R2R January: Holopchi & chilli cheesey sauce

Update: No pictures available. I am mortified... like really really mortified at my "rapidly pressing the delete button" stupidity that has left me pretty much pictureless to back up my claim of making something from a land far far far away in my own kitchen. More on that later...

This month's Recipes to Rival challenge was co-hosted by mom-daughter duo Giz & Psychgrad from Equal Opportunity Kitchen and Kat from A Good Appetite. The daring task we had to undertake - Holopchi, an Ukrainian dish which is bread wrapped in beet leaves.

The full recipe adapted off the The Keld Community Ladies Club in Ashville, Manitoba cookbook can be found here. A word of warning, the recipe is large enough to feed a starved battalion, so best you quarter it (that still made about 24 medium-sized rolls) - which if you join a helpful group like R2R, someone is bound to sound the alert and do it for you ;-)

I was excited at my first ever attempt to make bread. But had no idea what or where beet leaves and swiss chard could be sourced from (I'm starting to sense a pattern with the food blogger's challenges now - what is easy for those in the West to find is virtually impossible here and they play a whole different veggie game there...), so it was to the drawing board to figure out what would work (with some truly helpful suggestions from Temperance).

Like a mad scientist, here's some of the tweaks I did to "asianize" the recipe:
Attempt one - Substitute the leaves with Bak Choy leaves.
Verdict - Horribly icky soggy texture, the leaves did not fare well in the oven.

Attempt two - Use spring onions and spinach to wrap the dough.
Verdict - Much more better. The spring onions gave a wonderful aroma, altho they didn't hold the bread in too well (it opened up). Topped it with the below chilli cheesey sauce (since didn't have dill).

Chilli Cheesey Sauce
Ingredients:
Milk
Sharp cheese - grated
Garlic - chopped finely
Chilli flakes - sprinkling
Salt to taste
Butter

Method:
Melt everything together in a saucepan and whisk till smooth.

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For an idea of how holopchi is supposed to look like and leave your mouth watering, check out the other R2R-ers here.

Back to the pictures, the ones I had taken didn't look so great so I was editing through them on the camera itself and chucking them off. Kept two that looked somewhat decent but as apparently I accidentally deleted those off too (when the preview screen went back to the beginning) and was left with an empty memory card. Gah, lesson learned - next time upload em onto your laptop before you start deleting anything!