Here I am with a new post about Hungarian recipes.

And it’s another one I really like it 🙂 Dödölle are, let’s say, kind of gnocchi, but they are then usually cooked in a pan with pork lard until they make a nice crust. Usually they are served as a main dish with a lot of onions and sour cream, but personally I prefer in this way.

But in restaurants you can find them sometimes served also as a side dish next to some nice meat recipes, for example some braised beef cheeks, or something like that.

It’s a recipe that is traditional of the western part of the country, especially the cultural region called Őrség, or geographically the county of Zala and surroundings. Dödölle is its more common name probably, but depending on the places it can be called also in other ways: gánica (as my wife’s grandmother used to call it), ganca, krumpligánica, cinke.

The basic recipe it’s made with wheat flour (usually what’s in Hungary is labelled as rétesliszt), but the version I am going to show it’s made with buckwheat flour.

Let’s see.

 

INGREDIENTS (2 people):

Dödölle:

• 400 g old potatoes
• 130-150 g buckwheat flour (it may vary a bit)
• pork rendered lard (I used Mangalica pork lard)
• salt

Sauce:

• fresh spring onions, 7-8 (or leek if you prefer)
• 30-40 g of dried porcini (or 400 g fresh ones)
• extra virgin olive oil
• salt

 

1. First of all we have to boil the potatoes: peel them, cut into small cubes, and add water just enough to cover them, less than a finger over them. Add some salt and boil until they are soft. If you use dried porcini, before starting with the potatoes put them to soak in warm water, for at least 20-30 minutes.
2. While the potatoes are boiling we can prepare the sauce. Cut the spring onions into pieces (not too small), and drain the porcini from their water.
3. Take a pan, heat a generous amount of extra virgin olive oil, and add the porcini, and after few minutes also the spring onions. Season with salt. When they are cooked (10 minutes all together), keep it aside warm.
4. Now the potatoes are soft and it should have remained just enough water. Squeeze the potatoes inside the pot, until you obtain a cream. Then start adding the buckwheat flour and stir energetically, stay on the heat. Keep doing it until you obtain a compact and homogeneous mass (it’s quite a hard job 😀 ).
5. Then take a large dish, grease it with lard and then spread all the potato mass on it, 1-2 cm thick.
6. Now take a spoon and cut pieces from it. They don’t need to be of regular shape, but you can shape them as you prefer.
7. Once you have cut all your dödölle, take an iron or cast iron pan (they are the best to obtain a nice crust), heat some pork fat and when it’s hot start cooking the dödölle, at medium/high heat. Few minutes on both sides should be ok.
8. When you have a nice crust, mix them with the spring onions and the porcini mushrooms.
9. Serve it and enjoy 🙂

 

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Products used:

Buckwheat flour: Bio hajdinaliszt from Pàsztòi Malom