Russian Syrniki
Syrniki are fried quark cheese pancakes, garnished with sour cream, jam, honey, or apple sauce. The cheese mixture may contain raisins for extra flavor. In Russia they are also known as tvorozhniki
Syrniki are made from full-fat, creamy cottage cheese, mixed with flour, egg, and sugar, sometimes adding vanilla essence. The soft mixture is shaped into cakes, which are fried, generally in vegetable oil. The outsides become crispy, and the center is warm and creamy. They are sweet and served for breakfast or dessert. Their simplicity and relative lack of expensive ingredients makes them very popular in Eastern Europe.
The name syrniki is derived from the word сыр in Russian or сир in Ukrainian (transliteration: syr), meaning “cheese” in both languages. Although the modern meaning of the word сыр (syr) in Russian is hard yellow cheese, the original word in Slavic languages stood for soft white cheese (similar to today’s quark cheese, which is still called сир in Ukrainian but metamorphosed into творог, tvorog in Russian). Thus, the word syrniki, derived from the old meaning of syr, came to designate pancakes made from soft white cheese.
Russian Pirozhki
Pirozhki (plural form of pirozhok), sometimes transliterated as piroshki (or pyrizhky from Ukrainian), is a generic word for individual-sized baked or fried buns stuffed with a variety of fillings. The stress in pirozhki is properly placed on the last syllable: Pirozhok (Russian: singular) is the diminutive form of the Russian cognate pirog , which refers to a full-sized pie. The Russian plural of this word, pirogi (Russian: with the stress on the last syllable [piro'gi]), is not to be confused with pierogi (stress on “o” in English) in other East European cuisines, which are similar to the Russian pelmeni or vareniki.
A common variety of pirozhki are baked stuffed buns made from yeast dough and often glazed with egg to produce the common golden colour. They may contain sweet-based fillings such as stewed or fresh fruit (apples, cherries, apricots, chopped lemon, etc), jam, or cottage cheese; a vegetable filling (mashed potatoes, mushrooms, onions and egg, cabbage); meat or fish; an oatmeal filling mixed with meat or giblets. The buns may be plain and stuffed with the filling, or else be made in a free-form style with strips of dough decoratively encasing the filling.
This stuffed bun is also popular in Armenia, where it is called piroshki. It was adopted into the Armenian diet during pre-Soviet times, when Eastern Armenia was part of the Russian Empire, and continued along to the times of the Soviet Union and then independent Armenia. Piroshki can still be found as fast food made freshly on the streets of Armenian cities. In Armenia piroshki are commonly made with meat or potato fillings. The Greek variety piroski (Greek: πιροσκί) is popular in parts of Greece influenced by eastern cuisine and in most big cities, where they are sold as a type of fast food. The Greek piroski come baked or deep-fried with many different stuffings.
In Latvia pīrāgi (or speķa rauši) are crescent shaped buns made with bread dough. They are baked (not boiled) and usually filled with bacon and onion. The Latvians have also developed other filling like kartupeļu pīrāgi (with potatoes), sēņu pīrāgi (with mushrooms), and kāpostu pīrāgi (with cabbage), as well as dessert versions filled with apples, rhubarb, or cottage cheese. Karelian pasties (karjalanpiirakat/ karjalanpiirakka in the South Karelian dialect of Finnish and karjalanpiiraat/karjalanpiiras in the North Karelian dialect) are a differently shaped pie popular in both Karelia and Finland.
Potatoes among American crops became very popular when the vegetable was brought and adopted to the Eurasian climate. Before then, the ingredient was not available as it took more time to acclimatize to continental regions like Russia and Ukraine. Before then, the ingredients would contain more vegetables and fruits, as well as duck, goose and rabbit meat, uncommon today.
