Noodles with curd cheese: the supper of Polish childhoods, in twenty minutes
Curd cheese loosened with sour cream and sugar into a soft cream, folded through hot buttered noodles. The whole secret is to loosen the cheese before it meets the hot pasta: dry curd tipped straight into the pan seizes into hard lumps that squeak against your teeth. A handful of ingredients, twenty minutes, a supper many Poles remember from childhood.
Your own work in that: 22 min.
- Curd cream 10 min
- Pasta and serving 12 min
Step by step
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Mash the curd cheese
Put a pot of salted water on for the pasta. Crumble the cheese into a bowl and mash it with a fork into fine curds, until not one larger lump is left. Don't use a blender: curd worked into a smooth paste turns gluey and loses the grain that is the point of this dish.
Ingredients: 400 g wide egg noodles or farfalle · 400 g medium-fat curd cheese (twaróg) · 4 tbsp sour cream, 18 % · 3 tbsp sugar · 40 g butter · 1 tsp salt
A fork, fine curds, no lumps
Loosen the cheese with cream
Add 4 tablespoons of sour cream and 3 tablespoons of sugar and mix with the fork into a soft, thick cream, one you could spread on bread. It takes 2 minutes.
Ingredients: 1 tbsp sugar · ½ tsp cinnamon
TipThis is the whole recipe in one step. Curd protein meeting hot pasta contracts and squeezes out whey: dry cheese then clumps into hard grains and squeaks. The cream coats the particles in fat, so the cheese stays creamy and spreads over every ribbon.
A cream, not crumbs: sour cream and sugar
Cook the pasta
Drop the noodles into the boiling salted water and cook until al dente, per the packet. Before draining, scoop out half a cup of the cooking water. Drain and toss at once with 30 g of the butter; keep the rest for the top.
TipAl dente matters more here than usual: in the bowl the noodles keep drinking moisture from the cheese and reach the right softness after two minutes of folding. Overcooked, they break apart as you fold them through the thick curd.
Al dente, half a cup of water saved
Combine off the heat
Tip the hot noodles into the bowl of cheese and fold together off the heat, adding the cooking water a spoon at a time, until the cheese coats every ribbon and the whole thing is creamy, not dry. Don't heat it in a pan: curd cheese heated hard releases whey and clumps into tough lumps.
TipThe pasta water carries starch that binds the cheese to the noodles instead of letting it slide to the bottom of the bowl. Two tablespoons are usually enough; add one at a time and watch.
Off the heat, pasta water a spoon at a time
Serve at once
Spoon into bowls, sprinkle with sugar and cinnamon and top each with a knob of the remaining butter. Serve straight away: within a quarter of an hour the cheese absorbs the moisture and the dish turns dry. Reheating works only with a spoonful of milk and very gentle heat.
Ingredients: 1 tbsp sugar · ½ tsp cinnamon
Sugar, cinnamon, butter, straight to the table
Before you start
The savoury version
Half a teaspoon of salt and plenty of freshly ground pepper instead of the sugar, with 100 g of rendered bacon and its crisp bits and chives on top. The same supper, grown up.
Which curd cheese
Medium-fat curd in a block mashes best. Lean curd is dry and grainy, so give it two more tablespoons of sour cream; full-fat needs only two in total. Tub curd is already broken down and wetter, so it takes less cream still.
With fruit
A handful of raspberries or blueberries, or grated apple with cinnamon, folded in at the end. In summer the same thing with strawberries turns supper into dessert.
Nutrition
per 100 gStep photos are computer-generated from the recipe.
