What’s the potato-dumping trade off? Do you have to somehow eliminate one to chose the other, so as to avoid a starchy filling bowl of side dishes for dinner? It appears that in Poland, there is no trade off. Here’s a recipe for potato dumplings - “kopytka”
Ingredients: 1kg boiled in brine potatos, a few spoonfuls of flour (this will depend on the type of potato, but roughly, ¼ of the total mass of the poatoes should be equaled by the flour), 1 egg, salt to taste.
Directions: Start of by mashing the potatoes (it helps if they have cooled down, as they will stick together less) ensuring that no thick parts remain - it’s crucial that the potatoes are smooth as they will serve as the basic foundation for the dumplings!
Some recipes also call for a spoon or two of potato starch, which absorbs water, so in the case of an excessively sticky dough, P.S. is your man.
Add the flour, egg (and a pinch of salt if desired) to the potato bowl, and stir well until a smooth dough forms. Make sure that there are no grits of flour or potato by passing the dough between your fingers.
Use a little extra flour for the surface you’ll be working on, to disable to dough from sticking to it. Form the dough into a long log shape (about 4cm thick), but don’t worry, the sides don’t have to be perfectly uniform.
Next, with a sharp knife, slice the log with diagonal cuts, so that dumplings, somewhat like a rhobmus in shape, are formed.
Heat a large pot of salty water and throw in the dumplings one by one. Make sure they don’t stick to each other while bouncing on the bubbles, and wait for all of them to surface and bob around for a bit on top.
Remove them with a skimmer, and place on a wooden board to cool. Essentially, bon appetit, they’re ready for consumption. That’s only theory though.
In practise, they’ll be indescribably better tasting once you wait for them to cool down a bit, and fry them up with some butter on a pan. That gives them a crispy outer buttery layer, while keeping the inside compact and warm.
Goes perfectly with last weeks zrazy!