[Sca-cooks] Yonah Shimmel's

[Phil Troy / G. Tacitus Adamantius]

Also sprach Stefan li Rous:
>So, what *is* a "knish"? I went to the site but there isn't any 
>verbal description, just the photos. I guess they expect that anyone 
>looking for the site knows what they are. Are these stuffed 
>biscuits? Or something more like a stuffed potato pancake or 
>dumpling? This is a traditional Jewish food, right?

Yes. Probably Russian Jewish, but I don't know that for sure. They 
bear some similarity to the kasha-filled piroshkies (or was it 
pirogs?) mentioned in the Domestroi, but in modern usage a knish is a 
filled pastry, baked or fried, usually in an eggy unleavened dough. 
This has been my experience; I'm sure someone will trot out 387 
exceptions to this.

Years ago, the knishes that were commonly seen for sale or made at 
home (again, in my experience) would be filled with things like 
mashed potato and onion, buckwheat kasha, with or without mushrooms, 
minced meat (cooked before chopping, so a hashy consistency rather 
than hamburger-ey), and chopped liver. Maybe chopped cabbage. These 
are all still fairly common, but I get the impression that there are 
now more vegetarian options commonly available (not that there 
weren't any before) -- things like spinach are, as far as I know, 
either a recent development or more well-known and popular than they 
used to be.

Most of the knishes I've seen have been either vaguely 
hockey-puck-shaped (and about that size), or rectangular, which 
latter may be a function of mass production...

Adamantius

-- 






"S'ils n'ont pas de pain, vous fait-on dire, qu'ils  mangent de la 
brioche!" / "If they have no bread, you have to say, let them eat 
brioche."
	-- attributed to an unnamed noblewoman by Jean-Jacques 
Rousseau, "Confessions", pub 1782

"Why don't they get new jobs if they're unhappy -- or go on Prozac?"
	-- Susan Sheybani, assistant to Bush campaign spokesman Terry 
Holt, 07/29/04