My husband has a grandmother, Valentina (or Tinka for close people), she is 84. They are married with the grandfather for almost 60 years, grown 2 daughters, live together in their own house (which is in an ideal state), take care of their perfect garden and themselves, hardly give us to help them, try not to burden others with their problems, but want to take care of others’ problems (sometimes for too much). Till their 80 they went hiking, skiing. Grandfather drives a car and got his endless drivers license last year. They are the salt of the earth, family power. They remind me mine grandparents, all already gone. Anxiously caring, directively advising, full of memories and at the same time remarkably flexible and ready to listen and hear, though not from the first try and not always.
So, Tinka cooks amazingly good traditional Slovenian dishes and, what is interesting, having obvious obsessive-compulsive part of personality, she insists in creative approach to cooking, says, that she makes everything “by eye”, “by feeling”. Me and my husband asked her to make for as a cooking master-class. And the first dish is some kind of ravioli or Russian “vareniki” – Slovenian “krapi”.
Tinka’s version of krapi is ones made of buckwheat flour filled with cottage cheese and covered by a butter sauce.
Ingredients are:
dough: 500 gr. of buckwheat flour, boiling water with salt;
filling: cottage cheese (200 gr.), 1 egg, sour-cream (2 table spoons), breading (breadcrumbs, 4-5 table spoons).
The process: put flower into a bowl, mix in boiling water with salt, steer. Put on the table, add a bit of flower (Tinka uses wheat one). Stir and roll out the dough, it can be thick enough. Take another bowl, out there cottage cheese, an egg, sour-cream, breading. Stir.
Rolled dough cut into squares, put in the filling, form triangles. Put in boiling water and cook until done. As a very tasty addition you can make a butter sauce (melt butter, put breadcrumbs in it and fry a bit).
As Tinka said, another recipe is to make krapi with boiled potatoes.
Bon appetite!
And some video, which, as my dear friend said, “you can watch endlessly”.
[:]