Kre­plach – Ashke­nazi Dumplings in a Veg­an Soup

Kre­plach are pas­ta dumplings, filled with meat or veg­eta­bles and boiled in a broth. They are the Ashke­nazi rel­a­tives of oth­er types of East­ern Euro­pean dumplings like the Ukrain­ian varenyky or the Pol­ish piero­gi. It is very like­ly that kre­plach came to Cen­tral and East­ern Europe via the Ital­ian Jews who began to reset­tle from the Sephardic (Spanish/​Portuguese/​Italian) com­mu­ni­ties to East­ern Europe via Ger­many start­ing in the four­teenth cen­tu­ry. Some sources even sug­gest that kre­plach were the orig­i­nal fore­fa­thers of East­ern Euro­pean dumplings. Served on many Jew­ish hol­i­days, they are a sta­ple dur­ing the fes­ti­val of Purim; some say the dumplings sym­bol­ise the rev­e­la­tion of Esther’s Jew­ish iden­ti­ty, which hep­led save her peo­ple. Here I am offer­ing the most uni­ver­sal veg­e­tar­i­an ver­sion, which can be eas­i­ly made veg­an or indeed with meat. As for the shape, you can come across a myr­i­ad. To me the clas­sic kre­plach is a tri­an­gle shape, but you can pinch the tri­an­gles’ edges to make them look very sim­i­lar to Ital­ian tortelli­ni to enhance their ances­tral con­nec­tion or opt for the half-moon shapes of their Ukrain­ian and Pol­ish siblings.

Serves 4 – 6

For the sim­ple soup:

veg­etable oil, for frying 

1 onion, diced 

1 large car­rot, peeled and grated 

1/2 fen­nel, diced

2 cel­ery sticks, thin­ly sliced

3 – 4 gar­lic cloves, fine­ly chopped

1 table­spoon mixed dried herbs

1/4 tea­spoon turmeric

20g (3/​4oz) fresh dill and pars­ley, fine­ly chopped

salt and black pepper

For the dumpling dough:

300g (101/​2oz) plain (all-pur­pose)

flour, plus extra for dusting 

2 tea­spoons dried dill 

1 tea­spoon salt 

3 eggs

Start with the soup. In a large saucepan, heat the oil and fry all the veg­eta­bles, apart from the gar­lic, with a gen­er­ous pinch of salt a medi­um heat for 20 min­utes, or until soft­ened and slight­ly caramelised. Add the gar­lic, dried herbs and turmer­ic and cook for anoth­er 2 min­utes. Pour in 1 litre (4 cups) water, add a gen­er­ous pinch of salt, bring to the boil, then reduce the heat and sim­mer for 15 min­utes. When the time is up, add the fresh herbs and take the pan off the heat. Let the flavours infuse while you fin­ish the rest.

To make the dumpling dough, mix the flour, dill and salt in a large bowl. In a sep­a­rate bowl, beat the eggs with 80ml (23/​4fl oz) water, then pour into the bowl with the dry ingre­di­ents. Start by mix­ing with a fork, then grad­u­al­ly work the mix­ture with your hands to form a dough. Knead the dough for 2 min­utes, cov­er with cling film (plas­tic wrap), and let it rest in the fridge while you pre­pare the filling.

Place the pota­to in a large saucepan, cov­er with salt­ed water, bring to the boil and cook until soft. Heat some oil in a fry­ing pan and fry the onion with a pinch of salt over a medi­um heat for 15 min­utes, or until caramelised. Tip into a bowl. Add a lit­tle more oil to the same pan and fry the mush­rooms for 10 min­utes. Tip into the bowl with the onion.

When the pota­to is ready, drain, add the but­ter, mash, then add to the bowl with the onion and mush­rooms and mix well. It might seem like very lit­tle, but this is exact­ly how much you’ll need for the filling.

For the dumpling filing: 

1 large pota­to (weigh­ing approx.100g/31/2oz), peeled and cubed

veg­etable oil, for frying

1 onion, thin­ly sliced

200g (7oz) white but­ton mush­rooms, fine­ly diced

20g (3/​4oz) butter

Dust a clean sur­face with some flour and work the dough for a few min­utes to wake it up. Next, roll it out into a large rec­tan­gle. We are aim­ing for as thin a sheet as you pos­si­bly can pro­duce. Trim off the edges to make an even rec­tan­gle (reserve the dough in the cling film), then cut the rec­tan­gle into even squares. You will prob­a­bly get four ver­ti­cal­ly and sev­en or eight horizontally.

Have two light­ly damp dish tow­els ready. Cov­er the squares with one, and reserve the oth­er for fin­ished dumplings. To shape the dumplings, pick up each square, fill it with a shy tea­spoon of the fill­ing and fold it into a tri­an­gle shape, pinch­ing all edges closed. Place under the oth­er tow­el, while you fin­ish the rest.

Bring a large saucepan of water to the boil, then boil the dumplings for 5 min­utes. Drain.

To serve, place around 4 dumplings into a soup bowl and top with a ladle of broth. Sea­son with black pep­per and tuck in while every­thing is steam­ing hot.

Extract­ed from Kapus­ta, by Alis­sa Tim­o­shk­i­na (Quadrille $42). Pho­tog­ra­phy by Lau­ra Edwards