Cooking Kozjansko Carps (Buckwheat Pockets)

Here is what take two looked like

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

First I made buckwheat cereal for the filling. I made it first so it would cook while I was making the dough. I used buckwheat cereal because I couldn’t find millet. I used 1/4 cup dry and followed the directions on the package. I have to say, Bob’s Red Mill Buckwheat Porridge was much easier and better tasting than my zganski. I will eat it again.

 

 

 

 

 

 

While that was cooking I made the dough

Dough

1 cups Buckwheat flour – the trick to sccess was that I didn’t use the buckwheat flour. I put the buckwheat cereal in the coffee grinder and made a much lighter flour. This worked much better than the buckwheat flour.

1 cups gluten free flour (for my friends who are gluten sensitive)
2 Tablespoons Sour Cream
About 1/2 cup of boiling water

To make the dough add the water to the buckwheat flour, just until it was wet. I then let cool then add the rest of the ingredients. The directions said to add more water if it was too dry, but mine was plenty moist. I kneaded in the gluten free flour until it was stiff enough to roll out, but still soft and stretchy.

 

Filling

1/2 cup cooked porridge
1 cup cottage cheese
1 egg
3 green onions chopped
I also added garlic and basil to taste as they were rather plain

Mix all the filling together

Then roll out the dough to about 1/4 inch thick. Cut into circles (I used a glass), put a spoon full of filling on each circle, then fold in half and crimp with a fork. Put the carps into boiling water and boil for about 20 min (they are particularly unappealing when boiling). I didn’t think they were done at 20 min, so I did them an extra 10.

They turned out looking like the picture with these directions, but Charlie thought they tasted really bland. Well, they are dumplings. So, I used the other Slovenian secret ingredient and fried them in bacon grease and served them with crumbled bacon and sour cream. Hey it might not be traditional, but then it was OK with my taster.

Next time I will roll them out as thin as I can so they aren’t too doughy.

 

 

The first go round were dark brown and heavy as boiled lead. I won’t feed these to my guests. I think they might have different types of buckwheat flour in Slovenia, since the picture in the recipe was much lighter. So, I made some major changes to the recipe in my ‘test kitchen’.