat of butter, better than bullion to a skillet. Heat stirring with a whisk, add water and de-glaze the entire pan bringing the sauce to a bubble... it will thicken to the consistency of a glaze. Pour sauce over the meat mixture and mix it together very well distributing sauce.
Unroll the crescent rolls leaving the triangle together... you should have 4 pieces to work with. Lightly flour a board, rolling pin and the top of 1 sheet of crescent rolls. Using the pin roll the dough out side ways first to gain width, then roll long-wise, you are attempting to get the dough about 5-6 inches wide... Cut dough in half to create a square. Repeat with remaining dough. You should have eight squares.
Using the same large spoon you cooked with, place a generous heap of mixture in the center of a dough square. Grab two corners of the dough and in a criss cross motion make a wrap, lift one of the two remaining corners and press in to the center of the little wrap, seal with the remaining corner forming a square envelope packet. Repeat with all dough square, be generous with the filling. Place all packets on an ungreased baking sheet using a floured plastic spatula. Brush the packets with egg wash. Bake at 350 for 30 minutes till golden brown.
A few pointers. Use lean beef. Greasy beef will ruin your dough. The glaze from the pan amounts to only a few tables spoons and if it is mixed in well your filling should be most and not wet. Again a wet filling will ruin the dough squares and they will bake up soggy and not crisp. These little meal pastries are good cold as well.
