Cottage Cheese Donuts with Jam and Sour Cream (Papanasi cu Dulceata si Smantana)
When I was growing up my mother only made one kind of donut ... though it didn't really resemble the North American version but was more like a free-form fritter scooped/scraped out of the mixing bowl with a large spoon and fried. Sometimes, she added raisins to the yeast batter, but that wasn't too often. Being children, my brother and I never asked the Romanian names of what she cooked for us and the closest she came to giving us a name for these fritters was to call them donuts. (I don't think she knew the English word for fritters, to be honest.) They were probably what are called Gogosi (go-go-shi) in Romania in any case. I have NO idea what they were called in Yugoslavia. :)
ETA: My mom's fritters also bear more than a striking resemblance to the Spanish buneolos/bimuelos, though they were not drizzled with honey syrup but just sprinkled with icing sugar or rolled in regular or finely granulated sugar. Sometimes I would cut them in half and spoon some jam in the middle, close them up and eat them that way.
My nephew, the product of 2 different cultures, Romanian and Hungarian, has always enjoyed the benefits of this union and recently, while in New York for school, visited restaurants which featured the cuisine of each. He sent me pictures of the dessert he had at the Romanian one and I was stumped because I had never seen anything like it. So, I took a closer look at the menu and was intrigued to learn about something called Papanasi (papa-nash), a 'donut' made from a soft dough with cottage cheese, shaped into a round, with or without a hole in the middle, and served with jam (usually sour cherry) and sour cream. A small ball made out of the dough (like a Timbit) is often placed on top like a little hat.
I did a little research and these are the results of my first attempt at this special dessert.
The two kinds of papanasi made (with a hole in the center and without) and served with home cultured creme fraiche and raspberry jam. Both plates are waiting for their garnish of powdered/icing sugar before being served.
The traditional papanasi donut with a hole in the middle and the donut center on top, sitting next to the donut cutter used.
I played around with the scraps after cutting out the 8 donuts and made some smaller donuts without a hole, which I fried, then topped with one of the donut centers from the cut-out donuts. The centers were a bit too big in proportion to the base but the result resembled the papanasi that I had seen in pictures more closely.
Tastewise, these donuts reminded me somewhat of cake donuts that I've had with a faint taste of lemon from the zest and juice, and, vanilla. The dough itself was perforated with holes and not quite as dense as I had expected.
The recipes I found on-line varied with some of them using semolina (or gris in Romanian) along with the flour, but since I didn't have any in the house, I left it out. I DID splurge on a fancy donut cutter which turned out to be useless as the dough was so soft that the donuts stretched as I lifted them up to transfer them into the cooking oil. When I assembled the two, the donut centers fell right into the hole in the middle of the donuts.
Cottage Cheese Donuts With Jam and Sour Cream (Papanasi) - makes 8-14 depending on size
500 g (2 cups) cottage cheese with curd (or substitute paneer cheese with 1-2 tbsp of yogurt)**
2 eggs
1 tablespoon of lemon juice
200 g (1 1/2 cups) all-purpose flour, plus another 1/2 cup for forming the donuts
100 g (1/2 cups) sugar
1 teaspoon of baking powder
1/4 teaspoon of salt
1/4 teaspoon of vanilla sugar
zest from 1/2 lemon (~1 tsp)
enough vegetable oil to just barely cover the donuts
Garnish
sour cream or creme fraiche**
jam (sour cherry or raspberry**)
icing sugar
** What I used
Preheat 1 inch of vegetable oil on burner at medium heat in a shallow frying pan.
Combine the dry ingredients together in a medium bowl. Add the lemon zest and mix through to combine.
Puree the cottage cheese or paneer with yogurt in a food processor until smooth. Add the lemon juice and eggs and process for another minute or two until the mixture is smooth.
Add the dry ingredients and pulse for another couple of minutes.
NOTE that the batter looks curdled due to the much drier paneer cheese used. I expect the cottage cheese version will look a bit smoother.
Forming the Papanasi
1. The traditional forming method
Using a spoon, form 8 pieces of dough and then roll each one of them until they take the shape of a disc, about 1/2 inch thick; make a hole in the middle of each disc and use the extra dough to form another 8, smaller, round-shaped pieces.
The 16 pieces of dough will be fried in hot cooking oil for about 5-6 minutes, until they get a golden-brown color. Once the first side is cooked, turn over and repeat on the other side.
At the end of this process you will have eight large donuts and eight smaller ones which are more rounded.
2. Forming by rolling out the dough ... which I did
On the counter or any flat working surface, add 1/4 cups of flour and dump the papanasi batter on top. You'll see it's more liquid than a normal dough.
Knead in the flour and roll out very gently to about 1/2" thick sprinkling more flour on top so that the dough doesn't stick to the rolling pin. Cut using a donut cutter or a 4" round cutter. You can poke a small hole (1/2-1" in diameter) in the center with your index finger, if desired, and break off enough dough to make 1" round balls for each donut cut out.
