Slovenian Dinner Week 28: Buckwheat Ravioli with Cheese-Millet Filling, Vegetarian and Gluten-Free!

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Buckwheat Ravioli with Cheese-Millet Filling (Ajdovi Krapi)
Ajvar and Greek Yogurt
Parsley Chicken ā la Jacques Pépin
Green Salad

I first discovered buckwheat pockets, or buckwheat ravioli, in the bilingual vegetarian cooking blog of a young Slovenian woman. The ingredients seemed so simple and wholesome: buckwheat flour, farmer cheese, millet.

The Slovenian name she gave for the dish was ajdovi krapi.  (I-dough-vee krah-pee). There was nothing like it in my vintage Slovenian American cookbooks.  So I figured this must be her original creation.  A vegetarian twist that was far removed from traditional, meat-heavy Slovenian cooking.

But I was wrong.

A few months later, I discovered a half dozen references to this wholesome traditional dumpling,  sometimes with recipes included.  Ajdovi krapi turned up on Slovenian government websites, on blogs, and in an except from a recent book by a Slovenian cooking expert.  But that original blog had disappeared.

To figure out a recipe, I had to do my own metric conversions, and sometimes my own translations.  As usual, Google Translate was an awkard tool.  The low point was one surreal suggestion about how to serve these intriguing dumplings:

". . . top with sour cream and cold sores."

Umm, no thanks!  Sour cream and cracklings, the correct translaton, did sound a little more appetizing, but I liked the idea of a meat-free entree.  If nothing else, it would be a change of pace.

This project turned out to be more challenging than I expected.

It started with the Russian-style farmer cheese I bought for the filling.  When I opened the container,  I discovered a strange fuzzy film of mold on top.  Luckily, the cheese shop was just around the corner, so I was able to exchange it without too much trouble.

Then, perhaps because of the metric conversions, I ended up pouring too much water into the buckwheat flour.  And I forgot that I had never made an all-buckwheat dough before. So I was a little thrown by the sticky mass and had to knead in more more flour.

Ultimately, it all worked out.  Read on!




Buckwheat Ravioli/Ajdovi Krapi


1 1/2 cups buckwheat flour
1/4 c. boiling salted water  (more if needed)
1 egg, beaten

1/2 c. millet, cooked in boiling salted water and drained
1 1/2 cups farmer cheese or ricotta
1 egg, beaten
salt to taste
fresh parsley to taste, minced

First,  make the filling: Cook millet in boiling salted water for 20 minutes.  Drain and cool. Mix in cheese, egg, salt, and parsley.  Refrigerate.

For dough: Pour about 1/4 c. boiling salted water into buckwheat flour and stir with a spoon to make a stiff dough.  Let cool slightly, then add egg and knead until smooth. Cover and let sit for 30 minutes.

Roll out the buckwheat dough on a floured board, thinly, as for noodles.

For shaping the ravioli, there are a few choices.   Typically, squares or rounds of dough are folded over a spoonful of filling.  But the all-buckwheat dough didn't seem pliable enough for that.  So I decided to sandwich together pairs of  3-inch rounds. (See the photo below.)  Don't forget to seal the edges with a fork!

Cook the ravioli, a few at a time, in boiling salted water for 20 minutes.  Drain.

For serving, there are two traditional accompaniments: Buttered bread crumbs, or sour cream and cracklings :-)

For that first night,  I kept it simple and light: Plain boiled ravioli with ajvar and yogurt.  My husband decided to contribute one of his favorite quick entrees, from a Jacques Pépin recipe: boneless chicken sauteed with garlic and parsley.  (I suspect he had some doubts about how my buckwheat dumplings would turn out!)

The next night, we went completely vegetarian.  My husband sauteed the leftover ravioli with  mushrooms and red peppers.  With a green salad alongside, it was a fine dinner.

The verdict:  Delicious and versatile!  We kept on eating these wholesome buckwheat dumplings all week long.   I froze some for my Slovenian American mom to try.  She was the lone dissenting voice.  She didn't recall anything like this from her childhood in Cleveland.  "Too dry," she thought.

Buckwheat does have a hearty, assertive flavor.  For the faint of heart, the dough can be made with a blend of buckwheat and white wheat flour, as I did with my struklji recipe.  But we liked it this way!

Here are is how it looked, step-by-step:

Kasha Mediterranean: A Smokey, Slovenian-inspired, Gluten-free Salad

This unusual dish was the creation of a Slovenian American Facebook friend named Josef. He took a familiar Mediterranean pasta salad as the foundation and then added some twists to reflect his Slovenian heritage.  He calls it Kasha Mediterranean.

