Kartacze from Podlasie: giant stuffed potato dumplings with marjoram and recovered starch
A kartacz is a pyza that grew up: oval, the size of a fist, with a centimetre-thick potato wall and a generous minced pork filling scented with marjoram. The dough is raw and boiled potato in a four-to-one ratio, and the starch that settles out of the squeezed juice goes back into the mass. They simmer for half an hour in water that barely trembles and are served under hot bacon fat.
Your own work in that: 1 h 25 min.
- Potatoes boiling 25 min
- Dough 30 min
- Shaping 20 min
- Cooking 35 min
Step by step
0 / 9 done
Boil the smaller batch of potatoes
Boil 500 g of potatoes in their skins in salted water 25 minutes, until tender. Peel them while warm, press through a ricer and spread thinly on a plate to cool completely. A warm mass would scald the raw potato and turn the dough gluey.
Ingredients: 2000 g raw potatoes · 500 g potatoes to boil · 2 tbsp potato starch · 2 tsp salt
Half a kilo in their skins, through a ricer, cooled
Grate the raw potatoes
Peel the remaining 2 kg and grate on the finest side of a box grater, or blitz to a pulp in a processor. Work without breaks and move straight to squeezing: grated potato darkens within a quarter of an hour and the kartacz turns grey.
Finest grater, no pauses
Squeeze the pulp
Tip the grated mass into a cotton cloth, gather it into a knot and wring it hard over a bowl until it stops running; 2 kg usually gives up 550–700 ml of juice. Set the squeezed pulp aside and keep the bowl of juice.
TipRaw potato is nearly 80 % water. A kartacz is bigger than a pyza and cooks longer, so every excess millilitre in the dough means a split wall twenty minutes into the pot. Wring until the cloth gives only a drop every few seconds.
Wring until it stops running
Recover the starch from the juice
Leave the bowl of juice to stand 15 minutes. A dense white layer of starch settles on the bottom. Carefully pour off the grey water above it, scrape up the starch with a spoon and add it to the squeezed potato.
TipThat starch is the kartacz's natural glue. Recovered from the bottom of the bowl it replaces flour, binds the dough and lightens the colour. Thrown out with the juice it has to be replaced by shop-bought potato starch — the same thing, but it is easy to add too much, and an excess gives a hard, rubbery wall.
A quarter hour to settle, pour off, scrape up
Knead the dough
Combine the squeezed raw potato, the cold riced boiled potato, the recovered starch and salt. Knead by hand 3 minutes, until the mass is even, smooth and slightly tacky but firm enough to shape into a ball without slumping. Too loose? A spoon of potato starch, no more than two.
TipFour parts raw to one boiled is more raw than in pyzy, because a kartacz should be dense and springy rather than fluffy. The starch in boiled potato is already gelatinised and acts as the binder; from raw alone the dough binds poorly, and from boiled alone it turns soft and floury, closer to kopytka than kartacze.
Four parts raw, one part boiled
Make the filling
Dice the onion finely and soften in the butter 8 minutes, until golden; cool. Mix with the pork, the marjoram crushed between your palms, salt and pepper, kneading by hand for a minute. Fry a small test patty and taste: a kartacz holds a lot of filling, so its seasoning carries the whole dish while the potato wall is bland.
Ingredients: 500 g minced pork · 1 pcs onion · 20 g butter · 2 tsp dried marjoram · 1 tsp salt · 1 tsp black pepper
Golden onion, plenty of marjoram, a test patty
Shape the kartacze
Keep a bowl of water beside you. Wet your hands, take a piece of dough the size of a large orange (about 200 g, an eighth of the total), flatten it on your palm into a 1 cm thick oval and lay a log of filling (about 70 g) down the middle. Draw the edges up, seal thoroughly and roll between wet palms into a smooth oval with no cracks, tapered at both ends. Set them on a board dusted with potato starch. Makes 8.
Wet hands, a fist-sized oval, tapered ends
Cook in barely trembling water
Bring a wide pot of salted water to the boil, then lower the heat until the surface only trembles. Lower the kartacze in with a slotted spoon, 4 at a time, and nudge them off the bottom once. Ideally use two wide pots at the same time — in one pot the second batch means another 35 minutes. When they float, cook another 30 minutes. Cut the first one open: the wall should be even and translucent, with no white raw band.
TipA kartacz is large and dense, so the raw starch throughout the wall needs a full thirty minutes to gelatinise. At the same time a rolling boil knocks it against the pot and tears the wall, letting the filling out. Long and very gentle is the only way.
Barely trembling water, thirty minutes
Make the dressing and serve
Dice the bacon and render it in a cold pan over medium heat 7 minutes, until crisp. Add the onion in feathers and fry another 6 minutes until golden. Lift the kartacze out with a slotted spoon, drain and pour the hot bacon and its fat over them. A spoon of sour cream for anyone who wants it. Serve at once, two per person.
Ingredients: 200 g smoked bacon · 2 pcs onions · 100 g sour cream, 18 %
Bacon crisp, onion golden, straight from the pan
Before you start
Freezing
Lay the raw shaped kartacze on a tray without touching, freeze and bag them. Cook from frozen in barely boiling water, 8 minutes longer. Thawed before cooking they fall apart in the pot.
Cepelinai
Lithuanian cepelinai are essentially the same dish, except the bacon dressing is usually turned into a sauce: add 150 ml sour cream to the rendered fat and bring to the boil once.
It split in the pot
Three reasons: the dough was too wet because it was under-squeezed; the water boiled too hard; or the oval had a crack that let water in. Always cook one test kartacz before the rest go in.
Nutrition
per 100 gStep photos are computer-generated from the recipe.
