Pastry & pies Fasting
Pumpkin zelnik
A layered pumpkin pie made through the autumn and during the fasts, when eggs and butter are set aside.
Recipe from Туѓино Јабано
- Prep
- 1 hr 10 min
- Cook
- 50 min
- Total
- 2 hr
- Fasting
- Suitable
Ingredients 10 ingredients
Method
- Work the flour, salt, water, vinegar and 100 ml of the oil into a soft dough and knead it for five minutes. The vinegar relaxes the dough and the sheets pull thinner for it.
- Divide into eight balls, oil them lightly, cover and leave them to rest for at least 40 minutes. Skipping this is why dough tears.
- Mix the grated pumpkin with the sugar, cinnamon and walnuts and set it aside. It will draw out liquid; pour that off before filling, then scatter the semolina over the pumpkin to take up what is left.
- Roll and then stretch each ball on a floured cloth until it is thin enough to read through, brushing with oil as you go. Stack them in pairs.
- Heat the oven to 190°C and oil a round tin about 30 cm across.
- Spread a quarter of the pumpkin along one edge of each pair, roll it into a rope and coil the ropes into the tin from the centre outwards.
- Brush the top with the last of the oil and bake for 45 to 50 minutes, until the coils are crisp and browned at the edges.
- Leave it to cool for twenty minutes. Straight from the oven the filling is loose; it sets as it cools.
If you cannot find it
Substitutions that work outside Macedonia.
- Macedonian field pumpkin (tikva)
- Butternut or another firm winter squash; avoid the watery kind sold for carving.
- Hand-stretched kori
- Shop-bought filo, three sheets brushed with oil for each rope.
- Sač (the bell and hearth)
- A heavy tin and a moderate oven; if you have a lidded roasting tin, cover it for the first twenty minutes.
