Zeppelins with cottage cheese and meat
5 servings
40 minutes
Robertas Lukjanskis, chef of the Vilins restaurant (St. Petersburg), shared the recipe with us. "In Lithuanian families, zeppelins are rarely cooked - it's not a quick process. You need to peel a lot of potatoes, then grate and squeeze them - not everyone likes it. Previously, zeppelins were simply called dumplings, and during the First World War, when German airships flew through Lithuania to Russia, someone looked at the sky and realized that here - the name is flying. In Lithuania, zeppelins are served with sour cream and fried cracklings . But for a Russian, such a serving is a shock to the eyes: zeppelins are simply floating in fat, and also with sour cream. It tastes great, but looks a little repulsive. So I came up with the idea of making them with béchamel sauce.
1
Peel the potatoes.
2
Boil 1 kilogram of potatoes until cooked and pass through a meat grinder.
- Potato: 3 kg
3
Grate the remaining potatoes on the finest grater to turn them into a puree. To simplify the process, you can use an electric potato grater or pass the potatoes through a juicer and use the pulp. If the juicer extracts too much moisture from the potatoes, add some potato juice to the pulp to make it moist.
- Potato: 3 kg
4
Squeeze the resulting mass through cheesecloth and let the potato juice settle. When it separates into starch and water, drain the water and keep the starch.
- Potato starch: 1 tablespoon
5
Mix boiled potatoes, raw potatoes, and the starch left after settling potato juice.
- Potato: 3 kg
- Potato starch: 1 tablespoon
6
For the meat filling, pass the pork neck through a meat grinder, finely chop 100 g of onion, sauté it in butter until golden brown, and mix it with the minced meat. Add salt (10 g).
- Pork neck: 300 g
- Onion: 200 g
- Salt: 50 g
7
For the cottage cheese filling, finely chop the tarragon and mix it with the cottage cheese.
- Tarragon: 50 g
- Cottage cheese 9%: 300 g
8
Take 100 grams of potato mass and 60 grams of filling. Form a flatbread from the dough, place the filling in the center, and shape it into a zeppelin.
9
Bring water to a boil, add 1 tablespoon of salt and potato starch. Place the dumplings in the boiling water. Cook meat dumplings for 25 minutes, and cheese ones for 2 minutes.
- Salt: 50 g
- Potato starch: 1 tablespoon
10
Prepare béchamel sauce. Melt butter in a saucepan, finely chop onion (100 g), and sauté until golden brown. Add flour and sauté for 2-3 minutes until the color changes. Introduce milk and cream, stirring until it thickens to yogurt consistency. Cut the bacon into small cubes, add two-thirds to the sauce, and set aside one-third.
- Butter: 80 g
- Onion: 200 g
- Wheat flour: 40 g
- Cream: 100 ml
- Boiled and smoked pork belly: 100 g
11
Place the zeppelins on a plate, drizzle with béchamel sauce, and sprinkle with chopped green onions and remaining bacon.
- Green onions: 100 g
- Boiled and smoked pork belly: 100 g