Karelian pies

Ingredients

Quantities for 8 servings.

• 250 g Rye flour
• 150 ml Water
• 150 g Short-grain rice
• 700 ml Milk
• 100 g Butter
• 3 piece Eggs, hard-boiled
• to taste Salt

Method

1. Cook the rice in the milk over a low flame for forty minutes, to a slightly loose porridge. Season it and cool it.
2. Knead a dough from the rye flour, water and salt for five minutes. It comes out firm and not sticky.
3. Divide it into sixteen balls and roll each into an oval half a millimetre thick. Dust with rye flour rather than wheat.
4. Spoon porridge into the middle, leaving the edges bare, and crimp them into a frill with the filling left open.
5. Bake at 250 °C for fifteen minutes — short and very hot, or the thin pastry dries out.
6. Melt half the butter with an equal amount of hot water and dip the hot pies in it. Cover them with a cloth for ten minutes.
7. Mash the boiled eggs with the rest of the butter, softened, and salt: this is munavoi, egg butter. Serve it with the pies.