Here are the special ethnic touches: Kasha or buckwheat groats, a Slovenian staple, instead of pasta. Paprika, to reflect the Hungarian-influenced cooking of Prekmurje, a northeast border region. Pumpkin seed oil from Styria, a Slovenian-Austrian area to the north and east.  Chickpeas to evoke the spirit of Primorska, the Mediterranean region that borders Italy.  And feta, similar to the tangy Slovenian goat  cheese that was a breakfast favorite during my own visit to Slovenia a few years ago.

This dish is definitely Slovenian inspired, even if it is not a traditional recipe.  So I think it deserves a Slovenian name:  Ajdovi Salata, or Buckwheat Salad.

And one more plus I recently discovered: Thanks to the buckwheat, the salad is gluten-free!

I have made this salad four or five times in the past year. It's a flexible recipe. When we were preparing a cevapcici dinner for a friend on the East Coast recently, I even made it with couscous instead of kasha. Still good, but  I don't recommend skipping the buckwheat!

The recipe that follows is my most successful version so far.  I have followed Josef's original guidelines pretty closely.  To maximize the distinctive smokey-nutty taste,  I do recommend toasting the buckwheat, splurging on pumpkin seed oil, and using smoked paprika.

A word about buckwheat: Kasha is probably the form of buckwheat groats most familiar to Americans, especially in Jewish cooking.  It is usually pre-toasted, often cracked into smaller pieces, and generally packaged in boxes.  This recipe works best with whole buckwheat groats, often sold in bulk.  You may need to toast them yourself, as described below.

To learn more about buckwheat, check out the website for Burkitt Mills, probably the major grower and producer in the United States, or maybe the world.  It will tell you everything you need to know about buckwheat.  You can even buy seeds to grow your own!  (Once again, thanks to Josef for the suggestion!)

And here is an informative and entertaining new site about pumpkin seed oil, by the first American producer of this pricey-but-worth-it delicacy.

Kasha Mediterranean (Buckwheat Salad/Ajdova Solata)


Salad:

1 c. dry whole buckwheat groats or kasha, cooked in
1 ½ c.  salted water

1 16 oz can of chickpeas (garbanzo beans), rinsed and drained
6-8 oz feta cheese, cubed
4 small/medium tomatoes, diced
1 cucumber, peeled, seeded, and diced
1 green pepper, diced
½ c. red onion, diced (or 4 green onions)
4 T. fresh parsley, minced
sea salt, ground, to taste
black pepper, ground, to taste
smoked paprika, ½ t. or to taste

Dressing:

2 T. olive oil
2 t. pumpkin seed oil
juice of 1 lemon
2 T. white wine vinegar
1-2 cloves garlic, minced
1 T fresh mint, chopped
1 t. smoked paprika, or to taste
sea salt, ground, to taste
black pepper, ground, to taste

To prepare buckwheat: Toast the whole buckwheat groats in a dry skillet on medium-high heat, stirring constantly, for 5 minutes, until buckwheat grains have browned.   Add 1 ½ c. salted water and let come to a boil.  Reduce to a simmer, cover, and let cook for 15-20 minutes, or until water is absorbed.  Remove from heat and let sit, covered, for 5 minutes. Remove cover and fluff with a fork. Let cool. Measure out 1 ½ c. cooked buckwheat to use in salad. Save the rest.

To prepare salad:  Mix 1 ½ c. cooked buckwheat with remaining salad ingredients in a large bowl.  Sprinkle with seasonings and toss.

To prepare dressing: Mix all ingredients together.  You can change the proportions of olive and pumpkin seed oil. A little pumpkin seed oil goes a long way!

To assemble:  Pour dressing over salad and toss lightly but thoroughly.  Taste to adjust seasonings. Chill for several hours or overnight.  Garnish with additional parsley.

Since the feta, buckwheat, and chickpeas are all rich sources of protein, this salad can easily serve as a main course, with a little bread or a plain green salad on the side.  It also works well as a side dish to accompany a plain meat entree, like the sausage shown in the photo.  It's a good dish for a potluck.

But however you use it, this hearty salad is delicious and unusual.  Most recently, it impressed our wandering journalist son, who was visiting from his current home in Kosovo.

Buckwheat Breakfast Crumbles: Slovenian Fusion

It was Tuesday morning, time for breakfast, when I had a sudden brainstorm. There was half a bag of buckwheat flour in the cupboard, left over from last Tuesday's near-disaster with the žganci.  Why not whip up a batch of šmoren, substituting buckwheat flour for wheat?

