Kase Knephla (Cheese Buttons)

Making the knephla soup a few days ago, and researching the etymology of the word knephla, got me thinking about kase knephla (kay-za nep-fla), aka cheese buttons. Our family often served these on Lenten Fridays because they contain no meat. You must understand that in our family, a meal without meat was like a day without oxygen. After all, my grandfather raised cattle, my grandmother kept chickens, and my uncle raised pigs. I never saw a leek or asparagus until I moved away from home, but I was familiar with the various meat cuts and innards of every barnyard animal.

Kase Knephla was one of my favorite Lenten meals. I make them nearly the same as my grandmother, although I do add chopped parsley for a boost of flavor and a little color. Cheese buttons, as I will hereinafter refer to them since I know it's probably difficult for you to keep trying to say knephla in your head, are basically a German ravioli - an egg dough filled with cheese, onion and spices (well, salt and pepper anyway - that constitutes the majority of spice used in my family's cooking), boiled until the dough is cooked. After they are boiled, they are usually fried in butter with bread cubes. Maybe that makes them more like pirogi. Whatever you liken them to, they are quite tasty.

One quirk about this recipe that I'm sure will make many cooks cringe is that the filling contains raw onion. Almost every recipe I come across with onion in a filling instructs you to saute the onion first. But the sharp taste of the raw onion contributes to the traditional flavor of the filling. If you think that raw onion would be too pungent, I'm sure scallions would be an acceptable substitute.

Our family recipe calls for dry curd cottage cheese. That product is particularly difficult to find these days, unless you live in an area with a significant Jewish or ethnic German population. I don't even know if you can find it in my hometown anymore. I just used regular cottage cheese that I drained in a wire mesh strainer for about half an hour. I should have whizzed the drained curds in the food processor but I was just too lazy. I've read that fresh ricotta cheese is a good substitute for dry curd cottage cheese; however, I can't find that here either. So I just made do, which is what any good German grandma would do.

I used the food processor to make the dough, which is something that German grandmas don't usually do. In fact, I think I'm the only family member who even owns a food processor. (Me and all my newfangled contraptions) This dough is quite like an Italian egg pasta, but instead of adding eggs to the flour until you achieve the right consistency, you use a set amount of egg and make up the rest of the liquid required with water.

I rolled out the dough (I did it by hand but there is no reason you couldn't use a pasta roller) and cut it into squares, as the recipe indicates. You might think that with a name of cheese buttons, rounds would be more appropriate. You're right. However, I am sure that a frugal housewife realized that if you cut the dough into squares, it would be a) less wasteful and b) less time consuming.  So squares are the tradition, at least in our family. They are probably the same in other families in the area, because God forbid anyone would do anything differently from everyone else. Different is bad! Or so sayeth the townsfolk. That's one reason I don't live there anymore...

A plop of filling goes on each square, which is then folded into a triangle, the edges sealed and the buttons boiled until the dough is tender. The recipe says that takes 15 minutes, but I feel 7-8 minutes is more appropriate for a fresh pasta. I never get all the edges perfectly sealed so, as with any filled pasta, there is always the danger of leakage. I've found that having the water at a lazy boil mitigates this danger. I allow the water to come to a full, rolling boil, but turn it down and let it mellow before dropping in the buttons. Then I monitor the boiling fairly carefully, making sure that it maintains a boil, but just so. This time I didn't have any big explosions, so my theory seems to be validated.

As the buttons neared the end of their boil, I heated some butter in a wok (it's my favorite pan for frying stuff since it's so well seasoned). I threw in some fresh bread cubes to fry first (WRONG! I was supposed to add them last, but I screwed up). After the buttons were boiled sufficiently, I pulled them out of the water and added them to the butter and bread cubes. The bread had soaked up most of the butter so the cubes were a bit soggy. Next time I'll remember to add them last.

Even though I didn't do it last night, I recall eating these with ketchup as a kid. I hope the culinary gods will forgive me for that transgression.

Kase Knephla (Cheese Buttons)

Dough:
3 cups flour
2 eggs
1 tsp. salt
Water

Filling:
1/2 tsp. salt
2 eggs
Black pepper, to taste
1 small onion, finely diced
1 1/2 lbs. dry curd cottage cheese
4 tablespoons minced parsley

For Frying:
Cubed stale bread
Butter or cream

Bring several quarts of water to a boil and salt to taste. Mix flour, 1 tsp. salt, 2 eggs and water to make a firm dough. Divide into 3 parts. Roll very thin; cut into squares, about 3 inches. Mix remaining ingredients together and spoon onto squares. Wet edges of dough and fold over to form triangles. Seal edges with a fork.

Add buttons to water and boil gently for 7-8 minutes or until dough is tender. Melt a few tablespoons butter in large skillet or wok on medium heat. Increase heat to medium high heat and fry buttons for several minutes or until browned in spots, adding bread cubes toward the end of cooking.

 

Comments

[easy bake]

I am starting to sound like a broken record, but your photos are wonderful, and the steps you photograph are such a great accompaniment.

Bravo and thank you Darcie.

eb

[ntsc]

What eb said

[TheFuzzyChef]

Yeah, those do sound a lot like piroshki ... or actually, a lot more like varniki. Just what I needed, another German recipe consisting almost entirely of fat and starch. ;-) Thanks for the recipe!