Traditional ukrainian gombovtsi from cottage cheese recipe
What do you consider your ideal breakfast to be? A cup of coffee and a sandwich? Oatmeal? Trendy avocado toast? For me, it’s Ukrainian syrniki (a variation of cottage cheese balls). Or lazy dumplings (here we call them lazy vareniki). But definitely with sour cream. In general, something cheesy. Last year, during a trip to the Carpathians, I discovered an entirely new dish for myself. However, its history goes back thousands of years, a Ukrainian variation of either lazy vareniki, or donuts and partly cottage cheese balls — gombovtsi. It is delicious and straightforward, like most of the recipes on my blog.
What are Carpathian gombovtsi, and how to cook them correctly? In this article, you will find a brief history of a traditional dish of Ukrainian cuisine and a recipe with a detailed description.
Ukrainian gombovtsi — what is this dish and its history
Gombovtsi is one of the most popular desserts in classical Ukrainian cuisine. It is made from dough with fresh plums, cottage cheese, and potatoes. Since the cuisine of Transcarpathia is partially Hungarian, these delicious balls are no exception. Translated from Hungarian, “gombovtsi” means “dumplings” (vareniki).
Cottage cheese dumplings, the recipe which I will share today, are, in fact, one of the variations of lazy vareniki. Well, or donuts, as I wrote above because they are round. They are made with cottage cheese and semolina and then boiled in water or steamed. At the last stage of cooking, the gombovtsi are rolled in a sweet topping of breadcrumbs, sugar, and butter.
The dish is served with sour cream and berry sauces, sometimes, a filling of plums is placed inside each ball, but other fruits are also allowed.
All ingredients are based on two servings — 6 cottage cheese balls each.
Ingredients:
- 300 g non-grain cottage cheese
- One egg
- 50 g of semolina
- 1-2 tablespoons flour
- 50 g butter
- 50 g breadcrumbs
- 5-6 tablespoons sugar
- 1/2 sachet vanilla sugar
- Cinnamon to taste
Method:
Step 1. Cook the dough for the cottage cheese balls. Thoroughly mix the cottage cheese with the egg, semolina, sifted flour, a couple of tablespoons of sugar, and vanilla. To make the cottage cheese as tender as possible, you can beat it with a blender or rub it through a sieve.
Step 2. Separate a piece of dough at the rate of about a tablespoon without a slide per piece and roll it into balls of the same shape.
If preparing gombovtsy with plums, put the dough in the refrigerator for half an hour beforehand. Cut plums of medium size into halves, remove the fruit pits and sprinkle with sugar. Then split off a piece of cottage cheese dough, place it in the palm of your hand, and put the filling in the center. Pinch the edges and roll them into a ball. Fresh fruit can also be replaced with a very thick jam.
Step 3. Cook the breading for the gombovtsy. Melt butter in a frying pan, and add sugar and breadcrumbs. Fry until sugar dissolves. Take it off the fire. You can add a little cinnamon to the breading if you want. Traditional sugar can also be substituted for the brown one.
Step 4. Boil the balls in boiling water like dumplings, and discard them in a colander a minute after they float to the pan’s surface.
Step 5. Roll breaded gombovtsy while still warm and serve with sour cream, jam, and fruit sauces. Gombovtsy tastes very soft and tender.
An interesting fact from Faine Mіstse: some researchers of Ukrainian cuisine believe that the Hungarian-Transcarpathian gombovtsy resembles the technology of preparing Chinese baozi. This is due to the fact that the ancient Ugrians, when they were still a nomadic people, from time to time were part of various Turkic associations. The roots of this dish probably stretch back to those times and to those parts.
