Manty with pumpkin: a recipe for a popular Central Asian dish

If anyone does not know what manti are, it's a dish of dough stuffed with fatty meat, with lots of onions added, and as a supplement to meat and onions they often put a pumpkin and cook it all together. Yummy!

Who was born and raised in Central Asia or Kazakhstan (like me), for that mantle - one of the most favorite dishes. Here in each house there is a special large multi-tiered casserole, which is called a mantovarka (or mantashnitsey), in which our favorite mantas are prepared for a couple.

As a rule, we prepare the mantas for some feasts, when at least 2 hostesses gather in the kitchen, and then we amicably compose manty with pumpkin, the recipe of which everyone knows, for the whole company. Together, the three of them are moving quickly and one can not "charge" one mantovarku, since there are not many mantles, as many nills. And even if they do, it's not a problem to warm up in the same microwave, or the next day you can fry the cooled mantles in a frying pan - it will be very tasty.

We at home always make manti with pumpkin, the recipe of which I offer to your attention.

You ask, why add a pumpkin to the manties? For juiciness! A real manti must necessarily be succulent. In addition, meat with onion and pumpkin gives an excellent taste combination, who did not try, believe me, this is a very popular dish.

So, to prepare manti with pumpkin, the recipe of which I propose, we need to knead a simple elastic dough, as on dumplings - from flour and water and salt plus a spoon of vegetable oil. The dough should be well kneaded, kneaded and allowed to rest for a while, so that it becomes elastic for subsequent rolling. It is better to make kneading without the addition of eggs, since it is this dough that will later be better infiltrated from within with onion and meat juices, which are released during cooking.

For the filling, as a rule, take a young mutton, and for juiciness in the stuffing add more fatty fat (or fatty fat, who as he calls). But you can make manti from beef (it does not harden as quickly as lamb) or you can mix several kinds of meat - most importantly, be sure to take meat with fat so that the filling is not lean.

The most delicious mantas are obtained if the meat is cut manually by small cubes, about half a centimeter in size, and not passed through a meat grinder. But if you still decided to use the meat grinder, then use the largest grate.

The recipe for manti with pumpkin suggests onions and pumpkins take so much that in terms of their volume was not less than half of the volume of meat. The onion should be finely chopped, the raw pumpkin cleaned and cut into cubes about the same size as the pieces of meat. Meat, onion and pumpkin mix, pepper, salt - minced meat is ready.

Now you have to roll the dough into a thin layer, and the thinner you can roll out the dough - the better (especially skilled skaters manage to roll so thinly that you can read the newspaper through this dough, but since this does not work for everyone, try at least not thicker 2 Mm roll out).

Next, cut the dough into squares with a side of about 8-10 cm. But many, including me, do, as in the case of ravioli or vareniki - roll out a long bundle, about 3 cm in diameter, and cut it into lengths of 2 , 5-3 cm, and from each piece roll out individual circles for the filling. The more circles there are, the larger the size of the mantles. I make mans of medium size - not gigantic, but you do not need to twiddle - this is not pelmeni!

For each square or circle we put, without regret, mincemeat and form manti. Ways how to make a dough, a few - pigtail, envelope, rose. I do not know how to name my method, but I do this: first, pinch the dough over the forcemeat as if criss-crosswise, grabbing the opposite sides of the circle (or the corners of the square), then using a few tweaks to form the edges, get a plump envelope, and then join the corners in pairs, A drawing is drawn like the figure eight or the sign of infinity.

Grate mantovarki pre-lubricate with vegetable oil and put the mantles on them in a circle, so that they do not come in contact with each other. In the meantime, we mold and stack the manti, filling one circle after another, in the bottom pan we will separately set the water to boil. As soon as the water boils, we put the pans one on top of the other, tightly close the top lid and mark 40-45 minutes - that's exactly how many mumps with pumpkin are cooked for a couple, the recipe of which we have considered.

When it's time, we put manty with pumpkin and meat on a big dish, pour on butter, sprinkle with greens for dressiness and carry it to the table, where everyone is looking forward to the hot!

Ready-made mantas can be served with sour cream, gravy from the braised carrots and onions, but we love such a simple sauce as a mixture of sour cream and mayonnaise, taken roughly evenly, plus a bit of ketchup, and add to all a couple of cloves of garlic, passed through the crush - . It turns out very tasty!

Enjoy your meal!