I used soy milk, standard fare at our house, because that's all I had.  But it was a good match for the buckwheat, which turns out to be a particularly healthy food: high in protein, not technically a grain, and gluten free. Oil instead of butter was also an easy choice.

And there it was: Slovenian health food. Gluten-free, dairy-free, and vegetarian. A marriage of sweet šmoren and tangy žganci.  I had finally produced those little crumbles that had eluded me last week!

My new dish even tasted good, with the earthy, slightly sharp taste of buckwheat pancakes.  I topped it with a sprinkle of  brown sugar and served it with a side of organic Italian marmalade, blueberries, and nonfat Greek yogurt.

2 eggs


6 T. soy milk

2 T. buckwheat flour


2 t. brown sugar


dash of salt (optional)


oil for pan

Mix all the ingredients together until you have a smooth crepe-like batter. Heat a frying pan with a thin film of oil. Pour in the batter. Leave it alone until the mixture starts to brown on the bottom. Then follow the usual procedure for šmoren. Take a spatula and begin to scrape, turn, and chop the mixture until you have a pan of nicely browned little crumbles.   Serves 2.

Žganci: Mysteries of Buckwheat

Žganci is one of a handful of quintessentially Slovenian dishes.  There is an entire page devoted to it on a government website:  Žganci, Always and Forever. 

But it's hard to classify.

The Progessive Slovene Women of America call it buckwheat mush (ajdovi žganci) and include it in the "Bread-Biscuits-Mush" section of Treasured Slovenian and International Recipes.  The American Slovene Club, in Our Favorite Recipes, classifies it as a potato substitute, and refer to it as buckwheat crumbles.  Woman's Glory puts it in the catch-all "Varieties" category.

The recipes left me feeling even more confused.  The ingredients were simple, just buckwheat flour and salt water, in a 1:2 ratio. My three vintage cookbooks, as well as the many recipes on the web, all offered virtually identical (and peculiar) instructions.

To make žganci, you boil the salted water and then add the buckwheat flour. Some say you add it gradually, while you slowly stir.  Others suggest you just dump it in all it once.  But they all agree on one key point:  Once the flour is added, you stop stirring.  The Progressive Slovene women shout it out: DO NOT MIX.

You let the mix boil while the flour magically turns into a giant lump.  Then you make a hole in the center of the cake of flour with the handle of a wooden spoon so the water can cook it from the inside.  The water should bubble up over the lump.  Then you cover the pan and let it cook for 15 minutes (or maybe 45?)   Finally, you pour off half the water and stir in the rest.   Pour melted butter on top.  Cover and let sit.

Most sources suggest that you pick up spoonfuls of the big buckwheat cake  and use a fork to flake off crumbles, which should be "piled fluffily"  into a bowl.

I made a small recipe: 


2 c. water 
pinch of salt
1 c. buckwheat flour


I brought the salted water to a brisk boil and slowly poured in the flour.  Then I watched and waited.  To my great surprise, the flour did start to cohere into a large brown lump: 

Boiling Buckwheat Flour

After about 5 minutes, I nudged the lump with a spoon.  It seemed fairly solid.  So I poked a hole in the center of the mass with the handle of a wooden spoon.  Now it looked like this: 

Buckwheat Volcano

As I continued to watch, I began to worry.  There wasn't enough water to cover the top of the lump.  So I added more water.  Oh-oh.  Now it stopped boiling.  I started to worry that the lump was beginning to dissolve.  What if I was left with a pot of boiling mush?

The lump still felt firm.  I gently stuck in a knife, to see if the inside was cooked.  To my horror, I discovered that the firm exterior encased a ball of raw, uncooked flour!

At that point, I panicked.  Something had gone terribly wrong.  I figured the only way to salvage this mess was to turn it into a polenta. I took a fork and beat it into submission.

To my amazement, the brown soup and the raw flour mass was easily transformed into a nice, smooth polenta!

I poured it into a dish, which my husband had greased with olive oil.  I stuck it into the oven to firm up.  topped it off with two nice thick slices of bacon, cooked to a crisp in the microwave.  It looked like this:

The Final Version: Žganci with Bacon

The verdict:  Delicious!  A dark, tangy polenta that provided a fine accompaniment to the chicken ajmoht in my third week dinner.   An added plus:  Buckwheat is high protein and gluten-free!


And when I checked back, I discovered that I had done exactly what the Progressive Slovene Women had intended.  None of those little crumbles for them.  The goal was just a nice smooth mush.
Evidently,  I had simply made a regional variation, in what's called the softer Styrian style.

As they say on that government website: "Any day is right for žganci!  You know, to keep you strong."