Recipe for "meat-pie-1"

NAME

     MEAT-PIE-1 - Finnish meat pie
     This is an excellent-tasting stomachfiller.  My dear  mother
     gave  me this recipe when I moved away from home.  She prob-
     ably thought that it would give me that feeling of home.  It
     does. I have tried it on my friends, and it is always a hit.
     My mother is from Finland.

INGREDIENTS (Serves 4-6)

          DOUGH
     75 g      butter
     2.5 dl    milk
     25 g      yeast cake (or 1 package of dried yeast)
     0.75 dl   sugar
     7 dl      wheat flour
          FILLING
     1         large yellow onion
     400 g     ground meat (mixed beef and pork)
     200 g     cooked rice (left-over rice is fine)
     2 dl      cream
     1         egg
               salt and pepper

PROCEDURE

          (1)  Make the dough:  melt the  butter  and  add  milk.
               Heat  the mixture to 37 deg. C.  Crumble the yeast
               into a bowl. Add the butter-and-milk  mixture  and
               whip  it  until the yeast as dissolved. Add sugar,
               salt and flour and stir until it becomes a  dough.
               Cover  the  bowl, and let rise in a warm place for
               about 40 minutes.
          (2)  While the dough rises, chop the  onion  into  very
               small  pieces,  and put in a large frying pan. Add
               the ground meat immediately  and  saut  e  for  10
               minutes,  stirring  occasionally.  Add  the cooked
               rice and saute this mixture another 5 minutes. Add
               the  cream,  season to taste with salt and pepper,
               and turn off the heat. Let the frying pan stand on
               the  stove,  covered,  until  the  dough is ready.
               Preheat the oven to 225 deg. C
          (3)  Roll out the dough so it fits in a 30x40 cm baking
               dish.  Put  the  dough  into  the dish so that the
               dough covers the whole dish (this is the most dif-
               ficult  part;  don't be discouraged if you have to
               roll out the dough again).
          (4)  Add the filling on top of the dough. Whip the  egg
               and  spread  it  over  the filling. Bake it on the
               bottom rack in the oven for about 20 minutes.
          (5)  When the pie has cooled off a  bit;  cut  it  into
               pieces  that  are  3 by 15 centimeters (the tradi-
               tional size of lihapiirakka in Finland).  Serve.

NOTES

     While eating lihapiirakka, you can try the hard work of pro-
     nouncing its name.  "Liha" means meat and "piirakka" is just
     "piirakka".  The filling can  of  course  be  varied.  Other
     traditional Finnish fillings for other "piirakka"s are blue-
     berries (with some potato flour on top) and cottage cheese.

RATING

     Difficulty: moderate.   Time:  30  minutes  preparation,  30
     minutes  cooking  and cooling.  Precision: measure the crust
     ingredients carefully.

CONTRIBUTOR

     Krister Valtonen
     Dept. of CS, University of Linkoping, Sweden.
     {seismo,mcvax}!enea!liuida!obelix!valtonen