Fry as above in a shallow frying pan, turning over to cook each side. If your oil is too hot, the outside will be brown while the inside of the donut will be undercooked. For this reason, don't make your donuts too thick.
Let the donuts cool for a few minutes. On each larger donut, place a spoonful of jam and then a spoonful of sour cream (or the reverse as I did), then put each small donut ball on top.
Sift icing sugar over the top.
Interior of the donuts ... lots of holes
ETA: My mom's fritters also bear more than a striking resemblance to the Spanish buneolos/bimuelos, though they were not drizzled with honey syrup but just sprinkled with icing sugar or rolled in regular or finely granulated sugar. Sometimes I would cut them in half and spoon some jam in the middle, close them up and eat them that way.
My nephew, the product of 2 different cultures, Romanian and Hungarian, has always enjoyed the benefits of this union and recently, while in New York for school, visited restaurants which featured the cuisine of each. He sent me pictures of the dessert he had at the Romanian one and I was stumped because I had never seen anything like it. So, I took a closer look at the menu and was intrigued to learn about something called Papanasi (papa-nash), a 'donut' made from a soft dough with cottage cheese, shaped into a round, with or without a hole in the middle, and served with jam (usually sour cherry) and sour cream. A small ball made out of the dough (like a Timbit) is often placed on top like a little hat.
I did a little research and these are the results of my first attempt at this special dessert.
The two kinds of papanasi made (with a hole in the center and without) and served with home cultured creme fraiche and raspberry jam. Both plates are waiting for their garnish of powdered/icing sugar before being served.
The traditional papanasi donut with a hole in the middle and the donut center on top, sitting next to the donut cutter used.
I played around with the scraps after cutting out the 8 donuts and made some smaller donuts without a hole, which I fried, then topped with one of the donut centers from the cut-out donuts. The centers were a bit too big in proportion to the base but the result resembled the papanasi that I had seen in pictures more closely.
Tastewise, these donuts reminded me somewhat of cake donuts that I've had with a faint taste of lemon from the zest and juice, and, vanilla. The dough itself was perforated with holes and not quite as dense as I had expected.
The recipes I found on-line varied with some of them using semolina (or gris in Romanian) along with the flour, but since I didn't have any in the house, I left it out. I DID splurge on a fancy donut cutter which turned out to be useless as the dough was so soft that the donuts stretched as I lifted them up to transfer them into the cooking oil. When I assembled the two, the donut centers fell right into the hole in the middle of the donuts.
Cottage Cheese Donuts With Jam and Sour Cream (Papanasi) - makes 8-14 depending on size
500 g (2 cups) cottage cheese with curd (or substitute paneer cheese with 1-2 tbsp of yogurt)**
2 eggs
1 tablespoon of lemon juice
200 g (1 1/2 cups) all-purpose flour, plus another 1/2 cup for forming the donuts
100 g (1/2 cups) sugar
1 teaspoon of baking powder
1/4 teaspoon of salt
1/4 teaspoon of vanilla sugar
zest from 1/2 lemon (~1 tsp)
enough vegetable oil to just barely cover the donuts
Garnish
sour cream or creme fraiche**
jam (sour cherry or raspberry**)
icing sugar
** What I used
Preheat 1 inch of vegetable oil on burner at medium heat in a shallow frying pan.
Combine the dry ingredients together in a medium bowl. Add the lemon zest and mix through to combine.
Puree the cottage cheese or paneer with yogurt in a food processor until smooth. Add the lemon juice and eggs and process for another minute or two until the mixture is smooth.
Add the dry ingredients and pulse for another couple of minutes.
NOTE that the batter looks curdled due to the much drier paneer cheese used. I expect the cottage cheese version will look a bit smoother.
Forming the Papanasi
1. The traditional forming method
Using a spoon, form 8 pieces of dough and then roll each one of them until they take the shape of a disc, about 1/2 inch thick; make a hole in the middle of each disc and use the extra dough to form another 8, smaller, round-shaped pieces.
The 16 pieces of dough will be fried in hot cooking oil for about 5-6 minutes, until they get a golden-brown color. Once the first side is cooked, turn over and repeat on the other side.
At the end of this process you will have eight large donuts and eight smaller ones which are more rounded.
2. Forming by rolling out the dough ... which I did
On the counter or any flat working surface, add 1/4 cups of flour and dump the papanasi batter on top. You'll see it's more liquid than a normal dough.
Knead in the flour and roll out very gently to about 1/2" thick sprinkling more flour on top so that the dough doesn't stick to the rolling pin. Cut using a donut cutter or a 4" round cutter. You can poke a small hole (1/2-1" in diameter) in the center with your index finger, if desired, and break off enough dough to make 1" round balls for each donut cut out.
Fry as above in a shallow frying pan, turning over to cook each side. If your oil is too hot, the outside will be brown while the inside of the donut will be undercooked. For this reason, don't make your donuts too thick.
Let the donuts cool for a few minutes. On each larger donut, place a spoonful of jam and then a spoonful of sour cream (or the reverse as I did), then put each small donut ball on top.
Sift icing sugar over the top.
Interior of the donuts ... lots of holes