This recipe comes to us from Patricia Nemetz-Mills. She recently traveled in Burgenland and a cousin's mother served Zwetschgen Knödeln at lunch,
which brought back wonderful memories of her own grandmother's kitchen and recipe, so she dug it out of her own recipe box when she returned home.
Although we have published similar recipes twice before
(recipes 129
and 235),
we include it here as a companion piece to Patricia's trip report, which appears
later in this newsletter (357).
(from Patricia Nemetz-Mills)
- 4 large potatoes (peeled, boiled and cooled,
then riced or rough-mashed) - saved potato water
- 4 cups flour
- 1 large egg
- 1 tsp. salt
- sweet, ripe plums
- sugar
- cinnamon (optional)
Ingredients-coating:
- 1 stick of butter
- 1/2 to 1 cup sugar
- 1/2 to 1 cup bread crumbs
- 1 tsp. cinnamon (optional)
Make dough by mixing potatoes, flour, egg, and salt, then gradually adding potato water. Add enough potato water until the dough comes away from fingers while mixing.
Roll out dough on a floured surface, a bit thicker than cookie dough, maybe 1/2 inch thick. Cut dough into squares large enough to accommodate 1 plum. Place one pitted plum in center of each square. Sprinkle plum generously with sugar and cinnamon. Seal dough around plum, making sure there are no gaps. Drop sealed dumplings with plum in boiling water. Boil a few minutes until the dumplings start to rise to top and dough is firm. Drain.
Melt butter in a large pan, and add sugar, cinnamon, and bread crumbs into melted butter. The amount needed of each ingredient should be enough to coat the bottom of your large pan. Add more if necessary. Drop the boiled dumplings into the crumb mixture, stirring gently to coat each one. Serve warm.
Choose plums that are moderately firm, but sweet and ripe, preferably with skin that is not too tough when heated. Plums tend to get sour when cooked, so test boil a few to see how much sugar to add for your dumplings. If plums are large, you can put 1/2 plum in each dumpling instead of 1 whole plum.