Back to Childhood – Oatmeal & Cottage Cheese Dumplings with sour cream and berries

When I started living in Norway, I was quite surprised by the limited variety of products that one gets when shopping in local foodstores – compared to what I was used to from home or other europian countries I visited. Basically, here in Norway, no matter which supermarket you go to, you get the same products. Same cheese, same ham, same milk, same yoghurt, butter, soda, meat, … Everything is already packed in plastic, of course.

For quite some time I couldn’t, well – I didn’t want to, get used to it. I needed to understand a bit more about how the market works up here and to simply accept the fact that I can’t get the same as what I was used to back in time. Mainly I missed going to a butcher shop to get fresh ham cut right there and packed in paper, or fresh yoghurt and goat cheese from local farmers. Well well…

At the same time, I started enjoying the easy access to fish and seafood – shrimps and salmon became common parts of my diet very quickly! And as time was passing, I realized that the variety of food here is not that limited – because what more does one need, really? And that the products which are available are usually of very good (and stable) quality – and that’s worth something, isn’t it!

But during the first years, I was also used to travel back home to Czech quite regularly. I came home usually every third or fourth month and when I was there, I enjoyed whatever food I had been missing while staying in Norway. During the first years I also believed that sooner or later, I will move back and live in Czech, Norway was just…and experience. However, things have changed. Not only do I not plan leaving Norway any time soon, currently I cannot even visit my parents – for more than 8 months already I haven’t been able to travel home because of the corona virus and restrictions/ security measures connected to it.

Uf, I don’t want to talk about how much I miss my home and my family – because yes, I do – a lot, it’s hard not be able to see them and especially to be worried about everyone’s health, my parents mostly … but aren’t we all worried about such?

Let’s talk about the good things that appears one one’s mind when missing home! Honestly, I can miss some of the good Czech meals so badly sometimes! Recently, my desperation pushed me into making my first own goulash and even though you might be about to say that there’s nothing so special about making it, I was really satisfied, ok? 😅

But now, during these warm summer months, I have to think about those times many, many years ago, when I was still little and my family used to spent holidays at an old cottage, former farm, with a large garden full of red currant bushes, gooseberries, strawberries, cherry, walnut, apple or rowan berries trees…

I would spent hours and hours in that garden – talking to imaginary elves in the sandstones around, climbing trees pretending I am an adventurer or an indian guarding his territory, or even a princess in her royal garden – wearing grandmum’s old (and really fancy) nightgowns and high heel shoes that my sister and I found in our grandmum’s old wardrobe.

When playing since an early morning , one gets reeeally hungry and I would be the happiest kid if I got something sweet for lunch! It might sound weird to you, but back in Czech it’s not that unusual to eat as main course what one would probably consider rather as a dessert. Among such meals would definitely belong pancakes, bread pudding with apples and cinnamon, rice pudding with red currant, sweet (sourdough) dumplings with apricots, plums, blueberries or those little cream cheese dumplings with sour cream and berries, oh my!

How much I miss being a kid in that garden and eating simple but so awesome food prepared on an old stone stove!

Enough. I guess you understand I had to make at least some of the meals mentioned above. Once again, I decided to prepare a rather simple and easy dish, but I got a problem – I needed quark. For those of you who have no idea what I am talking about, it’s just fine – cause not many do know, really 😆

Quark is a type of fresh dairy product made by warming soured milk – the result is something between yoghurt and cottage cheese, with relatively low fat content. Quark can be sold as a rather moist, creamy and spreadable thick yoghurt like cheese, or as a piece of a rather dry, solid cheese perfectly suitable for grating or – making dumplings.

I tried to find something like solid quark in the stores here, but I had to give up. Instead, I tried to find some good replacement – and not surprisingly, cottage cheese was what I ended up with. If one drains the excess water and breaks the individual pieces of cottage cheese into a homogenous mash, the result works perfectli fine -“quark like”.

Oatmeal & Cottage Cheese Dumplings with sour cream and berries

This recipe for Cottage Cheese and Oatmeal Dumplings won’t take you more than a half an hour and I can promise that not only you will be full after eating it, but that you’ll get a bit of that childish happiness feeling also!

Two tips before you jump to the recipe. First: be sure you break the pieces of cottage cheese enough, just by fork but so that you don’t have only separated big clumps, but rather small pieces that will help to create a nice and even dough. Second: Be patient and let the dough rest for 15 minutes in the fridge. You want to get nice dumplings, not an ugly oatmeal-soup-something, do you?

INGREDIENTS:

FOR 8 SMALL DUMPLINGS:

100g oatmeal flour (oatmeal processed in a blender into fine flour)

125g cottage cheese

1 egg

1tbsp Sukrin (erythritol)

1 tsp lemon zest

1/4 tsp cinnamon

1/8 tsp cardamom

pinch of salt

FOR FINISHING:

250g fresh or frozen berries ( I used mixture of blueberries, rasperries, blackberries and red currant)

1tsp Sukrin (erythritol)

1/4 tsp cinnamon

Or only yoghurt, sour cream and fresh/ frozen berries 😉

INSTRUCTIONS:

If you do not have oatmeal flour, then start by processing oatmeal in a blender into fine flour.

In a bowl, break cottage cheese lumps into smaller pieces – use a fork to do so. Then add Sukrin, egg, lemon zest and salt and mix well together.

Blend oatmeal flour with cinnamon and cardamom and then mix with the cottage cheese mixture.

Cover the bowl with the dough by plastic foil and let it rest in a fridge for 15 – 20 minutes.

While the dough is resting, prepare the berry sauce – place berries into a small sauce pan, add sweetener and cinamon and bring to boil. Don’t forget to move the berries all the time so you don’t burn them! Boil the sauce for a few minutes – you want to reduce water that get released from the berries into approximately a half.

In another sauce pan bring water to boil.

Take the dough out of the fridge and by wet hands form small dumplings – I make about 8 of them, usually.

When water is boiling, put all dumplings into to the sauce pan and cook them for about 3 to 4 minutes.

Take the dumplings out of the water and serve them with the berry sauce you prepared and a spoon of sour cream. You can also top them with sliced almonds, more sugar or even melted butter, hmmm! 😋