Štruklji

Ingredients

• Flour400 g
• Warm water200 ml
• Vegetable oil40 ml
• Curd cheese700 g
• Eggs3
• Soured cream150 ml
• Sugar100 g
• Raisins80 g
• Tarragon — for the savoury version20 g
• Butter100 g
• Breadcrumbs80 g
• Salt1 tsp

Salt and spices grow more slowly than the rest: doubling a dish does not double the pepper.

Weight converts to ounces and volume to cups. Grams of flour are not turned into cups, because that depends on how tightly it is packed.

Method

1. 1

   Knead a soft dough from the flour, warm water, oil and salt and work it fifteen minutes.

   18 min

2. 2

   Cover it with a warmed bowl and rest it forty minutes; the dough has to turn pliable.

   45 min

3. 3

   Work the curd with the eggs, soured cream, sugar and raisins until even.

   10 min

4. 4

   Stretch the dough by hand on a cloth until translucent, as for strudel.

   20 min

5. 5

   Spread the filling over the sheet, leaving the edges clear, and roll it up using the cloth.

   12 min

6. 6

   Wrap the roll loosely in a clean cloth, tie the ends and lower it into boiling salted water.

   10 min

7. 7

   Boil it forty minutes, unwrap it, cut it into rounds and fry them in butter with the breadcrumbs.

   55 min

About the dish

The roll is wrapped in cloth and boiled rather than baked. Boiling gives a soft texture and a clean cut; baking makes an entirely different dish with a crust.

The cloth is tied loosely, with room left. The dough swells as it cooks, and a tightly tied roll either splits the cloth or bursts itself.

The finished rounds are fried in butter with breadcrumbs. That last step is obligatory: without it štruklji stay bland and damp.

Worth knowing

• — Use linen or cotton cloth without a pile. A terry towel leaves fibres in the dough that cannot be removed.
• — Cut the roll only once cooled to warm. Hot, it crushes under the knife and no clean rounds come of it.
• — The savoury version with tarragon is as classic as the sweet. In Slovenia they are treated as equals rather than one being a variant.

Nutrition

Per serving at the base yield, calculated from the ingredients rather than measured in a lab.

Calories

480 kcal

Protein

20 g

Fat

22 g

Carbs

50 g

More from Slovenia

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