Czech Food – Traditional Czech Plum Dumplings When Fruit is the Main Course
Dumplings are a staple part of the Czech diet and you’ll find them served at breakfast, lunch and dinner in different forms. There are some regional variations and one of those is the traditional Czech plum dumpling made with an unexpected ingredient, potato.
Traditional Czech Plum Dumplings Preparation
Let’s just say that whereas your normal fruit dumplings course would usually be a dessert, traditional Czech plum dumplings would be considered a main meal on it’s own and maybe priced accordingly. The initial preparation is kitchen 101. For serving 4-6 people lets say we start with 450g of potato (after peeling), so you’ll need one third of that weight i.e. 150g of coarse flour and an egg. Yep, that’s it. You boil and mash the potato then mix that with the egg and the flour until you get a consistent dough which you can then roll out onto a board.
Making the Dumplings
If you really want a zing out of it then use plums that have been soaked in rum. Whereas the sweet fruit dumplings are almost impossible to get wrong, the use of potato complicates things here. The dough can’t be too dry or too thin because you won’t be able to wrap the plum but it can’t be too wet or too thick because it won’t cook properly. There’s some trial and error involved. Anyway when ready you’ll put them straight into boiling water to cook. They’ll sink straight away but the idea is to use a spatula to keep them off the bottom until they float. Then allow another 4 minutes so total cooking time should be 8-9 minutes. Some people like to put a pinch of salt into the water, we don’t.
Presentation
So much talk of potato but this is supposed to be a sweet dish so when it’s presented it should traditionally have a topping of grated cottage cheese, melted butter, sugar as required and the other seasonal ingredient, poppy seeds. In the picture above we did not have the grated cottage cheese and poppy seeds. Instead that was replaced by grated hard gingerbread. It’s a diet buster.
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