Parene Buchty (A Recipe From Slovakia)

Category: Desserts & Sweets | Blog URL: http://www.russianseason.net/index.php/2009/08/parene-buchty-a-recipe-from-slovakia/

This recipe was entered in The Foodista Best of Food Blogs Cookbook contest, a compilation of the world’s best food blogs which was published in Fall 2010.

Photo: Alina Petropavlovska

Ingredients

250 ml milk

450 grams wheat flour

1 egg

350 grams thick prune jam

25 grams yeast

2 tablespoons sugar

A pinch of salt

2 tablespoons vegetable oil

Preparation

Heat milk a little bit, just so that it’s a bit warmer than room temperature.

Dissolve the yeast in approximately half of the milk.

Add in the remaining milk, flour, egg, sugar, and salt.

Beat the dough with a mixer and then knead by hand a little bit.

Cover the dough and leave it for 30-40 minutes, until it doubles in size.

When the dough has risen, roll it out about 7 mm thick, and cut in 24 square pieces. Put a teaspoon of prune jam on each square. Make sure you do not put too much filling, otherwise it will leak!

Seal the buchtas by folding them as envelopes first and then sealing tightly.

Put the buchtas on a flour-sprinkled surface.

In a saucepan, bring to boil 2 cups of water and place a steamer over the boiling water.

Brush the steamer with some vegetable oil to prevent buchtas from sticking to it!

Place a few buchtas in the steamer. Leave some space between them, as they will grow as they cook. We placed 6 pieces at a time, but of course this depends on the size of your steamer and saucepan.

Note the time as you put the last buchta in the steamer and cook them for 20 minutes. Keep the water boiling. Add more water if necessary as you start to cook the next set.

Ready buchtas should be spongy and moist inside, like a slightly undercooked bread.

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About

This dish which I first tried in the beautiful Slovakia. It is called Parene Buchty (pronounced bookhti). These are a sort of large steam-cooked dumplings with a filling inside, which makes it quite a heavy food, but we tried to adapt the original recipe by taking fine flour instead of coarse flour and making the dumplings smaller in size (I think ours were about twice as small).
I also spent some time at the supermarket choosing the right prune jam for the filling, as I needed a very thick, yet not gelatinous jam. If it is jelly-like, it will melt too soon and may start leaking, you know. Finally I discovered a jam I had never tried before, which turned out to be pretty good. And it never bubbled or leaked.
There are many traditional ways to serve Parene Buchty. For example, when I was in Slovakia, we served them with chocolate pudding sauce. You might as well serve them with melted butter and sprinkle with cinnamon and caster sugar; or make a poppyseed sauce. Our choice was plain chocolate dressing, as we figured this type of dessert required a simple garnish.
So, if you want a substantial, folksy Eastern European dessert, here is the Parene Buchty recipe.