Our cookbook of the week is Summer Kitchens: Recipes and Reminiscences from Every Corner of Ukraine by Olia Hercules. Over the next two days, we’ll feature another recipe from the book and an interview with the author.
To try another recipe from the book, check out: Sauerkraut with whole cabbage leaves .
This light summer meal — a melding of tradition and spontaneity — came about in Olia Hercules’s hometown of Kakhovka, Ukraine. While visiting her friend Katrya Kalyuzhna, documenting her making beet kvass for Summer Kitchens , Kalyuzhna “rustled up some lunch.”
Ukrainians have been making “lazy dumplings” for centuries, Hercules says. A mixture of syr curd cheese, flour, egg and fresh herbs, they’re akin to Italian gnudi. “They were so light,” Hercules recalls. “She just quickly boiled them and then she fried them in some clarified butter, and that made them even more delicious.”
As with many of the most satisfying meals, the dish was an amalgam of the ingredients Kalyuzhna had on hand. She blanched a handful of green beans she had picked from her garden, fried some shallots until crispy and tossed in a pinch of poppy seeds.
“The dumplings were so delicious my husband (photographer Joe Woodhouse) picked up the camera and shot them. And the shot in the book is the original shot when she cooked it. That was our lunch,” says Hercules, laughing. “Traditional with a little bit of common sense. I wouldn’t even call it modern cooking. That’s how recipes really come about, don’t they. If you’re cooking at home and if you’re growing your own things, you just think, ‘Oh, I have a little bit of this and I’ll use this, and I’ll substitute that.’”
LAZY DUMPLINGS WITH GREEN BEANS, POPPY SEEDS AND CRISPY SHALLOTS
For the dumplings:
100 g (4 oz) syr curd cheese or well-drained ricotta
75 g (2/3 cup) all-purpose flour
1 egg
Large handful of finely chopped dill
200 g (8 oz) green beans, tops trimmed
70 mL (1/3 cup) sunflower or vegetable oil
2 shallots, thinly sliced
1 tbsp all-purpose flour
2 tbsp clarified butter (or butter with a splash of oil)
Pinch of poppy seeds
Sea salt and black pepper
Step 1
For the dumplings, gently mix together the curd cheese or ricotta, flour, egg and dill, then season with salt and pepper – it will be quite a wet dough. Turn out onto a lightly floured surface and carefully knead until it is no longer sticky, then cover with a clean kitchen towel and leave to rest while you get on with the beans and onions.
Step 2
Cook the green beans to your liking: for crisp-tender, drop into boiling water and cook for 2 minutes; I prefer my beans softer, so I boil them for at least 4 minutes. Drain and set aside.
Step 3
To make the crispy shallots, pour the oil into a frying pan over low heat. Just before you are ready to fry, toss the shallots in flour seasoned with salt, then shake off any excess and drop them into the hot oil. Cook until they are golden brown, but be careful not to take them too far, or they will taste acrid. Drain on paper towels.
Step 4
Now, on a lightly floured surface, gently shape the dumpling dough into a 25-cm (10-inch) sausage and cut it into 12 pieces. With floured hands, lightly coax each piece into a dumpling about 6 x 2 cm (2 1/2 x 3/4 inch). Bring a large saucepan of salted water to a boil, then slip in the dumplings, in batches, and cook for 2–3 minutes – they will float to the surface when they’re done. Drain well in a colander.
Step 5
Melt the clarified butter (or butter and oil) in a large frying pan over medium heat. Add the dumplings and gently toss for a few minutes, until they are a light golden colour, then add the green beans to the pan and stir to warm through.
Step 6
Serve the dumplings and green beans with the crispy shallots, poppy seeds and some black pepper.
Serves: 2 (makes 12 dumplings)
Excerpted from Summer Kitchens: Recipes and Reminiscences from Every Corner of Ukraine by Olia Hercules. Text © Olia Hercules, 2020. Published by Weldon Owen. First published in Great Britain in 2020 by Bloomsbury Publishing. Reproduced by arrangement with the publisher. All rights reserved.
Copyright Postmedia Network Inc., 2020
