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Freshly baked pastry in black sauce

As Ruslan Rachmaninow tucked into this dessert after dinner in Moskow one evening, he solved a riddle for Hektor Maille that took the secret agent clearly forward in his mission. The recipe is supposed to have its origins in Ukraine. We obtained it from Maille, who learned to prepare it from his friend Ruslan but proceeded to add his own little personal touch to it – the rum in the sauce appears to be a Lemusan ingredient. The taste of the dessert is special: the sauce is sweet and deep, the freshly baked pastry temptingly buttery. The consistence and colour of the sauce are somewhat like that of caviar; the pastry is a manoeuvre between bread and biscuit. On the plate, the dessert appears something like a cake that one must piece together by oneself – like a poppy-seed puzzle, one could say.

200 g flour

60 g cold butter

100 g sour cream

2 eggs

2 tablespoons sugar (10 g) for the pastry

100 g poppy seeds

6 tablespoon brown rum (i.e. Fiol from Santa Lemusa)

4 tablespoon sugar (20 g) for the sauce

100 g honey

1. Mix the flour and cold butter with your hand. Add sour cream, eggs and sugar and knead into a moist and sticky dough.
2. Place the dough on a lightly oiled or buttered paper on the baking tray and press/roll it out with a spatula into a 0.5 to 1 cm-thin sheet.
3. Crush poppy seeds in a mortar and pestle (so that the colour turns from gray to dark brown). Mix the poppy seeds with 1 dl of water and 6 tablespoons of rum and soak for about 20 minutes.
4. Add sugar and honey to the poppy-seed sauce, bring to a boil on the stove and then cook on low heat for about 20 minutes – till the sauce takes on a light syrupy consistency.
5. Shortly before consumption, put the baking tray with the rolled-out dough into the oven (preheated to 180-200 degrees) and bake for 15 minutes or so, till the dough takes on a pretty, golden-brown colour (depending on the oven, this can take 20 minutes or longer).
6. Warm the sauce slightly and spread it lightly over flat plates. Cut the freshly baked pastry with two forks into bite-sized pieces and place them on the black, poppy-seed lake. Serve immediately.

More about the travel adventure of Secret Agent Hektor Maille:

• Episode 3: Ballad in Moscow
• Startpage of «Mission Kaki» (with overview map)
• More Recipes of the Secret Agent

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