Croatia

CROATIA: knedle sa šljivam

Thank you to Anita for this recipe. She says “this is something very traditional and all of the kids from my region (not only Croatia) remember our grandmas making this. It is called “knedle sa šljivama” or (and this is a free translation by yours truly) “plum balls” or “plum knedle”. I will leave the poetry of the title to you 😉
Here is the recipe, let me know if you have any trouble with it!!!”

I had no trouble as Anita’s directions were very clear. 

INGREDIENTS:

350 g of boiled potatoes
100 g flour type “1” (I used flour grated with stone grain, not fully refined)*
30 g of sharp flour*

* * in the US you can use all purpose flour instead of the two above – in Croatia we use different types of flour for specific recipes (rough grain for non-leavened doughs and fine grain for leavened doughs)

1 tablespoon of lard
a pinch of salt
10 plum-plums (1 small plum goes into each ball)
sugar as desired
50 g butter
6 tablespoons of bread crumbs (full)
3 tablespoons of sugar
(if necessary add a few tablespoons of oil)

DIRECTIONS:

Wash the potatoes and cook them in their skin for about 45 minutes. Peel the hot potatoes and grate them (use a masher for potatoes if you prefer).

Add salt, lard and half the flour to the grated potatoes, mix. Let the dough soak up a bit of flour and start kneading with your hands. Add the remaining flour little by little, but do not knead for too long. You need to get a soft dough that does not break.

Roll out the dough to a cm thick. Cut the dough into squares 7 x 7 cm in size and place each deseeded plum in the center of the square, close the dough pastry around the plum, and shape the ball. The ball must be completely closed!

If you add sugar, add it only in the middle of the plum, but not in the batter.

Melt the butter on low heat, add the bread crumbs and sugar to the hot butter. Cook on low heat for ten minutes with continuous stirring so that crumbs do not burn (looking for a bit less intense flavor than noisette butter). If a little bit of fat is lacking, add a few tablespoons of oil.

Boil 3 liters of water, add drops of oil and salt to the water. Add the balls to the water and boil until they reach the surface (they are done once the float on top). As soon as you take them out of the water roll them around in crumbs. Roll each ball into the crumbs completely.

Serve warm!