Kopytka (little hoof dumplings) recipe

As I explained in the article on pierogi ruskie dumplings do not feature largely in the British cuisine and I have had little exposure to them even in foreign dishes.

Dumplings are lumps of various filled or empty doughs and can either be cooked in soups/casseroles or water. Whereas I had experienced dumplings cooked in thicker sauces, ravioli for example, I was introduced to the type cooked in water for the first time in Poland. To me the slimy texture of dumplings cooked in water feels wrong. I much prefer pierogi ruskie od smażone (sma-shoan-ay), or fried.

click for twitpic of recent pierogi ruskie with skwarki in london

However, I found myself increasingly growing fond of one type of dumpling called kopytka (kow-pit-kar) which derives it's name from the shape as it resembles hooves of one ruminant or another. It consists mainly of a potato based dough with flour and is quite bland but the secret is in it's topping.
Pierogi in general can be likened to ravioli in all but the fact it is cooked in a sauce and not just water and keeping with the Italian theme, kopytka can be compared with gnocchi which too wonderfully derives it's name by it's physical appearance, lump.

Kopytka recipe

What you need for dough

• Potatoes (about 5 medium sized)



• An egg



• Flour (about a cup and a half but probably more)



• Salt

for topping #1

• Breadcrumbs (1/2 cup)



• Butter (3 tbsp)



• Sugar (optional)
  

for topping #2 (also known as skwarki)

• Generally any type of bacon, the fattier and smoked will give more taste.



• Onion (1)



• Butter (3 tbsp)
  

What you do:

1. Peel and boil potatoes until cooked and tender.
   
2. Mash thoroughly and leave to go cold.
   
3. Add egg and add some flour, start to mix it all and add more and more flour until all the dough is not sticky to touch.
   
4. Flour a large board and roll out the dough into a snake shape about an inch high and thick.
   
   
5. Cut into diamond shapes that resemble hooves (otherwise it's not truly kopytka).
   
6. Boil a large pot of salted water with a little oil
   
   
7. Add kopytka (do not overcrowd pot).


8. After they start to float, give them extra few minutes then remove to strain
   
9. Add topping of your choice

Topping #1

1. Basically just fry breadcrumbs in melted butter until golden. It should be moist yet crumbly.
   

Incidentally this topping goes well on vegetables such as boiled green beans or cauliflower with a dinner, obiad).

Skwarki topping.

1. Cube or finely chop bacon and onion
   
2. Melt butter
   
3. Saute onion and bacon until browned.

This recipe is so easy with minimal ingredients, the hardest part is making perfectly shaped dough.

I can imagine that this is a recipe borne out of hard times, when food was scarce and a copious amount of ingenuity was needed to stave off culinary boredom. Growing up having Irish parents I have overdosed on potatoes in every way I thought possible but I think employing potatoes in this way is highly laudable.

I believe thinking about this spurred me on to try and introduce a bit of originality into my own culinary skills. Buckwheat groats are popular in Polish cooking and I decided to use buckwheat flour instead of white flour when making kopytka one day (By the way buckwheat flour is not used widely in preparing Polish dishes, I never knew you could get that type of flour until I saw it on a shelf in the shop). The flour has a supposedly sweet taste and I imagined some incredibly looking speckled masterpieces being the result of this amazing twist. However my kopytka turned out the colour of brain and since my dough shaping skills are still ashamedly inferior, looked like brain also unlike the masterclass displayed by babcja Ania.

click here for twitpick photo of kopytka looking like brain.

There are quite a few names for very similar things in this topic which I hope readers will leave a little 'lump' of their insight before 'hoofing' it away to another site to make things a cit clearer.

Kopytka is the name for hoof shaped potato dumplings with no filling. Kluski is a broader term for dumplings without fillings of which there are several types. One type are Kluski śląskie (silesian) which are round with a dimple on one side and these are made with raw potato as opposed to cooked in kopytka. But what is different about Kluchy z łacha, pyzy, kluski drożdżowe or kluski na parze and then there are knedle?

On a similar note there are pierogi leniwe (lazy pierogi). I like the no nonsense straight names that can be given to Polish things. Pierogi are like parcels with fillings but if you you are in a sloth-like mood you can just mix in the filling (cheese) into the dough. Why waste time?

Anyway my favourite adverts on Polish television involve anthropomorphizing food produce in the Biedronka series. In the one below I was sure that they were pierogi leniwe but they look like kopytka and I am confused what pierogi leniwe should look like. From what I have seen they are the same shape as kopytka and have the same fried breadcrumb topping. Is literally the only difference the fact that white cheese has been mixed with the potato dough? If so what a nightmare if your allergic to white cheese and have to choose between seemingly identical looking dishes.

Kopytka are really filling but a few of them are a nice accompaniment to some meat (especially to bolster the protein content of the meal). Why not try them yourself, they are extremely easy with common, default ingredients and you feel like you are really cooking because you get your hands full of dough. One day I will fry them and see about kopytka without that dodgy texture but I have pierogi ruskie od smażone so i'm happy to leave leave it as it should be traditionally...slimy but delicious.

