The story of how my granny gave me cooking advice and the 1st recipe.
I probably should start with that cooking at my home was always a big thing. My grandma is a fantastic cook, my mom is a great chef and you could have easily called my dad chef as well. I guess one can say that I was pretty spoiled when it comes to yummy food and the level of cooking knowledge.
It wasn’t until I moved abroad for uni to realize how big of a privilege that was. It was also the first time when I figured out that many of my friends and peers from the study don’t have the same amount of culinary knowledge. Things that were obvious to me were often shocking to them.
I love to cook so I was preparing food quite often for my friends but after a few months away from home I started to miss traditional polish food. Here come my true savior and expert when it comes to traditional food: my dear Granny. When I called her she started throwing names of dishes and recipes out of her sleeve but the problem was that, as I student, I didn’t have nearly half of the ingredients for those masterpieces. I asked for something simple with a short ingredients list.
My granny said: “I have something perfect! A taste from your childhood. Sometimes a simple dish is the best one!” I got all hyped up because well I think we all get pretty excited when we think of the food that grandma made for us when we were little. The dish is called kopytka (translating to English it literally means“little hooves”), it’s a type of potato dumplings. You can meet them in Polish, Belarusian, and Lithuanian cuisine. It can be topped with butter, cinnamon and sugar or if you’re a savory type of person then you can fry it on a pan (after they’re already cooked) with onions and bacon and butter (polish people love butter). Actually, you can put almost anything on top of them and that’s why they’re so good. Okay, enough of the talking, let me give you the recipe.
Kopytka
Ingredients list:
- 500 grams of potatoes (should weight that much after peeling the skin off)
- 1 small egg
- 130 grams of flour+ some extra to sprinkle on the counter
- 1/2 teaspoon of salt
The first step is to prepare potatoes. Peel off potato skin, cut potatoes into cubes. Add the potatoes to a large pot of cool salted water. Bring the water to a boil and cook for 20–25 minutes until they’re thoroughly cooked (cooking time depends on the potato type). You can check if they’re ready by piercing them with a fork or simply tasting one. Drain the potatoes (make sure there’s no water left!) and set aside to cool down a bit. Next, mush them in a bowl until all the lumps are gone.
On the counter or wooden board put the flour, then on top add mashed potatoes with a hole in the middle for the egg and salt (see picture below).
The next step is to mix it all together, don’t be scared to make your hands dirty! Working the dough with your hands works the best. If it’s still too sticky you can add more flour.
In the meantime put a big pot with water on the stove. When it starts to boil add a bit of salt to it.
Divide the dough into 4 parts. Sprinkle some flour on the counter, take one part and roll it (long, round, around 2 cm thick) and cut it into pieces 1,5–2 cm long (see picture below). Sprinkle some flour all over the pieces. Repeat the process for the remaining parts.
If you got to this point, congrats! You’re almost at the finish line. One by one place kopytkas in the boiling water (medium heat). After they flow out to the surface wait around one minute and fish out all the pieces (picture below) and place them on a plate. Add some toppings to your liking and you’re done!
That would be all for my first post. Let me know if you tried kopytkas before or if you are planning on making them! If you have any questions feel free to share in the comments ❤.
I hope you enjoyed it and until next time!
