Botishal with cottage cheese

Sift flour and salt into a large bowl. Pour in room temperature water and vegetable oil. Knead thoroughly until smooth, then let rest for about forty minutes, covered with plastic wrap.

Step 2

Prepare the ingredients for the botishal filling. Boil the potatoes until tender and mash them with a potato masher. Grate the suluguni cheese using a coarse grater. Rub the cottage cheese through a fine sieve, add baking soda, and thoroughly mash the mixture with your hands. Add the mashed potatoes and cheese, season with salt and pepper. Mix well. Form eight equal balls.

Step 3

Melt the butter: you'll need it to grease the flatbreads. Transfer the dough to a work surface and roll it into a log. Divide into eight portions and roll them out into thin flatbreads. Place a ball of filling in the center of each. Pinch the edges together, gathering them together.

Step 4

Turn each dough piece out onto a floured surface and roll it out into a flatbread about 3 mm thick. Prick the dough with a fork, then fry each piece one at a time in a dry frying pan. Place the finished dough pieces on a plate and generously brush with melted butter.

Domestic tourism is flourishing, and with it, our love for national cuisines. There's so much more to try! Today, we explore the rich flavors of traditional Dagestan dishes.

Tatar pastries make up a large part of Tatar cuisine and boast a wide variety of forms and, most importantly, fillings. Delicious pies such as echpochmak, peremyachi, zur-belish, and vak-belish, as well as flatbreads such as kystybyi and eremek yukalary, can be made with virtually any ingredients—meat, potatoes, grains, cheese, cottage cheese, vegetables, mushrooms, herbs, and dried fruits. Tatar pies and flatbreads are often filled with a variety of fillings, making them versatile. If you don't eat meat, you can bake echpochmak with just potatoes and onions, or make kystybyi with millet porridge. A distinctive feature of Tatar pastries is the soft, fluffy dough, even for thin flatbreads. This applies regardless of whether yeast is added. The dough for Tatar pastries is traditionally made with oil (vegetable or butter) and the addition of milk or fermented milk products, which gives it a particularly soft and airy texture. When discussing Tatar pastries, it's impossible not to mention two main desserts that have long been its hallmarks: khvorost cookies and chak-chak. Both children and adults adore these sweet pastries. We suggest making all these sweet and savory baked delicacies at home—it's not at all difficult.

A very soft, fluffy, and tender eggless yeast dough with a cottage cheese and egg filling and a sweet sour cream and vanilla topping—I took the ingredients for these wonderful buns from Irina Khlebnikova's original recipe on the "Baking at Home" website, but I slightly adjusted it and changed the cooking method. The finished product tastes very similar to classic cottage cheese vatrushki, but is easier and quicker to shape. Don't be intimidated by the long prep time: it includes proofing, which takes about 1.5 hours.

Unsweetened cottage cheese with tomatoes can be served for breakfast instead of the traditional one—with berries, fruit, honey, or jam. The recipe for this dish is simple, quick, and accessible to everyone. However, if you want it to be especially delicious, try to find the best, naturally natural cottage cheese. This can be either plain or full-fat from the market. Making your own cottage cheese is absolutely perfect! As for cherry tomatoes, choose the ripest and sweetest ones: they will perfectly complement the milky notes, the flavor of the herbs, and also enhance the aroma of unrefined olive oil.