The Chechen recipe: chepalgash. Features of cooking, types, fillings

Caucasian cuisine is rich in recipes for all kinds of flat cakes, pies and pies, cooked on the basis of fresh or yeast dough with various fillings inside. This is Khychin, and kutaby, and delicious Ossetian pies. And today everyone who likes Caucasian cuisine can replenish their box of culinary recipes with another dish from the North Caucasus called chepalgash.

What is chepalgash?

Chepelgash is a national dish of the Chechen-Ingush cuisine, one of the oldest in the Caucasus. However, in Dagestan, they love him no less and use the same recipe during cooking. Chepelgash is a thin flat cake made from fresh dough with a filling inside (most often potato or curd). In Chechnya, they are even sometimes called pancakes, they are so tender.

With the Chepelgas, many traditions and rituals are associated with mountain peoples, there are references to it both in songs and in fairy tales. Thin cakes with pumpkin must be baked on the day when the child was making his first steps. They did them in large numbers at once, treating their relatives, friends and acquaintances.

There is also a wedding ritual associated with the Chepelgash flat cake. On the third day after the wedding, a needle was pulled out of the hem of the bride's dress, stuck into the center of the flat cake and thrown into the water. Then Chepelgash shot, driving away from the woman evil spirits. After that, she could recruit water from the river and bring her home, without fear for her health.

Types of filling for Chechen chepalgash

The whole taste of chepalgash breads lies in the filling, although sometimes they are cooked without it, just like thin pancakes. They, too, are quite tasty.

Traditionally chepalgash is cooked with cottage cheese. But other types of fillings can be used:

• pumpkin;
• potatoes;
• Salted cheese;
• chopped meat.

In general, the filling for chepalgash is the soil for experiments. Cakes made with greens, caramels and other ingredients will be equally delicious.

Chepelgash: the secrets of cooking

Like any dish of national cuisine, Chepelgash also has its own cooking features:

1. Fry cakes only on a hot dry frying pan. Finished chepalgash shifted to a plate, then abundantly lubricated with melted butter.
2. The unique technology of cooking Chepelgash is that the ready-made tortillas must necessarily be lowered for a few seconds into pure boiling water. In this way, flour, carbon deposits are washed off the surface of the cake, and it becomes unusually soft and delicate. Cope with such a "ritual" only experienced landlords can do, so to simplify their task, many simply sprinkle chalpalsh with hot water.
3. Chepelgash is always stacked, then cakes are well saturated with melted butter on both sides. After the stack becomes sufficiently high, it is cut from the top down into 5-6 parts.
4. Chepelgash, a recipe of which in each family passes from generation to generation, is made exclusively of a round shape and rolled out as thinly as possible.
5. Chechen cakes are served to a table with hot tea or milk drinks.

Preparation of dough for chepalgash

According to the traditional recipe Chepelgash is made from unleavened dough. He will need kefir and flour, taken in the proportion of 1: 1, as well as a teaspoon of salt and soda.

Sequence of preparation:

1. In a deep bowl, sift flour (600 g), add salt, soda, mix with hands and pour in 600 ml of yogurt (you can substitute homemade yogurt).
2. The dough is thoroughly mixed, adding flour if necessary (in addition, 50 g may be needed). As a result, you should get a soft and elastic dough, which will stick a little to your hands (when you roll out, you'll need to pour in the flour).
3. A bowl with a kneaded dough is covered with a lid or a towel and left on the table to "rest" for 15-20 minutes.
4. After the specified time, the dough is again kneaded on the table, adding flour as needed (about 70 g more). It is important not to overdo it, otherwise cakes will turn out to be too hard, and it will be very difficult to roll them out. Transfer the dough into a bowl and leave it under the towel for another 15 minutes.
5. After the dough "rested", due to the swollen gluten, it is put uniformly and as much as possible elastic, it stretches very well, which means that the chepalgash, whose culinary recipe is presented here, will not break when rolling.

The dough is ready, you can start to form a flat cake.

How to form a cake Chepalgash

After the dough is sufficiently rested, and the filling is prepared, it is possible to start rolling out the flat cake. For this, a piece that weighs no more than 250 g is cut off (or torn off) from the total volume of the test. Experienced cooks recommend forming three cakes at once, as they are fried very quickly.

From each piece of dough it is necessary to form an elastic ball. It can be sprinkled with flour if necessary, so that when rolling out a flat cake does not stick to the table. The ball of dough is gradually stretched out with hands until it becomes about 10 mm thick. Then put the prepared flat cake on the table and continue rolling with a rolling pin (up to 3-5 mm). Strive to ensure that the edges of the circle are thinner than its middle.

For each rolled flat cake laid cold stuffing. Its volume should be the same as the dough. It forms the same ball, which is then placed in the center of the flat cake. Next, you need to glue (join) the edges of the dough so that the filling is completely closed. To do this, use the method from edge to center.

For rolling, the cake is laid with a seam down on the flour-stricken table. Its thickness in the finished form should not be more than 4 mm. Roll out the cake mainly in the center, constantly turning and rotating in different directions. Make sure that the edges do not become too thin.

When three tortillas are rolled out, you can begin to fry Chepelgash with potatoes, the recipe of which is presented below, or with other ingredients. You need to heat the frying pan. Fry the tortillas from two sides to a ruddy crust. Then wipe the chepalgash with a dry towel to remove excess flour, lower it one by one into boiling water or sprinkle with hot water. Ready cakes put on a plate in a pile, lubricating them with butter.

We begin to prepare the filling.

Chepelgash with potatoes

For potato filling it will take approximately 800 g of potatoes boiled in a uniform. It is recommended that this way of cooking it, because the filling is more dry, which means that the cake will be easier to roll out, do not get wet and do not tear.

Welded potatoes must be peeled, mashed in puree, add salt, pepper and other spices to taste. You can additionally fry finely chopped onions. This will already be a recipe for chepalgash with potatoes and onions. After the filling has cooled, you can form a cake.

How to prepare chepalgash with cottage cheese

Such a filling for chepalgash flat cakes is considered classic. In general, cheese is a very popular product for all Caucasian peoples and is often used as a filling for different baking.

At that amount of dough, which is obtained from 500 ml of kefir, you need about 1 kg of dry cottage cheese. In it you need to add 1-2 eggs (depends on the moisture of the cottage cheese), green onions and salt to taste. The filling should not be too wet. Otherwise, the flat cake will break when rolling. Recipe chepalgash with cottage cheese can be corrected to your liking. Anyone who does not like the onion can replace it with other greens or even remove it from the recipe.

Chepelgash with pumpkin

Chechen cakes with pumpkin filling are very tasty and juicy. The complexity in their preparation can arise when rolling.

For filling, pumpkin is peeled and baked in the oven for 40 minutes or cooked until cooked on the stove. After that, the pumpkin should be kneaded to the state of mashed potatoes. It should be noted that when choosing the second option, the filling turns out to be more dry. If desired, add a fried onion or fresh spring onion to pumpkin puree.

So do chepalgash with pumpkin. The recipe for these tortillas is not at all complicated. But it is necessary to adhere to the technology of cooking.

Recipe for Chechen chepalgash from cornmeal

The classic recipe for cooking Chechen cakes uses not wheat, but corn flour, which is considered more useful. But such chepalgash have a specific taste, which is not popular with everyone. Therefore, in the modern interpretation of the recipe chepalgash with corn flour is used occasionally.

However, those who want to taste the cakes prepared according to the old version, you need to know that the proportions for the test remain the same.