The dish I made for Latvia is probably one of the more unique dishes I've made. Sometimes I'm a bit disappointed to only be able to find yet another stew or soup to make for countries that use a lot of meat (with the exception of the bean stew in the last post!) so I was excited to find a naturally meatless and adorable recipe for Latvia.
These little mini tarts are called sklandrausis, which are little cups of rye dough filled with pureed carrot and potato. I made these on June 24th; the 23rd and 24th are known as Jāņi in Latvia, when families celebrate the summer solstice through the night. It sounds like a lot of fun!
I first started by making the dough. I didn't have any rye flour, so I improvised and used whole wheat flour instead.
The flour is mixed with carraway seeds and butter (or lard).
The dough that formed was a little tough; that makes sense for whole wheat flour, though I'm not sure if the same would happen with rye flour, but I did read that rye dough can be hard to handle when rolled out thin.
The dough is rolled out and cut into circles to make the tarts.
I started by filling a muffin tin with the circles of dough in order to make the cup shapes, although the recipes I used simply said to turn the edges up. I was only able to get a few of the pieces to stand up like that without the help of the muffin tins, and those were the pieces that had been sitting out longer--so maybe as the dough dries out it's easier to mold and stay in the position you want it.
To make the filling, normally sour cream is involved. I opted for a dairy free version since my lactose intolerance has gotten worse and worse as I get older.
For the carrot filling, I blended boiled carrots, honey, sour cream, and egg.
It created a nice creamy mash. The egg helped set it up during the baking process.
The other layer of these tarts consisted of boiled, mashed potato with butter and milk. I believe I used a bit of sour cream in this layer as well instead of the milk.
The tarts are filled with the potato mixture first, then with the carrot mixture.
After baking in the oven, the top layer sets up due to the eggs into an interesting consistency, like a custard mixed with mashed potato. The tarts can then be topped with more sour cream that has been sweetened with honey. I opted for just plain sour cream since I figured I would enjoy them more as a savory food with a hint of sweetness rather than something kind of toeing the line between sweet and savory.
Overall I really enjoyed these. I think I would like a version with just carrot and no potato even more, and embracing the sweetness even more with a plain flour crust, no potato, and more honey in the carrots would taste amazing. It would basically be a pumpkin or sweet potato pie with carrot instead.
Recipes Used: Sklandrausis (food.com) // Sklandrausis 2 (latvianeats.com)
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