During the Holidays I spend some time in Macedonia and got to see my grandma. She is a great cook and I have learned a lot from watching her cook while growing up. In the video, we made Zelnik for Christmas. Zelnik is one of my favorite Macedonian Dishes and it’s vegan. Macedonia is rich in delicious vegan cuisine and I hope to share more traditional recipes in the future with you.
Zelnik is a Balkan pie also famous as Zelnjak in Serbia. There are different versions of Zelnik, some of them have eggs or yogurt in the dough, and it can be made with different filling such as leek, chard, sauerkraut, spinach-white cheese mixture, and many more.
My favorite is the simple spinach one with the original vegan dough.
Tips on Making The Best Vegan Zelnik
- Once the Zelnik is baked take it out of the oven, sprinkle it with water, and cover it with a kitchen towel. This will make the pie very soft.
- When preparing the spinach it’s best to chop it up and massage it with salt. This will soften it up and make it easier to spread.
- It’s great in combination with vegan yogurt. This is the way people eat it traditionally because the yogurt brings lightness to the meal.
- My grandma always says that it’s best to make it with fresh yeast because it melts much easier in the water.
Cooking Macedonian Vegan Food With my Grandma
Equipment
- Stove
- Oven
Ingredients
- 1 kg white flour
- 100 gr cornflour
- 1/2 cup olive oil
- 500 gr spinach
- 1/2 cup vegan butter
- salt by taste
- water
- 40 gr fresh or dry yeast
- 7 gr baking powder
Instructions
- Combine the flour, yeast and baking powder, and salt. Mix and start adding water.
- Start kneading the dough in the bowl. Once it's formed in a bowl transfer it to a clean surface and knead it tor 5-6 min.
- Melt the vegan butter and add the oil to it. Mix well together
- Separate the dough into 15 dough balls and roll them out.
- Brush 13 of the rolled-out dough pieces with the oil-vegan butter mixture.
- For the bottom layer of the Zelnik stack 9 pieces of the brushed dough on top of each other and sprinkle cornflour in betwean. Add one of the non-brushed pieces and start rolling the stacked layer until the dougn is thin and can cover your pan.
- Transfer the dough to the pan and brush it with the oil mixture.
- Add salt to the spinach and squeze it together until the spinich softens.
- Add the filling to the baking tray.
- For the top layer repeat the same instruction as for the first one. Then cover the Zelnik and curl the sides.
- Bake it in the oven for 40-50 min on 150C.
