Laba diena!
The title generally says it all, but I will try to be a bit more specific.
_Preface_
_Respecting my sweetest memories as a kid of living in Lithuania in the earlier 1980s in general, and including what I liked the most to enjoying myself in an ordinary dining room after school lessons while my mother was working hard in the Klaipeda port._
_Remembering my previous attempts to cook cepelinai once in a while in decades since then all of which have failed._
_With hope to succeed from this time on._
I’m going to cook two kinds of cepelinai:
– with ground meat (beef);
– with cottage cheese.
**Point A [Basics]**
I’m going to: take some raw potatoes and grate them all [_see point B_] by hand into a mass using a small-holed-rough-edged grater.
The goal is: to achieve the steady consistency of the potato mass as a mix of the thready (fibery) units, to let them units hug each other tightly to the extent of clinching, and to prevent the cepelinai from getting dissolved while boiling.
Finishing: I take the mass, press it with a cloth, collect the juice, and in a while, return the sediment (the starch) back into the potato, saying goodbye to the liquid.
**Point B [raw vs boiled potato: Questions]**
\- Some recipes say they use nothing but exclusively raw potatoes.
\- Some recipes say they also add some boiled potatoes with the nuances:
– 2/3 raw potatoes plus 1/3 boiled ones.
– 3/4 raw potatoes plus 1/4 boiled ones.
– peeled potato to be boiled.
– unpeeled potatoes to be boiled.
What does the actual best practice manual say on how to get the true and authentic result?
**Point C [adding starch: Questions]**
\- Some recipes say they can add some starch right into the potato mix (and also they can powder the cepelinai a bit with starch before boiling).
\- Some recipes say they add some starch into the water where we are boiling the cepelinai.
\- Some recipes say they do not use any additional starch.
What practice is the best?
**Point D [cooking time: Questions]**
– no less than 20 minutes
– 25 minutes
– up to 30 minutes
I suggest that 25 minutes approach (after the cepelinai come to the surface) boiling sounds pretty reasonable for the first time to try.
**Point E [proportions: Questions]**
Considering it could be up to ten persons of which everyone should get at least a pair of the full-sized cepelinai (one of each kind):
– it would be at least 20 cepelinai (10 with meat and 10 with cottage cheese);
– it would be about 6 kg of potatoes;
– it would take about 400 g of each stuffing (400 g of meat and 400 g of cottage cheese).
Note: calculations based on the recipe given in there:
https://worldrecipes.eu/lt/tradiciniai-lietuviski-cepelinai-receptas
**Point F [sauces: No principal questions]**
I suggest no revolutionary inventions here. Classical sour cream and fried pork with onions. So no special questions here.
**Summary**
That’s it.
Any sound ideas would be highly appreciated.
Thank you very much!
With great love and best wishes from Ukraine!
Cheers
2 comments
1. Make sure that potatoes are starch rich.
2. Potato mix should be formable. Some excessive water should be removed.
3. My mom sometimes adds extra starch to the mix if she sees that mix is not suitable.
4. Zeppelins should withhold after boiling.
These tips are for raw potatoes mix zeppelins.
Starch is added into the mix due to variaty of potatoes. Some are watery so you wil need to add startch and alo. Some has alot that none will be needed.
My mum sometimes would cheat if she messed up and cepelinai would break in water and would add startch im water so water becomes more thick and cepelinai dont break down.
Also this method is sometimes used by people who like to make home made frozen cepelinai.
But im general for good cepelinai you need lithuanian potatoe, or good starchy variaty, or just add more startch after draining.