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  • Serves 6 (12 strudels)
  • about 4 hours, including rising
  • Melnraksts · vēl nav izmēģināts

1796Wahzsemmes wehschu plahzini.(Wiener Krebsstrudeln)

Modernizētslpp. 189–190 · PDF 203–204
6 porcijas

Crayfish strudels baked in milk (Wiener Krebsstrudeln)

The book gives 160 crayfish, 1 mārciņa of butter for the crayfish butter, 1 mārciņa of flour, three lots of 4 egg yolks, 3 spoons of yeast and 2 stopi of milk for baking, which converts to 160, 420 g, 420 g, 12 yolks, about 3 tbsp and 2.55 l. We use a quarter of the crayfish and three fifths of the dough, and much less milk for baking (see Notes).

Method

12 soļi
  1. Soak the sweetbreads in cold water for 1–2 hours, changing it twice. Simmer them in salted water for 10 minutes, cool in cold water, peel off the membrane and chop finely. Boil the asparagus for 4–5 minutes, until just tender, and chop finely.
  2. Chill the live crayfish in the freezer for 20 minutes, then drop them head first, a few at a time, into a large pan of fast-boiling salted water and cook for 5 minutes. Drain. Peel the tails, pull out the dark thread and chop the meat finely. Remove the stomach sacs from the heads.
  3. Crayfish butter: crush the shells finely in a sturdy food processor or a mortar. Cook them in the 150 g butter over low heat for 15–20 minutes, stirring, until the butter is red. Strain through a sieve lined with muslin or a clean napkin, squeezing hard. Keep the butter warm.
  4. Put the crushed shells left in the cloth into a saucepan with the 300 ml milk and the bread, simmer for 15 minutes, then rub through a fine sieve, pressing hard. Throw away the shells.
  5. Stir the chopped crayfish tails, sweetbreads and asparagus into the strained milk and bring it back to a simmer. It should be a thick, spoonable ragout. If it is too thin, take it off the heat, stir in 1–2 yolks and warm it gently, stirring, until it thickens; don't let it boil. Cool completely.
  6. Dough: warm the cream until lukewarm, stir in the yeast and 1 tsp of the sugar and leave for 10 minutes. Warm the flour in a bowl in a low oven (about 40 °C) for 5 minutes. Add the yolks, melted butter, yeast cream, remaining sugar and salt, and knead for 8–10 minutes to a soft, smooth dough. Cover and rest for 15 minutes.
  7. Roll the dough out on a floured surface to a rectangle about 36 × 24 cm and 3 mm thick. Cut it into six 12 cm squares and cut each square in half diagonally, making 12 triangles.
  8. Brush each triangle with beaten egg, put a heaped tablespoon of filling in the middle and roll it up from the long side to the point. Set them on buttered baking paper, cover with a cloth and leave in a warm place for 45–60 minutes, until puffy.
  9. Choose a heavy, lidded pan or shallow casserole about 28 cm across. Bring the 400 ml milk and 1 tbsp of the crayfish butter to the boil in it. Set the strudels in it side by side, cover and cook over medium heat for 15 minutes without lifting the lid.
  10. Uncover, brush the tops with crayfish butter and keep cooking until the milk has boiled away completely and the bottoms fry golden brown in the fat, 10–15 minutes more; you'll hear them start to crackle. Brush with crayfish butter twice more. A skewer pushed into a strudel should come out clean and the filling should be piping hot (72 °C). For browner tops, put the pan in a 200 °C oven for the last 10 minutes (our addition).
  11. Sauce: melt the butter in a small pan, whisk in the yolks, flour, sugar and cream, and stir over low heat until thick and just beginning to bubble. The flour keeps the yolks from curdling.
  12. Lay the strudels in a warm dish and pour the sauce over, or serve it separately in a sauceboat.

Notes

What the book says vs. what we added

the book boils and shells 160 crayfish, cooks the crushed shells in 1 mārciņa of butter until red and strains the butter through a napkin, then boils the leftover shells with milk and white bread and rubs it through a horsehair sieve. The chopped tails, boiled skostiņi (probably asparagus) and piena gaļa (probably sweetbreads) go into this, and it is thickened with 4 yolks if needed. The dough is warmed flour, 4 yolks, melted butter, cream, sugar and 3 spoons of yeast, rolled out and cut into triangles, filled, rolled up and left to rise on buttered paper, then boiled hard in 2 stopi of milk until the milk is gone and the strudels fry golden brown, brushed all the while with crayfish butter. The sauce is butter, 4 yolks, a little flour, sugar and cream cooked thick. The soaking, the timings, the salt and the oven finish are ours.

The milk

2 stopi (2.55 l) is a lot. It suits a very large pan of strudels, but boiling that much away takes the best part of an hour. Modern recipes for Dampfnudeln, which are baked the same way, use a few hundred millilitres, so we do too.

Sweetbreads and asparagus

the book's piena gaļa, "milk meat", is probably the German Kalbsmilch, calf's sweetbread, and skostiņi are probably asparagus; both readings are uncertain. If you can't get sweetbreads, poached chicken breast works; that substitute is ours.

Yeast

the book's "3 spoons of yeast" was liquid brewer's yeast. 20 g fresh or 7 g dried yeast does the same for this amount of flour.

Crayfish

buy them live and cook them the same day, discarding any that are dead. Frozen whole cooked crayfish work too: thaw them and start at step 2 without boiling. You can also use 200 g peeled crayfish tails for the filling and 500 g whole cooked crayfish for the shells.

A sweet sauce on a crayfish dish is genuine 18th-century taste, not a mistake.

Vāczeme

"Germany" here covers the German-speaking lands in general; the subtitle names Vienna.

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