Eastern Europe's Potato Pie

When I first found a recipe on how to make your own pie crust the nice Bosnian lady in the video said to knead the dough until your arms hurt, and it was the most accurate description there ever was for this recipe! 

Quick disclaimer: I made potato pie today, but in reality, this pie crust can be used for all, I will also include a cheese-spinach filling that I usually make. 

Ingredients: 

Pie crust:

• 600 grams of flour, separated into two servings, 300 grams each. 
• 150-200 ml of warm water 
• 1 big spoon of salt

Stuffing: 

• 1 kg of potatoes 
• 2 onions 
• 7 grams of ground pepper 
• 1 big spoon of salt 

Pie crust: 

• This is going to be the simplest recipe to follow! Get a bowl and combine your flour, salt and water, and knead until your hands hurst and the dough feels soft and not sticky. If you see that it needs some more flour in order to be less sticky, feel free to add some and knead. 
• After that, you pour oil in a deep dish and then you place your dough ball and cover it with more oil. Place plastic wrap on top. 
• Repeat this process for another dough ball and let these two babes sit for an hour! 
• After an hour you are going to get down and dirty with the dough, here you have two ways of doing it, by using your hands or a rolling pin. 
• I use my hands and I start by pinching the borders of the dough ball and then I lay it on my first and let it spread, and then I switch it on my arm and make circular movements until it's tin enough without making holes. I lay it on top of a floured tablecloth and spread with my fingertips. This means that once you place it on the tablecloth you will go under it with your palm, and gently raise and spread the dough with your fingertips! Once it's super thin, remove the edges and start placing your stuffing. 
• If you can't do this, just spread the ball a bit and lay it on the tablecloth and use your rolling pin until ultra-thin! 

Stuffing:

• Chop the potatoes into tiny cubes and do the same with the onions, combine these two and add your salt and pepper. Do this prep work only after the one-hour mark for the dough, and you can use a strainer to avoid too much water. 
• Once you spread the crust, add the stuffing and use the tablecloth to roll the dough from two sides as shown in the video below: 

 

Bonus tips: You can use spinach and cheese to create the best stuffing ever. Crush the cheese (cow cheese or feta) with a fork and add a cup of yogurt and an egg and combine until smooth. The best stuffing ever. 

The Last Supper 

I grew up poor, and I like to think this is why food plays such a central role in my life. When you grow up aware of every item in the house, and lack thereof, you become a magician at combining and thinking about ingredients. I used to walk home from school and create these elaborate nightmare meals just for fun, just so that I could use up everything in the fridge. 

This is not uncommon in Montenegro. So, when I tried my first stake in the US when I was 15 years old, I remember thinking I preferred my mom's schnitzel, out of my loyalty to poverty. I even remember openly saying that's it's so easy to create incredible meals with incredible ingredients. 

My first date question thus became: ''What would be your last meal?''. I figured that I wanted to fall in love with another cheap food person, who ties food to sentiment not only quality. Someone who would eat eggs and French fries and lettuce and cheese with me, and who would be able to understand why I cry when I eat sushi, and why I take time to learn restaurant recipes instead of going out whenever I crave a food. 

There is a part of me that wants to say that I would eat steak for my last meal, but the reality of life is that I just want to feel loved by the food I am served, and that can only be accomplished by creating meals made for me by those who truly loved me. 

My last meal would be a reminder of how the simplest foods carry the deepest emotions, and how even if I was a poor kid, I was always full thanks to the abundance of love my mom poured into every meal. I was always full because I understood the genius behind every recipe, she created out of nothing.