R2R: Holopchi

This month's challenge for Recipes to Rival is a Ukranian dish called Holopchi. Its kind of like a cabbage roll but instead, its bread dough wrapped in beat leaves. Our host for this month were Giz & Psychgrad from Equal Opportunity Kitchen and katbaro of A Good Appetite.

I was a little intimidated by this recipe at first. It seemed like a lot of work and it made a huge batch! But one of our hosts scaled it down to a quarter of a recipe (still quite a bit) so it seemed easier to handle after that.

I went ahead and scaled it down even more to an eighth of a recipe so I wouldn't end up with a ton of extras. I ended up with about 14 holopchi. While this recipe does take a lot of time like any yeasted bread (all that rising), it wasn't all that hard. I had everything mixed and rising in no time. I made one substitution with the beat leaves though. The ones at my local grocery store looked a little sad and limpy. I used collard greens instead. They held up really with the bread and were quite tasty.

After wrapping the bread dough with the leaves, I left them to rise one last time. I came back and they were spilling out of the leaves!

I didn't bake my rolls with the dill sauce. Instead I used lots of butter as suggested in the recipe. Lots and lots of butter. Paula Deen would have been proud!

I did forget to cover the holopchi when I first put them in the oven so the collard greens were a little...crispier... than they probably should have been. It didn't affect the flavor of the rolls though. These little babies were delicious! The butter made the bread itself crispy and oh so buttery yum. The dill sauce that went with them was also very tasty. I wasn't sure of the dill/collard green combination but it turned out to be wonderful. I may try baking them in the sauce next time, though I loved baking them with the butter. All in all, a great recipe. One that I will definitely try again!

For more holopchi, check out the Recipes to Rival Blogroll.

Beet Leaf Holopchi
from The Keld Community Ladies Club in Ashville, Manitoba. The last publishing of this cookbook was 1976 and I doubt it's even in circulation anymore.

This is not your usual cabbage roll - can you imagine a bread dough wrapped in beet leaves and baked in a creamy, garlic, onion and dill sauce.

Bread Dough:

2 pkgs. yeast
1/2 cup warm water
1 tsp sugar
2 cups scalded milk
4 cups warm water
1/4 cup melted butter
8 cups flour
3 eggs, beaten
2 Tbsp salt
1 Tbsp Sugar
6 1/2 cups flour
a couple bunches of beet leaves (I used collard greens)

Note: When I first saw this recipe I thought it was wrong - how many recipes need THAT much flour. I used the recipe and indeed had to add more to get the right consistency. AND I ran out of dough before I ran out of beet leaves.

Directions

1. Dissolve 1 ts. sugar in 1/2 cup tepid water, sprinkle with yeast and let stand for 10 minutes.

2. To the milk-water liquid add the melted butter, dissolved yeast and 8 cups of flour. Let rise in a warm place until double in bulk (about 1 hour)

3. Add salt, beaten eggs, sugar and remaining flour.

4. Knead well until dough is smooth and top with melted butter or oil.

5. Place in a warm place and let rise until double in bulk. It will take about 2 hours. Punch down . When dough has risen to double in bulk, place a piece of dough, the size of a walnut on a beet leaf and roll up (leaving sides open)



6. Place holopchi loosely in a pot to allow for dough to rise to double in bulk again.

7. Arrange in layers, dotting each layer with butter.

8. Cover tightly, bake in a moderate oven of 350 F for 3/4 to 1 hour. Serve with dill sauce or cream and onion sauce. (I like to cook the holopchi with the sauce but you don't have to. You can add it later - just make sure you have enough butter in roasting pan before layering your beet leaf rolls.)

Sauce

1/2 cup butter
2 cups whipping cream
8 small onions (I left these out and just used dill)
2 handfuls of chopped fresh dill (this makes the whole dish)
2-4 large cloves of garlic, chopped fine

Melt butter in saucepan. Add onions, garlic, dill and cream.
Let it come to a boil and then turn down the heat.

This is not a 5 minute recipe. When you commit to making it - it's an adventure - most definitely a worthwhile one.