Kistibi. Tatar National Dish

It is not surprising to hear from Tatar housewife an unobtrusive question: What are you cooking today? Tatars are always looking for new recipes and ideas. They cook quite a lot and always diverse. They even bake homemade bread for the whole family. If you are invited to a Tatar family tea party, you will be surprised by the variety of sweet food on the table which is necessarily homemade: cottage cheese cheesecakes, sweet pies and other delicacies from different types of dough, as well as honey and dried fruits, homemade baklava, candy and more. Everything is insanely delicious, because it is all simple and homemade.

Tatar feasts leave an unforgettable impression. They gather a large number of people under one roof and the tables are rich with an abundance of beautiful, hot, cold, and vegetable and meat food. As for daily food, everything is simple, mostly dough and meat. Tatars do not eat pork, so they skillfully cook mutton and horse meat, as well as familiar to everybody beef and poultry. In the freezer every Tatar family always has manti, pelmeni, chebureki, cabbage rolls, i.e. different kind of products that can be defrosted and cooked quickly.

But in addition, there are dishes, which are served piping hot, for example, kistibi. This interesting name hides a simple, but an extraordinarily tasty dish that is oiled bread with a filling, usually mashed potatoes. Kistibi is an independent dish, but most often it is served with sweet tea. We offer you to join us on this gastronomic journey and cook a traditional Tatar dish.

Directions:

Make mashed potatoes and flavor the puree with hot milk and melted butter, add salt and pepper. Fry onions until golden and add to the potatoes. Do not let it cool, cover with a towel and put in a warm place.

Add warm milk, 1.7 oz of melted butter, an egg and other ingredients into the big bowl with flour and knead the dough. The dough should be soft and not sticky. Leave the dough for 15-20 minutes to rest, cover with a towel or a napkin. Do not put it in the refrigerator.

There are 2 ways to roll our identically sized tortillas. You can roll out the dough into a thin sheet and cut the tortillas out using a plate. Or you can divide the dough into identically shaped balls the size of a tangerine and roll each ball out.

Fry the tortillas in a pan without oil on both sides. Then each tortilla is smeared with melted butter. Put mashed potatoes on one side of the tortilla (approximately 2 Tbsps.) and cover the filling with the other side of the kistibi. The more melted butter you put on top, the more delicious the dish will be.

Don’t forget to serve kistibi with hot tea.

Bon appetite!