This recipe for dödölle comes from the Cuisine of Hungary by George Lang. Lang mentions that the dish comes from the area of Slovakia which was once part of Hungary, where it is also called sztrapacska. He also writes that cooked cabbage or savanyúkáposzta can be mixed into the dumplings before they are cooked.
Ingredients:
Salt
1.5 cups grated raw potatoes
.75 cup flour
1 tablespoon lard or bacon drippings
.5 cup sheep’s-milk cheese (Liptó or Bryndza)
Method:
“Fill a three or four quart pot with water and add two tablespoons salt,” writes Lang. “Bring to a boil. Mix the grated raw potatoes with flour and a pinch of salt. Place the mixture on a small wooden board and with the help of a spoon tear off walnut-sized pieces, dropping them gently into the boiling water. Cook them for 10 minutes. Remove the pieces with a slotted spoon and rinse them with cold water. Place the lard or bacon drippings in a frying pan. Put the little dumplings and the mashed or sieved cheese together in the pan and gently cook and stir for a few minutes. Serve immediately.”
George Lang is misinformed. The Dodolle is actually a Somogy country recipe and nothin to do with sztrapacska. The above recipe is wrong. For Dodolle you boil the skinned potatoes, then mashed and add 1/3 cup of Semolina (Griz in Hungarian), 2/3 cup of flour, a pinch of salt. Mix the mashed potato with the griz and flour and when thoroughly mixed cover the pot with a fitting lid and gentle heat the mass. Stir it with a wooden spoon, it is tend to stick to the bottom. The heating is necessary to allow the semolina(griz)to absorb the moisture from the boiled potato. Do the rest of George Lang recipe. By the way if you mix the grated raw potato with flour and not use egg 2 yolks as a binding, you archieve a dissolved mass in the pot. The boiling water simply wash away the flour.
I am a bit shocked reading this, because dödölle has NOTHING TO DO with sztrapacska. This recipe and description is totally misleading sorry that I have to say this.:( My grandma used to live close to the Slovakian border, she made the dödölle in a bit different way and she called it ganca, but it was still very far from sztrapacska which was also popular on our table in my childhood.
The recipe is not really wrong so much as mislabeled. Lang says it
is a Slovak dish, and it looks just like bryndzové halušky. If the
bryndza is omitted and the dumplings are mixed with cabbage then
they call it strapačky (obviously the dumplings have to be cooked
first, that is just an error). I don’t know what Lang was thinking
when he decided to call it dödölle, but he was describing a different
dish, and that explains the confusion. I guess if you want to split
hairs, you could say it’s not a Hungarian recipe and shouldn’t be
here. Also, it is quite possible to make raw potato dumplings
without eggs, but you need a higher ratio of flour to potato, or you
can squeeze some water out of the potato pulp before adding flour.
Either way the result is pretty dense, so you have to make the
dumplings small if you want them to be edible.
My Nagy AMA taught me to make krumpli galuska with raw
potatoes. Ratio was 2 potatoes to 1 egg, a little salt and
enough flour to bind it all together. We used a coarse grater. I
still love it with shredded cabbage or cottage cheese. You
have to make the galuska small, I do it the traditional way
using a spoon to break off small pieces flowing off a saucer.
Here in Zala Megye Dödölle are fried in a pan – they go together very well with venison or a “bélszin” with mushroom sauce or even goose liver …
Try the Zöld Elefant in Zalaapáti or Szent Antal in Zalabér for this.
If you’re not really hungry you can also eat them just with some sour cream …