Even though the Soviet Union and North Vietnam were closely aligned during the twentieth century, Russian’s imprint on Viet popular culture is shallow. I grew up with a beet, potato and carrot salad called rau củ trộn (aka salade Russe), introduced to Vietnam by the French. My north Vietnamese cousins were educated in the USSR, and I’ve noted Russian tourists on Phu Quoc island. But honestly, I know very little about Russian culture and food, but realize its ties to Asia.

Cue Darra Goldstein’s new book, Beyond the North Wind. It's loaded with interesting recipes beyond borscht, facts and perspectives that only Darra — a prominent Russian scholar, emerita professor of Williams College, founding editor of Gastronomica and former Stoli vodka girl — could generously and expertly provide with giddy enthusiasm.

She’s obviously not stodgy. For those reasons, I was happy to let Darra’s new book school me on Russian foodways. Coincidentally, the first page I opened to was for Russian Hand Pies (page 111). I was struck by the pleating. They looked just like steamed bao that I’d seen at a Korean market! I noodled around and found out that Koreans living in Russia are called Koreo-saram.

Koreo-saram / Russian-Korean Food

What is Koreo-saram food like? Did Darra have experience with it? I asked and she responded:

The history of Korean settlement in the former USSR is really interesting (and painful). During the Soviet years, the group that had the most presence in the Moscow farmer’s markets was from Uzbekistan. Uzbek Koreo-saram always had stalls in the pickled/fermented foods aisles, and their specialty was a spicy shredded carrot salad, which became nearly a staple on Russian tables, it was so beloved. It’s still popular — I recently saw some at a market in Murmansk, far above the Arctic Circle. It’s very simple to make — you just add onions sautéed in vegetable oil and raw minced garlic (lots of it) to shredded carrots and then mix in salt, pepper, cayenne, and a little sugar or honey. Some people add ground coriander. What makes is so appealing apart from the taste is its brilliant orange color.

Korean food is very trendy in Russia now. What’s interesting it how tied up it is with traumatic history. Moscow is finally getting some restaurants that reflect Korean food as eaten in Korea, but until recently what Russians ate was largely the food of the Korean diaspora in the Far East and Central Asia. The carrot salad originated in the 1930s, when Koreans living in the Russian Far East were deported to Central Asia by Stalin. They created it to make a kind of banchan with ingredients that were readily available.

There’s now a chain of street food kiosks in Moscow that specializes in pyanse, which were introduced by Koreans living on Sakhalin Island in the Russian Far East (the Koreans were forcibly settled there by the Japanese in the early 20th century). Pyanse became really popular among the local population, and they eventually spread throughout the country. I read that when pyanse were first introduced to Moscow, the Russians asked “When will they turn brown?,” expecting them to be like golden baked pirozhki. They usually have a meat and cabbage filling, not unlike pirozhki, except that the spices are different and of course they’re steamed.

The pyanse photo above is from this article that Darra pointed to. There are more photos to check out. You don't have to read Russian to understand the gist of its popularity.

Creating Russian-Korean Hand Pie Filling

Intrigued, I became emboldened by Darra's recipe headnote (introduction) for Russian hand pies:

Russian pirozhki—not to be confused with the boiled Polish dumplings called pierogi—are made with enriched dough that’s either baked or fried. The dough can enclose an almost endless variety of fillings, from savory to sweet. One of the great satisfactions of Soviet life was the freshly fried pirozhki you could buy on the street. Filled with ground beef, they were steaming hot and dripping with so much oil that the cheap gray paper holding them couldn’t absorb it. Sometimes, when resourceful vendors ran out of that wrapping, they’d substitute strips of paper from old-fashioned adding machines, which only contributed to the pies’ allure. Today it’s still possible to buy pirozhki from kiosks, but more often, Russians pop into cafés that specialize in a wide range of pies large and small, where they can savor them in a warm space at leisure.

The second sentence, which I set in bold, combined with Darra’s insights into Koreo-saram food, opened the door for me to riff on her recipe. I made two fillings—her original filling of sauerkraut and mushroom and a Koreo-saram inspired filling of kimchi and shiitake.

It wasn’t a far-fetched idea since all I had to do was use mild-flavored Korean baek (white) kimchi, which is made without red pepper flakes, instead of sauerkraut. The dried shiitake was an easy swap for porcini. Korean cooking employs a lot of the onion family so I kept that.

There was already carrot in the Sinto brand of kimchi I’d purchased so it was copacetic with the Russian filling; I simply was adding more carrot to color up the Korean filling. In the photo below, the Koreo-saram filling is at top, and the Russian filling at bottom.

Instead of caraway’s sweet note, you’ll see in the recipe, that I season with gochugaru, Korean red pepper flakes. The Russian filling gets finished with butter so I swapped sesame oil. The substitutions were seamless and both fillings tasted great, like close kin.

Dough, Shaping and Other Tips

Darra’s recipe forewarns you that the dough is sticky. I found that to be true and found an easy workaround. I don’t know if I got the shape 100 percent right but the hand pies baked up just fine. Here’s a little video I made:

Each batch makes twenty four pies. I had hungry neighbors, including two young men who’d never eaten Russian food before. A dozen of the Russian and Russian-Korean hand pies disappeared in a flash.

These hand pies store and reheat well too. Refrigerate baked ones or freeze them and thaw. Reheat in a preheated 350F toaster or regular oven until the pies are hot.

I didn’t know much about Russian cooking before opening Darra’s book. Now I’m looking forward to diving in further.

More Recipes for Little Pies!

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