When you're craving sweet flavours, it's a good idea to choose a sweet main dish instead of eating a ton of chocolate. Hungarian cuisine offers many options and one of the best is the dish we call Nudli, made with simple potato dumplings.
It's a simple, Hungarian dish, very similar to Schupfnudel, or Fingernudel and also to gnocchi. We normally eat with sweet toppings! The most common nudli version is served with jam, ground poppy seeds and icing sugar, but my version is not too bad either with Crème Anglaise and caramelized walnut sprinkle!
You can serve nudli as a main dish since it's filling comfort food, or a smaller portion could be a nice dessert too.
Ingredients
Nudli
- 1000 g potatoes (baking type)
- 1 pinch salt
- 2 egg yolks
- 300-400 g flour
- Semolina for cover the dough during shaping
- 1000 ml salted water for cooing
Toasted breadcrumbs
- 250 ml breadcrumbs
- 50 ml oil
- 2 tbsp sugar
- 1 tsp cinnamon
Crème Anglaise
- 125 ml milk
- 125 ml double cream
- 1 tsp vanilla paste
- 3 egg yolks
- 3 tbsp sugar
Caramelized walnut sprinkle
- 100 g walnuts
- 3 tbsp sugar
Instructions
Crème Anglaise
- Pour the milk and cream into a saucepan. Add the vanilla paste and heat up the mixture. Remove from heat before it starts boiling.
- Mix the egg yolks and sugar with a hand mixer till the mixture is pale in colour.
- Gradually whisk the hot mixture into the cold mixture.
- Pour the mixture back into the saucepan and constantly stir on low heat without boiling it, until the custard thickens.
- Pour the sauce into a bowl, cover its surface with cling film and chill. By keeping refrigerated, you can use it for one day.
Caramelized walnut sprinkle
- Spread the walnuts on a piece of parchment paper.
- Place the sugar in a non-stick pan and heat it up over medium heat. The structure of sugar can be messed up if you stir it, so make sure, you don't stir it in the pan!
- When the sugar melts, it will turn light golden so quickly. Make sure you grab the pan right at that state and pour the caramelized sugar over the walnut pieces.
- No worries, you can clean the pan easily with hot water.
- When the caramelized sugar completely sets on the walnuts, place them into a food processor and chop it semi-fine to get a crispy sprinkle.
Toasted breadcrumbs
- Add the breadcrumbs oil, cinnamon and sugar into a non-stick pan.
- Toast it on medium heat while constantly stirring it till the breadcrumbs become golden brown. Be very careful it's very easy to burn it. Take a note: after you remove the pan from the heat, the pan is still hot, so you need to stir till the temperature drops.
Nudli
- Bake the potatoes in the oven at 190 °C for 45 minutes.
- Cut the baked potatoes in half, scoop the potato out of its baked peel, and send it through a potato ricer.
- Place the smooth potato into a bowl, add the salt, egg yolks.
- Start adding the flour gradually, while mixing the dough by hand. Keep adding the flour until the dough starts to combine instead of being a sticky mixture. It's important to keep it as soft as possible. If you add too much flour, the dumplings will have a rubber-like texture during cooking.
- Divide the dough to get small balls. Use the semolina and this way the dough won't stick to the surface. Roll out these balls to get a half cm thick ropes and cut them to get 5 cm long pieces. Process all the dough, generously add semolina to cover the dumpéling pieces, to avoid them sticking together.
- Boil the water in a big pot. After it starts to boil, you can add a handful of dumplings. Cook them till you notice that every piece is floating on the top of the water.
- Place the dumplings directly into the pan with the toasted breadcrumbs, cover them evenly.
Serving
- Put some nudli in a bowl.
- Pour some Crème Anglaise over the top.
- Sprinkle them with the crispy, caramelized walnut sprinkle.
Nudli - Photo by © Reka Csulak
