North Dakota’s Fleischkuekle

Fleischkuekle is a meat-filled hand pie popular in parts of North Dakota. Descended from, or related to, the Crimean Tatar hand pie called cheburek that’s popular in Ukraine and much of eastern Europe, Fleischkuekle were introduced to the Great Plains by ethnic Germans who emigrated from Russia in the 19th Century. Wait a sec. This is sounding familiar. In my piece about the Runzas of Nebraska 8 years ago, I wrote this: In the mid-18th Century, Sophie of Anhalt-Zerbst, a German princess, converted to the Eastern Orthodox religion in order to marry Peter of Holstein-Gottorp. Peter, expected to become the next Tsar of the Russian Empire, was also ethnically and culturally German (he didn’t even speak Russian!) Upon her conversion to the eastern faith, she took a new name, Ekaterina, or Catherine in English. She would later be known as Catherine the Great. Why were two Germans set to become the rulers of Russia? Seems like the nobility in Europe did a lot of horse-trading in those…