Tatar Bakery Staple · Meat Triangle Pastry
Echpochmak
Photo: Viktorianec / Wikimedia Commons · CC BY-SA 3.0
Cooks leave a small hole in the top and pour a spoonful of hot broth through it partway through baking, keeping the raw-diced meat and potato filling juicy.
Echpochmak is a triangular hand pie of yeasted or short pastry stuffed with diced meat, potato, and onion, baked until the crust turns deep golden and the filling steams inside its sealed shell. Bakeries around Kazan sell them warm, wrapped in paper, as a grab-and-go lunch.
Why it's made this way: The dish is a cornerstone of Tatar home and street baking, its name literally meaning 'three corners' in Tatar, and it remains one of the most recognizable foods of the Volga-Ural Tatar community.
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