Gaby
It’s hard to find anyone who doesn’t love eating them. But cooking? Well, that takes a bit of effort. Plus, you need to know a few essential secrets: how much and what to put in the dough. The filling is easier. You can even borrow some cooking tips from the characters in the book “The Lion’s Heart.” You can make dumplings with cheese (both fresh and salty), potatoes (mashed, diced, or grated), cabbage (fresh or fermented), meat, scrambled eggs, cherries, apples, raspberries, mulberries, nightshades, blackberries, and pumpkin.
We asked the head of production at the “Kiev” restaurant to share the technology behind this dish. Why her? Because the “Kiev” restaurant was one of the first in the region to introduce “Dumpling Days.”
– We try to do this on weekends so that the whole family can come in for lunch.
The recipe for the dough and filling was developed by a veteran of our restaurant. So, let’s get to work.
First, we prepare the dough. For 600g of flour, we take 2 eggs, half a cup each of water and kefir (a fermented milk drink), 2 tablespoons of sugar, half a teaspoon of salt, and 2 teaspoons of yeast, and we knead the dough.
Next, we roll it out thinly, cutting out circles depending on the filling—larger for cabbage and potatoes, smaller for cheese.
There’s another way to make the dough. For 3 cups of flour, you need half a cup of water, 2 eggs, and half a teaspoon of salt. Knead the dough to a medium thickness, making it easier to roll out into a flatbread about 1-1.5 mm thick (for dumplings with cherries, it should be twice as thick). Cut the dough into squares measuring 5 x 5 cm (this way, you can shape triangular dumplings by folding opposite corners of the square) or use a thin glass to cut out circles. However, in this case, more dough goes to waste, and it tends to dry out faster.
The filling is all about your imagination or… improvisation with whatever ingredients you have on hand. For the amount of dough we have, you’ll need 800g of filling. For example, sauté some cabbage, and once it cools, add a hard-boiled egg (finely chopped), fried onions, and season with salt and pepper.
In addition to dumplings with potatoes and cabbage, dumplings with cottage cheese and apples are also delicious: mix 400g of well-drained cottage cheese with 400g of peeled and grated sweet apples, and it’s best to add a pinch of sugar (just a tiny bit) into each dumpling.
Kids who come to us for lunch with their parents love dumplings filled with canned cherries. We remove the pits. We prepare a sauce by simmering cherry juice (400g) and sugar (200g) for almost an hour over low heat.
