Author of the recipe and photos: Ieva Šidlaitė
For the dough you will need:
175 g lard (available in stores)
175 ml water
500 g Zelbukis wheat 550C flour
a pinch of salt.
For the filling you will need:
1 kg of minced meat
1 egg
a tablespoon of rye flour
1-2 cloves of garlic
1 onion
salt and pepper
4-5 hard-boiled eggs
200 g of boiled greens (spinach, nettle, chard leaves or others)
For the filling
1/2 l broth
3 – 4 tbsp. gelatin
1 beaten egg for brushing
First, prepare the dough. Place the lard, salt, and water in a saucepan and heat until all the lard has melted. Sift the flour into a bowl, make a well in the middle, and pour the hot lard and water into it. Mix everything with a wooden spoon, and when it is smooth, knead well with your hands. Wrap the dough in plastic wrap or cover with a kitchen towel and leave to rest for half an hour.
Meanwhile, prepare the filling. Chop the onions and garlic and add them to the minced meat along with the egg, salt, pepper and flour, mix everything well. Peel the eggs and cut them in half. Squeeze the greens well, mixing them in a handful, even “squeezing” them if necessary, it is important that as little water as possible remains.
Grease the baking tin with fat and sprinkle with flour. Take 2/3 of the dough and roll out a sheet of dough about 1/2 cm thick, carefully so as not to make holes, and place it in the baking tin. The sheet should be slightly larger than the tin so that the edges hang over the edges. Add half of the minced meat, then add the greens. Press everything lightly with your palm so that there are no gaps. Place the boiled eggs or the remaining minced meat on them in a row in the middle, press lightly again to fill the gaps. Roll out the remaining dough and place it on top of the pie. Cut off the edges of the lid so that there is no excess dough, and the edges of the bottom dough as well, leaving the edges slightly larger so that you can fold it over the top, brush with egg wash, fold and press with your fingers. Cut a hole in the middle to let the steam escape, you can even insert a “chimney” made of foil. Brush the entire top of the cake with beaten egg, use the remaining dough to make decorations and place in an oven preheated to 200 degrees. After 20 minutes, reduce the heat to 160 degrees and bake for another 1.5 hours. Remove the baked cake and let it cool.
When the cake cools, the meat falls off and a free space appears between the dough and the filling. We fill that space with jellies made from broth and gelatin. You can even use the roll from a cube if you don't have homemade. We swell the gelatin in the broth and dissolve it over very low heat, without boiling. Then we pour it into the cake through the hole that was left for the steam to escape. We pour it slowly so that it has time to be absorbed and until you see that the liquid has already reached the surface. Then we put the cake in the refrigerator to set.
This jelly cake holds its shape very well and can be cut into slices very nicely. It only needs to be made 1-2 days before slicing. We eat it with horseradish mayonnaise, pickled or fermented vegetables.
