Sirniks ( Cottage Cheese Dessert/Snack Of Ukraine)

SIRNIKS

Cheese cutlet with mild sweet taste ‘Sirnik’ I ate at my friend and neighbor in Ethiopia. Extremely delicious and healthy cutlets they eat with sweet. Ukrainian food basically borders on sweet taste and is not at all spicy. I had a chance of having dinner at their place all vegetarian /Non-vegetarian dishes were basically sweet not having savory taste like we most of us are used to , but every preparation was extremely delicious and mouthwatering. Since I am basically vegetarian I gorged upon the bread, eggplant vegetable and these sweet cheese pan fried cutlets as dessert. Irina is real good lady who agreed to teach me how to make these cutlets ‘Sirinkkies’ at short notice. We in Debrezyiet Ethiopia have to plan everything in advance for many factors. L.

Preparation Time: 10 min.

Cooking Time: 10 min

Servings: 20 Medium size Sirniks

Ingredients Required For Making Sirinkkies:

• 250 gm. Cottage Cheese / Ricotta cheese

• 75 gm. Refined flour (maida)

• 2 Egg

• 3 Tea spoon Sugar2 Drops Vanilla essence

• 15 ml. Olive oil/any other cooking oil

Directions For Making Sirniks:

• Crush cheese with a fork or spoon till it becomes soft and uniform. It can also be mashed with palms to make soft.

Cheese softened by beating with fork

• Add 2 drops vanilla essence and mix.

Vanilla essence being added to softened cheese

• Break an egg and add to the cheese essence mixture.

Eggs broken directly to cheese vanilla mixture

• Mix nicely. No need to beat the egg separately.

Eggs being mixed to cheese and vanilla mixture

• Add refined flour with spoon in little proportions and mix.

• The mixture will become soft but thick like dough. Due to different size of eggs the requirement of flour may change little. Remember the mixture should neither be too thick nor too thin. It should be thick enough to make ball out of it.

Cheese, flour, egg and vanilla mixture

• Add raisins and mix.

Raisin added to the flour,egg cheese vanilla mixture

Sirnik mixture

• Divide the mixture to 10-12 parts and make round out of them by rolling on dry refined flour.Flatten them by pressing lightly.

Irina showing the size of ball to me made

A ball from mixture of Sirnik coated with refined flour and flattened

Heat oil in a frying pan and when the oil is hot (not smoking hot) place the ball of cutlet mixture in the oil and pan fry on medium flame till golden brown on one side.

Oil heated on frying pan

Sirniks placed on hot oil and being pan fried

• Turn and fry the other side also till golden brown.

 Sirniks pan fried on both sides

• Remove from oil and place on a paper napkin so that all excess oil gets absorbed by the paper.

Irina with Delicious Sirniks

• Delicious Sirinkkies are ready to be served and enjoyed with friends and family.

Sirniks

• I love them more when served with a topping of cream.

Tips:

• Do not add all flour together because some the moisture in cheese and the size of egg dictates the amount of flour required.

• Dust off the excess flour stuck to the cutlet balls before frying them.

• Since the cutlets have sugar and cheese thus they tend to brown up fast thus keep checking them while frying by lifting with a blunt flat spatula.

• Do not use mustard/Niger / Palm oil the strong smell of oil spoils the taste of these cutlets.

Suggested Variations:

• Eggs can be replaced by two medium size potatoes by vegetarians.
  

• Finely cut cashew nuts, almonds can be added to the mixture.

• Jaggery/Brown sugar are healthy replacement of white sugar.
• 1 teaspoon honey can be added to the mixture before making the dough.

• Boil small pieces of bone less chicken / mutton with salt then stuff one piece each in the mixture before rolling it to a ball.

• Those who want to use less oil can first cook them on non-stick frying pan till light dots of golden brown color start appearing then sprinkle 3-4 drops oil on each side. And cook till good golden brown.

• Finely cut mushroom can be added to the mixture. If mushroom are being added then add flour 2-3 tea spoon more as mushroom loose water while being cooked.

• Rice can flour/whole wheat flour is a healthy replacement of refined flour.