The World Table

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Baltic · Dessert

Sklandrausis

  • Intermediate
  • 45 min
  • roughly 2 of 4 for cost
  • Vegetarian

rich · earthy · sweet-edged · silky Leads with richness that coats and comforts, an earthy, grounding base, melting away silken.

Ingredients

  • 250 g wholegrain rye flour
  • 60 g butter, melted
  • 120 ml very hot water
  • 4 g salt
  • 300 g floury potatoes, boiled and riced
  • 60 ml sour cream
  • 1 egg yolk
  • 1 tsp caraway seeds
  • 300 g carrots, boiled soft and pureed
  • 40 g honey, plus a little to glaze
  • 1 egg
  • 60 ml double cream, plus 2 tbsp to glaze

The skills inside

Mashing & puréeingResting dough: the pause that does the workThe wobble & the skewer: testing a bake

Allergen screen

Found: gluten · dairy · egg

Screened for: gluten, dairy, egg, nuts, peanuts, fish, shellfish, molluscs, soy, sesame, celery, mustard, lupin, alcohol. Not screened: sulphites.

Screened by keyword from the ingredient list, not reviewed by a person; check every label for what the list cannot show.

Method

  1. Stir the melted butter into the hot water, pour it onto the rye flour with the salt and work fast to a warm, plastic dough; cover and rest it 30 minutes while it is still warm. 30 min
  2. Pinch off eight pieces, press each into a disc on the bench and draw a 2 cm wall up from the rim with your fingers to make a shallow open case, then prick the bases.
  3. Beat the riced potato with sour cream, yolk, caraway and salt to a stiff paste and spread it 1 cm deep in each case.
  4. Beat the carrot puree with honey, whole egg and cream until smooth and just pourable, then spoon it over the potato to sit just below the rim.
  5. Bake at 200C (390F) for 25 to 30 minutes, until the carrot has set with no wobble left and the rye wall is dry and dark at the edge. 30 min
  6. Brush the hot tops with the cream loosened with honey and eat them warm or cold, the same day.

How to tell it is going right

This dish has no standard of its own yet. It is judged on the techniques it exercises: checked at the pan, while there is still something to be done about it.

Resting dough: the pause that does the work 71 recipes

  • It actually rested, covered, for the time stated, not cut short because the rest of the schedule was tight.
  • It rolls and shapes without fighting: it stays where it is put, and it does not spring back or shrink on the bench between passes.
  • The surface is smooth and supple rather than dry, cracked, or skinned over.
  • It is at the temperature the next step needs: cold where the fat must stay solid, cool and relaxed where it must be rolled thin.
  • Baked, it holds the dimensions it was shaped to rather than shrinking back from the edges of the tin or the rim of the dish.

Where it goes wrong The rest was skipped or shortened, so the gluten was still tight: the dough fought the pin and sprang back thick and uneven, then shrank down the sides of the tin in the oven.

Mashing & puréeing 114 recipes

  • Smooth to the degree the dish asks for, judged on the tongue rather than by eye: no lumps, no fibres, no grit, unless texture is the point.
  • No gluey elasticity: a spoonful drops cleanly off the spoon rather than stretching in a rope behind it.
  • The consistency holds: it mounds on a spoon and stays there, neither slumping flat nor standing so stiff that a spoon has to cut it.
  • Nothing separates on the plate: no water or fat weeping out into a ring within a minute of serving.
  • The colour is even throughout, with no streaks of unincorporated fat, liquid, or seasoning at the edges of the bowl.

Where it goes wrong A starchy ingredient met a high-speed blade, so the cells burst and released their starch: what should be light comes out as an elastic glue that lifts off the spoon in one mass.

At the Table

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The sweetness rule is absolute: the pour must be sweeter than the plate, and acid keeps it from cloying.

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Film school

This dish, cooked on camera Search films of Sklandrausis Technique: Tempering a custardThe skill inside this recipe The cuisine, deeper Technique films from the Baltic kitchen