This new Ottawa bakery is making popular Russian pies

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Pie Rogues

571 Gladstone Ave., pierogues.com

Russian baked items (savoury pies and chocolate babka buns) made to order for Friday pickups, $6 to $9

Irina Khazanova has put lots behind her.

The 40-year-old’s first profession was as an editor and proofreader. However the final time that she labored in an workplace was in 2016. “I spotted I didn’t need my life to be in entrance of a pc,” she says.

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As a result of she went to culinary faculty in addition to college, she launched into a second profession, promoting desserts and French baked items from her house in Moscow.

Then, she got here to Canada 5 years in the past, together with her spouse and two cats, above all to flee the the Russian government’s anti-gay discrimination.

“It’s getting worse and worse and we simply determined if we wish to be a pair and regarded a pair, that’s one of many advantages I get from being in Canada,” says Khazanova.

In Ottawa, she not too long ago completed working at Artwork-Is-In Bakery. Now, she’s absolutely dedicated to her one-woman enterprise, Pie Rogues.

Its identify performs on the Russian phrases for “pie” (pirog) and “small pies” (piroshki), and naturally, Pie Rogues sells Russian pies, each giant and small. Khazanova, who’s Jewish, additionally makes chocolate babka, the candy braided bread that originated within the Jewish communities of Poland and Ukraine.

Though Khazanova left her homeland, she continues to be a fan of its meals and tradition and needs to champion it.

“Russia doesn’t have the perfect picture within the eyes of different nations in the mean time,” she says. “I needed to introduce the perfect that our tradition has to the individuals in Ottawa, to simply present the locals what Russia is admittedly about, what it means to me by way of reminiscences and flavours.”

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That stated, Khazanova isn’t averse to creating little tweaks to personalize her pies, all of which I discovered scrumptious, from their breads to their delectable fillings.

“Cabbage pies are the biggest a part of my reminiscence of my mother making pies,” she says. “It’s a really Russian flavour and Russian vegetable.”

However to her cabbage and mushroom pies, Khazanova provides caraway and garlic, even when in Russia “you’d by no means see caraway added to it.” For her pork and cabbage pie, she provides fennel seeds. “Pork with fennel is a really non-Russian flavour, but it surely’s common in Canada, so I improvised,” says Khazanova.

“They’re totally different, however they’re comforting and good,” she says.

The addition of feta and parsley to her potato pies can be distinctly non-Russian, but it surely did make for a extra full of life, flavourful filling. A pie that’s full of scallions, egg and rice — “basic Russian,” Khazanova says — is made with sushi rice, she confesses as a result of it most carefully approximates the proper texture. “It brings this quirky however good Asian sub-flavour,” Khazanova provides.

As for babka, Khazanova opted to not make a poppy seed model, if it’s essentially the most basic one, as a result of chocolate babka is extra common in North America, she says. Her bun-sized chocolate babka was richly flavoured however not too candy, and texturally someplace within the center between bread and cake.

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After launching her enterprise with assist from an Make investments Ottawa program for immigrant entrepreneurs, Khazanova started manufacturing final summer time. For now, she works and sells out of a shared industrial kitchen on Gladstone Avenue, with none staff, though she says “invariably, my poor spouse helps me in each means doable.”

There are different individuals making Russian pies in Ottawa, “however they cater solely to Russians,” Khazanova says. She desires to forged her web extra broadly, be sure that Ottawans at giant know and like her wares, after which open her personal bakery.

“I’m not fairly there but,” she says.

However from what I’ve tasted, she deserves to be, and hopefully, she’ll get there.

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