Photo: Arnaud 25 · CC BY-SA 4.0
Kulebyaka (Layered Salmon and Rice Pie)
Russia's great fish pie: salmon, rice, mushrooms, boiled egg and dill stacked in layers and baked in a pastry case, with a thin pancake laid between one layer and the next so the fillings do not mix. Escoffier brought it to France in the early twentieth century.
Ingredients
- Pastry
- puff pastry (bought) · or brioche dough500 g
- egg yolk · to glaze1
- Thin pancakes (5)
- flour60 g
- milk150 ml
- egg1
- butter · melted10 g
- Filling
- salmon fillet, skinned500 g
- rice150 g
- button mushrooms · thinly sliced250 g
- onion · chopped1
- hard-boiled eggs · chopped3
- dill · chopped1 handful
- butter40 g
- salt and pepper to taste
Steps
- ⏲ 20 min
Whisk the flour, milk, egg and melted butter to a thin batter. Cook 5 thin pancakes in a hot pan and leave them to cool. Let them take almost no colour.
- ⏲ 20 min
Cook the rice, cool it and mix with the egg, dill, half the butter and salt.
- ⏲ 15 min
Fry the onion and mushrooms in the rest of the butter until all their water has gone, season and cool.
- ⏲ 10 min
Heat the oven to 200°C. Roll the pastry into two sheets. Lay the bottom sheet on a tray and put one pancake on it.
- ⏲ 10 min
Stack half the rice → pancake → mushrooms → pancake → seasoned salmon → pancake → the rest of the rice → pancake. Cover every layer with a pancake.
- ⏲ 5 min
Lay the top sheet over, press the edges to seal, brush with yolk and cut two or three steam holes.
- ⏲ 48 min
Bake 45-50 minutes, until deep golden. Leave 15 minutes before slicing.
Variations
- With sturgeon. Sturgeon or salmon is the classic fish. A grand version puts white fish and rice at the top and bottom and the sturgeon or salmon between.
- With buckwheat. Cooked buckwheat in place of the rice.
- With cabbage or potato. A plain version with no fish.
- In brioche. Brioche dough in place of puff pastry.
Tips
- Put a pancake between every layer. The fillings stay apart.
- Keep the pancakes thin and pale.
- Cook every drop of water out of the mushrooms.
- Cool every filling before stacking.
- Wait 15 minutes after baking. Cut straight away and the layers slump.
More detail and the reasons why (2)
- The pancakes are partitions. According to English Wikipedia, the fillings of a kulebyaka are generally divided by thin pancakes so they do not mix. The Escoffier-lineage variation of beef Wellington also wraps the meat in crêpes, but there it is a barrier that keeps the pastry from getting wet. Here the same thin pancake goes between the fillings to keep one layer from the next, which is why rice, mushroom and salmon show separately when it is cut. The pancake is the thin, unleavened blinchiki that blini lists among its variations.
- One branch of the Russian pirog. The same article calls kulebyaka a type of pirog and says Escoffier took it to France in the early twentieth century and put it in his cookbook. Unlike pierogi, where the dough wraps one small filling at a time, it stacks several fillings in one large case and is sliced to serve.
The basics behind this dish
- Browning and the Maillard ReactionMeat fails to brown for one of three reasons: it is wet, the pan is cool, or you put too much in at once. Plus how the brown film stuck to the pan becomes your sauce.
- Cooking Meat: Temperature, Resting, and Cutting Against the GrainDoneness is a core temperature, not a number of minutes. What resting actually does, how to handle a thick cut, and why the direction you slice changes the texture.
- Knife Skills: Grip, Cuts, and Why Size MattersHow you hold the knife matters more than how fast you cut. The pinch grip, the claw hand, and why uniform size is a cooking decision rather than a cosmetic one.
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