SC - Cuskys--A Recipe

[L Herr-Gelatt and J R Gelatt]

>I'm gonna stop for breath, and hand over the floor to anyone else who
>wants it.
>
>Adamantius
>
>P.S.: I REALLY want to thank the gentleman who posted the French
>"kuskynole" recipe. It does seem to settle the question about the
>meaning of the word "hew" in the English version. On the other hand,
>being, as it is, the text that the English recipe is a direct
>translation of, it seems to possess the same logistical weaknesses, too.
>It does say to cut the dough into rectangles before filling them, and it
>does then include a diagram very much like the one in the English text.
>Unfortunately, it doesn't seem to get us any further than the English
>version, either, at least, not on its own.
>
>Adamantius    
>______________________


At the risk of getting thoroughly trounced (again), I have some Cusky news:

Yesterday Ragnar Keitelsson and I made cuskynoles during our Endless Hills
Cooks Guild meeting. The filling was roughly this:

4 Ida Red apples
4 Bosc pears---these two items reduced to very fine mince in a food processor
A little lemon juice to prevent excess browning (Not in the original)
1 cup raisins, minced in the food processor
6 oz. finely chopped almonds
about 15 dates, thinly sliced
about 1/2 lb. of figs, destemmed and finely chopped
2 tsp. powdered ginger
1 tsp. powdered cinnamon
1/4 tsp. powdered cloves
1/2 cup sugar

This is an incredible filling! You must try it! We discovered the filling's
taste changed radically with the addition of dates and figs, which are
rather sweet-bland on their own.

The pasta dough was made with your standard flour-egg-water-salt (2 cups
flour, salt to taste, 2 room temp. eggs, enough water to make a very stiff
dough. Ragnar cheated a little and put in some vanilla. Bad Ragnar! It was
wonderful). We let the dough rest, and then colored it--half yellow and half
green. After coloring, we rested it again and then rolled it very thinly. At
this point we discovered that it would take approximately four such batches
of dough to use up the filling. We were on a time constraint, so did not
make all the cuskys. 

We could fit 9 cuskynoles of the rectangular sort onto a half-sheet of green
or yellow pasta. So the above pasta recipe made 18  Cuskynoles altogether,
each approx 3 inches wide and 5-6 inches long. Method: Put 9 oblongs of
filling in a 3x3 grid on half of the sheet of pastry, leaving at least an
inch in between. Brush with water all around the filling and on the entire
unused half of pastry. Immediately fold the unfilled half over the filling.
Seal around the lumps of filling, pressing out any air pockets. Press the
back of a knife between the  lumps to seperate into individual portions. You
now have something that resembles the much maligned grid-illustration of the
original (The French shows 9 such objects, I gather, and the English shows 15).

Quick math: 4x18=72 Cuskynoles from the above filling and 8 cups flour, 8
eggs, some salt and water.

We let the Cuskys set up for about 10 minutes while we got the water
boiling. They boiled about 10 minutes in a shallow pan to gaurd against
breakage. They were put on a rack to drip, and then fried in hot butter
untill almost slightly browned. The green looked sort of icky at this point.
The yellow looked wonderful. In light of the posting of the French version
(Hey, I could actually read it!), we won't color them next time. But it was fun.

The biggest cheat of all, presentation: We sprinkled them with Poudre Douce
(Sugar, Cinnamon, Ginger, a tiny pinch of Mace), and served them with
golden-fried almonds sprinkled on top. They were devoured instantly using
the fingers (messy but fun), and everyone liked them. I kid you not, there
were NO complaints. Not even from the picky eaters or kids.

Comments: In retrospect, the filling was delightful, even after boiling and
frying, it tasted wonderfully fresh and fruity-spicy. We'll ditch the dough
colors next time, since that was far more trouble than it was worth. We had
a little more pasta around the edges than I would have liked. Others liked
the pasta, though to me the filling was the point of the dish.

It would have been far easier to  employ Adamantius' method and fill the
individual squares. Even easier would have been to use a square (heretic!)
ravioli press, or round (egads!) pierogi press to fill them.

I highly reccomend this recipe, whatever shape you choose to make them (and
regardless of whether they will actually be "icleped cuskynoles" once the
shape has been altered). It will be well recieved. The filling is expensive
but stretches very far, making this a fairly economical dish. It has the
added benefit of the ability to be made and frozen in advance, and then can
be boiled and fried from the frozen state on site. 

We had a lot of fun making these, and it is a highly successful dish. I hope
you enjoy it.

Aoife

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