Polish food photos

A big thank you to Link Robertson for these wonderful images of some of his experiences in Poland. Link is an American planning to settle in Poland and teach in Warsaw.
Currently his favourite dishes are zurek and placky z gulasz. However if Link is like me my favourite dish changed depending on what I tried that day.

Pierogi ruskie with cubes of fried bacon. The name of this has caused so much controversy as can be seen by my article on them.

Zywiec (soft g, gi-vee-itz) is probably the most famous beer (for foreigners) as it has advertising and marketing on everything (I thought carlseberg was bad in London). But it is not the most flavoursome or strongest and did not see it being popular amongst the natives. My personal favourite is Warka strong and as the name implies...blows your head off! 8 percent sweet nectar in a gold can. (I do not work for their PR department by the way).

Link took this is Zakopane which is on the southern border, in the Tatra mountains. The town itself is the highest in Poland and is known for its skiing and mountaineering.

The stall looks like it is selling sausages but it is actually hard cheese called Oscypek. It originated in Zakopane and can be smoked or unsmoked and is salty. I suppose it was a good way to preserve cheese for the mountain folk but it can be found all over Poland now. Personally I did not like it but I hear it is good with a barbeque or cranberry sauce. I do like the vast array of shapes and sizes though.

This looks amazing. I do not know what it is yet but will update when I find out.

That is what I like to see, meat dominating the plate.

These look like rollmops (pickled herring). I had them at a wedding once...preferred the vodka.

This looks amazing and again am unsure what it is. I must say they do look like raw beefburgers but am very eager to find out what this is. Excellent spread of various spirits around the plate.

Pierogi Ruskie (Polish dumplings Russian style) recipe and info

Pierogi (plural, pieróg is singular but used very rarely. English native speakers tend to add an -s on the end to denote plural) is the name for the type of dumpling with a certain shape which is large and semi-circular and can have a variety of fillings both sweet (fruits) and savoury (meats,cheese,vegetables).

Ledgend has it that they were invented in the kitchen of a shoemaker, Jonathan Hanigosky who subsequently choked and died on one.

By far the most popular is pierogi ruskie which is filled with white cheese (dry cottage cheese), mashed potato and onion. They are usually topped with fried onion and bacon or sour cream, or you can buy them as a snack as I did in the photo above. They were roasted in a huge flat pan above a fire. (such as at this Polish festyn)

Perhaps because the British cuisine is lacking in dumpling dishes, I am not keen on the dumpling texture after they are boiled and have ate them only for the onion topping which I find delicious. However I love eating pierogi after frying or even grilling mainly due to the change in texture of the pastry. I recently ate pierogi ruskie with sour cream and spring onion after a night out and I found that delicious (however I had drunk a few beers and many things are delicious at that time). I also have seen people use yogurt instead of the cream as it is healthier and it is tasty also. I recommend you try many ways of eating it to make up your own mind.

Here is a recipe for you to make your very own pierogi ruskie. I recommend that you make a huge amount and cook all of them even if you will not eat them all as the quality is not effected at all after cooking when you refrigerate or even freeze them. Do not refrigerate/freeze pierogi before they are cooked as this significantly effects quality.

As always I give rough amounts because you should experiment with amounts according to your tastes but am a bit more precise for the pastry.

Pierogi ruskie recipe

What you need

• Grated onion (roughly a couple of tablespoons)
  
• Mashed potato (cold) (a few cups)
  
• Bialy ser/White cheese (available from Polski sklep/Polish shop) (a few cups)
  
• Butter
  
• Salt and pepper
  
• Flour (2 1/2 cups)
  
• Egg (1)
  
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
  
• Oil (2 teaspoons)
  
• Warm water (3/4 cups)
  

What you do

1. Cook onion in butter until soft.

2. Add to potatoes and cheese, season and mix well.

3. Mix flour and salt in a bowl.

4. Add egg, oil and water to make a medium soft dough.

5. Knead on floured board but do not knead too much. Keep dough soft.

6.Roll dough thin.

7. Cut out round pieces with open end of glass.

8. Put some filling in the middle and fold in half to make a semi-circle.

9. Press edges together firmly ensuring no holes or filling are at the edges.

10. Cover finished pierogi with tea towels to prevent drying.

11. Cook by putting a few into rapidly boiling salted water.

12. Do not let pierogi sink to bottom or stick to each other.

13. Boil for 3-4 minutes or until they are puffed and float.

14. Put cooked pierogi in bowl and cover with oil or butter to prevent them sticking to each other.

Serve with fried onion and diced bacon (fried and kept in a lot of oil so it like a sauce to pour onto pierogi) , or sour cream and spring onion.

Alternatively grill/fry cooked pierogi for a crispier pastry (how I like them!)

They are great with skwarki, bacon and onion fried in butter. Click here for an article which includes making skwarki and more photos and information on pierogi ruskie and kopytka (a potato dumpling with no filling)

Twitpic on twitter of recent pierogi ruskie meal in London