Belarus

Menu: Draniki (potato pancakes) and oreshki (caramel-filled butter cookies)| Recipe Source: olgasflavorfactory.com and natashaskitchen.com

Thoughts: The draniki were crispy, flavorful, and the perfect rainy day comfort snack. As I’m finding out is often the case with recipes from Eastern Europe, the ingredients were simple and affordable but still absolutely delicious. The oreshki were definitely tricky to figure out but after a disastrous first batch, I got the hang of things. Even then, they were still fairly messy to make but absolutely worth it.

Ready to cook?

Draniki: (link): I followed the recipe for the potato mixture exactly and added chopped dill to the sausage patties. The recipe called for putting raw patties on top of the potato mixture, but I got nervous about cook time (either getting the potatoes perfectly golden and having the sausage undercook, or getting the sausage just right but burning the potatoes in the process). I decided to fry each patty in lard over medium heat for 1 minute per side and found that this worked perfectly! Lastly, this recipe called for plain sour cream on the side, but I don’t love that flavor so I spiced it up with reserved liquid from the grated onion, a heavy squeeze of lemon juice, salt, black pepper, and more chopped dill (she really is the queen of Eastern Europe when it comes to herbs).

Oreshki (link): I followed this recipe exactly and ordered the oreshnitsa press from Amazon! If you’re making these on a convection stove (or honestly even if you’re cooking over a flame burner), prepare for a smoking mess when the butter oozes out of the mold and hits the heat source. I added more flour to the batter to thicken it up a bit, but that still didn’t completely help; but that aside, they were still totally worth it. For the filling, I followed the instructions exactly but made one addition: I saw in another recipe that many people who make oreshki will take the cooked overflow batter that ends up in the spaces between the walnut shapes, scrape it off, crumble it up, and add it to their filling. It made for an amazing texture and is totally worth doing! Lastly, I was pressed for time so instead of popping the filling in the fridge to stiffen up, I threw it in the freezer for half an hour and it worked perfectly.