Long and cold winter in Finland. You need food that warms you up. I remember my mother making this quite often during the wintertime when we had guests over. Coulibiac has become one of our family’s everyday foods. We love to eat fish, which is a slightly different way of doing it. It is also a wonderful dish when you have guests coming over. You can prepare it ahead and just bake it when your guests have arrived. It also relatively easy to adjust for vegetarians by using mushrooms and other vegetables in the filling.
A coulibiac (Russian: кулебяка, tr. kulebyaka) is a type of pirog usually filled with salmon or sturgeon, rice or buckwheat, hard-boiled eggs, mushrooms, onions, and dill. The pie is baked in a pastry shell, usually of brioche or puff pastry.
In the early part of the 20th century, Auguste Escoffier, the famed French chef, brought it to France and included recipes for it in his masterwork The Complete Guide to the Art of Modern Cookery.
A classic grand coulibiac features several fillings, often a mixture of some white fish and rice for the top and bottom layers with fillets of sturgeon or salmon between. Generally, the fillings are divided into thin pancakes to prevent mixing. The most unusual ingredient commonly included in the grand version of the dish is vesiga, the spinal marrow of the sturgeon.
Coulibiac is also made with simpler vegetarian fillings like cabbage or potatoes.
My version of coulibiac is a bit different today. I found beautiful fresh spinach from the Organic store, so I decided to use it instead of onion. And I used ready-made puff pastry.
Rice
- 1 large onion, finely chopped
- 200g basmati rice
- 400ml sour cream
- zest 1 lemon, juice ½
- large bunch dill
Cook rice in salted water until done. Drain. Season with fresh dill and set aside to cool.
spinach
- 500g fresh spinach
- butter
- one small onion finely diced
- salt and pepper
- dash of cream
Fry the finely chopped onion and add spinach. Fry until spinach has wilted. Add cream and let it boil for a while. Set aside to cool.
Eggs
Boil 4 eggs,peel and chop small. Set aside.
Salmon
400g salmon cut in stripes
Dough:
250 g quark
250 g soft butter
1 tsp baking powder
4 dl wheat flour
Mix quark cheese and soft butter until smooth. Combine baking powder with wheat flour. Add the mixture to the butter and cottage cheese. Mix quickly until smooth.Shape the dough into a rectangle and wrap it in plastic wrap. Let it firm up in the refrigerator.
You can use ready-made puff pastry if you don’t want to make your own dough.
Filling:
400 g salmon
Salt
white pepper
■ Dice the salmon into approximately 100 g pieces. Salt and pepper.
Now you have all your coulibiak ingredients ready. Let’s fill it:
■ Roll out the quark/puff pastry dough directly onto parchment paper on a baking sheet, making it the size of the entire sheet.
■ Spread the rice in the center of the dough as a long strip. Arrange the salmon pieces in a row on top of the rice. Then spread the spinach and last hacked eggs on the fish so that the eggs cover the entire length. Fold the long sides of the dough over the filling, using parchment paper as assistance. Seal both ends. Press the seams securely and brush the coulibiak. Poke holes in the dough here and there. If you have leftover dough, you can decorate your coulibiak as I did.
■ Bake the pie in a preheated oven at 225 degrees Celsius on the lower rack for 20 minutes. Then reduce the heat to 200 degrees and bake for about 10 more minutes or until the pie has a beautiful light brown color
Serve with salad.
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