Eat Well, Travel Often

Passport & Plate - Parene Buchty (Jam filled steamed dumplings)

Slovakia | Monday, March 10, 2014 | 5 photos

Ingredients
250 ml milk
450 grams flour
1 egg
350 grams thick prune jam
25 grams yeast
2 tablespoons sugar
A pinch of salt
2 tablespoons vegetable oil

 

How to prepare this recipe
1. Heat milk a little bit, just so that it’s a bit warmer than room temperature.
2. Dissolve the yeast in approximately half of the milk.
3. Add in the remaining milk, flour, egg, sugar, and salt.
4. Beat the dough with a mixer and then knead by hand a little bit.
5. Cover the dough and leave it for 30-40 minutes, until it doubles in size.
6. When the dough has risen, roll out about 7 mm thick, and cut in 24 square pieces. Put a teaspoon of prune jam on each square. Make sure you do not put too much filling otherwise it will leak.
7. Seal the buchty by folding them as envelopes first and then sealing tightly.
8. Put the buchty on a flour-sprinkled surface.
9. In a saucepan, bring to boil 2 cups of water and place a steamer over the boiling water.
10. Brush the steamer with some vegetable oil to prevent buchty from sticking to it!
11. Place a few buchty in the steamer. Leave some space between them, as they will grow as they cook.
12. Steam for approximately 5 minutes on each side.
13. Keep the water boiling, add more water if necessary as you start to cook the next set.
14. To serve drizzle with melted butter and ground walnuts with sugar. Also dust with powdered sugar if desired.

 

The story behind this recipe
“Collect moments/not things” is my favorite adage. My fondest things are not things at all, but memories (with the added joy of never having to dust them!) Those which stand out as most memorable are the Summers of my youth spent in Slovakia. Scientist have recently discovered that which I’d come to realize intrinsically that our olfactory sense is most closely associated with the region of the brain responsible for long term memory. Hence a scent can elicit our dearest ones with the clarity as if it were just yesterday. For me it is all the smells that conjure up the languid Summers spent among beloved family and newly made friends; The slight mildewy scent of a once regal house in just imperceptible disrepair, fresh cut grass, a chicken coop. Where I would love to be the first one up, sleep could wait (probably my New York City indoctrination) entering the barn at the back of the property (mist still hovering on distant hills, grass pungent and wet with dew). I’d scamper up the ladder to the hen house to collect freshly laid eggs. Even then I remember marveling at the perfection of nature…life. Those very eggs (with a yolk deeper than the sun, fiery and orange) would than be used by my grandmother to prepare my favorite food (which has since become my daughters’ as well) Parene Buchkty. A steamed jam filled dumpling served with melted butter, ground walnuts and sugar. It probably remains such a classic favorite as it is rather time consuming to prepare so we make them infrequently; freezing half the batch and eating them sparingly over the course of time. As a working mother it is, I assure my children, a great testament to my love for them that I continue the tradition. Fooling not even myself when I say it, they’re just that delicious. Time well spent. This is hands down and by far the best recipe you’ve probably never heard of much less ever eaten. Snap to it and Dobru chut!!