Tuesday night, I made some spinach cottage cheese dumplings for dinner. The original recipe was for spinach ricotta dumplings but it seems my local supermarket is not so big on cheese variety so I had to substitute with cottage cheese. It made the dumpling ‘batter’ a little more wet so I had to put in more flour… and it also gave them a little bit of a tangy flavour. All in all, the dumplings are pretty easy to make, here are my super non-specific instructions (that makes about 4 portions if you’re reasonably hungry and 3 if you’re famished):
- What you need: spinach, 250g cottage cheese, one clove garlic, chives, 1 egg, 1 cup flour, 1 small onion, other vegetables of your liking, cream.
- Chop up a bunch of spinach, sautee in a pan with one clove of garlic and chopped chives, until spinach wilts and juices evaporate.
- Meanwhile, chop up an onion and whatever veggies you would like to eat with your dumplings (I choose mushrooms and asparagus).
- Take spinach off heat, mix in 250g of cottage cheese (drain off as much liquid as you can) and leave to cool.
- Once cool, beat in 1 egg, about 1 cup of flour (you might need a little more or less depending on how watery your batter is) and season with salt and pepper.
- Put a pot of water on to boil.
- Using two teaspoons, make little quenelles (this part is a little tricky but practice makes it easier), lightly roll in flour and shake off excess, place on a plate lined with baking paper. (OR if you are short on time like I was, just dunk the quenelles into boiling water right off the spoon! My batter was really sticky and it was just so much work to roll them in flour)
- Heat butter in a pan and cook dumplings under nice and golden on all sides.
- Meanwhile, sautee the onions in a separate pan until they caramelize, then add in your other vegetables (if you are using vegetables that have a longer cooking time, say carrots, you might want to half-cook them first).
- Add cream to the onion+veg mixture, and cook on low heat until cream starts to thicken. (I love the almost smoky flavour caramelized onions add to the cream).
- Take the cream mixture off the heat, toss the dumplings in the sauce and serve.
- Enjoy!
“it seems my local supermarket is not so big on cheese variety”
Cheese was one of the things I missed most during my short trip to Asia.
Last night I had something very similar: chard gnudi at Mistura – supposed to be the best Italian place in Toronto. And I’ll bet anything that your dumplings were 10x better, that just looks so awesome.
I finally found ricotta yesterday! At one of the sorta upscale supermarkets.
Haha, those dumplings were pretty good, we must make some when I’m back in Toronto, and I would also like some crazy mac n cheese! So is Mistura really the best Italian place in Toronto?
This is gonna sound overly harsh, but I’d have to say that overall Mistura sucks.
Good and attentive service, pretty cool menu, apparently the winelist there is awesome but that’s lost on me. Food was not better than lunch at Mercatto or Terroni but cost about twice as much (still less outrageous than I expected). Decent ambiance/decor (except the men’s room which is decorated like a frathouse livingroom from 1993). So-so location.
When you get back I’m gonna make you a mac ‘n cheese that’ll change your life!