Papanași
Ingredients
- 500 g cottage cheese, well drained
- 2 eggs
- A few drops rum extract (optional)
- 75 g granulated sugar
- 1 tbsp vanilla sugar
- 230-250 g all-purpose flour
- 1 tsp baking soda
- Vegetable oil for deep-frying (about 10 cm deep)
- 250 g smetana or crème fraîche, to serve
- Runny whole-fruit blueberry jam, to serve
Papanași are the dessert every Romanian restaurant serves and every grandmother makes: a dough of well-drained cottage cheese, eggs, sugar and vanilla, bound with just enough flour and baking soda to hold together while staying tender. The dough is divided so that each portion makes a ring plus a small ball. Both are fried gently until deep golden, and the ring is served with the ball perched on top, all of it drenched in smetana (soured cream) and a runny blueberry preserve that pools around the plate.
Method
Drain any excess liquid from the cottage cheese. Blend it with the eggs, rum extract, sugar and vanilla sugar using an immersion blender into a rough paste — a little chunkiness keeps the doughnuts delicate.
Mix the flour with the baking soda and add it to the cheese. Knead lightly on a floured surface into a ball; the dough should stay slightly sticky but manageable, so add extra flour only if you must.
Divide the dough into 9 balls. Roll 8 of them into thick sausages and join the ends to make rings with a hole in the centre. Divide the ninth ball into 8 small balls.
Heat about 10 cm of oil in a deep pot over medium-low heat; it is ready when bubbles form around a toothpick dipped into it.
Fry only two or three papanași at a time, turning them several times with a slotted spoon, until deep golden, 5-7 minutes. Fry the small balls for 3-4 minutes.
Drain on paper towels.
Serve warm: spoon smetana over each ring, add runny jam, set a small ball on top and finish with a little more cream and jam.
