A Hearty Winter's Meal. . .

Hello my friends,

have you ever heard of 'holuska'?

 

Unless you come from a Hungarian/Czecholavakian heritage the chances are pretty slim.  :)

 

Growing up my mom made holuska quite regularly.  (We're not even sure how you spell it)  It was an inexpensive dish that our dad had taught her.  He learned it from his parents.

 

It may not look delicious, but trust me. . .if you love cabbage, dumplings, and butter; you will love this!  Yes, butter, lots and lots of butter!!

 

 

First you peel potatoes and cut them into small pieces.  Put them in a blender and add a bit of water.  Just enough that the blender will chop them up.  I continue adding until I have a blender full.  That will make a lot of dumplings.

 

 

Soon they will look like this.

 

Then you take that potato mush and add flour.

 

Now you will have a potato paste.  lol!

Next you drop spoonfuls of potato paste into hot boiling water. Try not to let it stop boiling.

Now this is where it gets funny.  In my mind I always remembered  mom saying that they should not be any larger than the tip of your big finger.  None of my sisters remember this.  I think I must have dreamed it.  (wink)  Believe me from now on, I am making them bigger.  It took me forever to cook them all!

 

 

 At this point I am already dreaming of that buttery potato goodness!

 You continue cooking them until they float to the top and turn white.  Under cooked dumplings are not good!!

Mom use to take one out of the water and cut into it to see if it was cooked through.  Mine were so small that I didn't have to worry.

After you cook a batch put them in a strainer and rinse off all that extra starch.  Yes, I'm saving you a few calories so that you can add more butter.  ha, ha!

 

Fry up a head of cabbage and you're good to go.

 

 

Stir the two together, heat through and season with S&P, and (in unison say) lots of BUTTER.

 

YUM!

 



 

We had our Ohio relatives here for a reunion last July.  None of them had heard of holuska.  They did remember grandpa making some kind of potato/cabbage dish.

Our dad was the oldest surviving son, and maybe that's why he knew how to make it.

 

And a humorous fact about holuska is that you don't want to feed it to a basketball player just before a game.  Our brother, Dennis played basketball on the high school team.  He'd tell mom, "please don't make holuska before a game, because I can't jump after eating it".  Stories like this make this dish even more wonderful!

 

Do you have any heirloom recipes passed down from older generations?

 

hugs,

Jann