Baked Croatian Cottage Cheese Štruklji {Recipe}
Recipe from Ally’s Kitchen: A Passport for Adventurous Palates
Author Alice (“Ally”) Phillips, on Baked Croatian Cottage Cheese Struklji:
When my Croatian grandparents were teenagers, they came to America looking for a better life beyond their peasant villages and difficult times in the small town of Dišnik, a couple of hours from Zagreb. Recently I visited my grandma and grandpa’s homeland and their small hometown. What a God wink it was to find relatives still living there nearly 100 years after my grandparents came to America!
A favorite local dish is Štruklji. The traditional version, Zagorski Štruklji, is served in most Croatian households and is very popular. My version is a regional variety specific only to Hrvatsko Zagorje where my grandparents lived, and I created a few shortcuts to make it easier for the everyday home cook — and me.
Štruklji is usually made with homemade dough rolled and cut into pieces, then baked (pečeni štruklji) or boiled (kuhani štruklji). I prefer baked because it’s easier, and I used puff pastry instead of making my own dough. My boho’d version isn’t even rolled at all! This unique but traditional Slovene dish reminds me of my grandparents whenever I make it.
Cooks&Books&Recipes {Dee}:
As I mentioned in my review of Ally’s cookbook, my palate is perhaps a tad less adventurous than some. But I do love to travel — and I definitely try to taste dishes native to wherever I travel. So when it came time for me to choose a recipe to test from Ally’s Kitchen: A Passport for Adventurous Palates, I decided to first choose where I’d want to go on Ally’s “magic carpet.” Europe, the Mediterranean, the Mideast, Africa, Asia, the Caribbean Islands? For me, the choice was easy: I have always wanted to see the cobalt-blue skies, turquoise waters, and bright-white beaches of the “stunning Mediterranean.” Perusing the recipes in this section, I immediately found the one that fit my style. Ally’s Baked Croatian Cottage Cheese Štruklji recipe uses store-bought puff pastry instead of homemade dough, for a result that looks like you spent the entire day in the kitchen. That’s my kind of cooking — simple, with a deliciously gourmet result. The fact that this recipe was inspired by Ally’s Croatian grandparents was a nostalgic bonus.
My first mistake of note was that I cut the puff pastry sheet into only six (instead of twelve) squares. But this was more than OK, because it meant that I ended up with a double-size štruklji. No problems there, since we would have just wanted two each anyway.
To start, I made the dessert version. This batch was so crazy-easy to make, so puff-golden beautiful, and so light-lemony delicious that I quickly thawed out the other puff pastry sheet and got busy with the “boho-ing.”
I went savory with the second batch, mixing in spinach, mozzarella cheese, and Italian spices (and making them double-size on purpose this time). These štruklji were the perfect accompaniment to our planned meal of tomato soup, making for an easy yet now-much-more-elegant Friday night supper.
Plus, I had extra filling — “mistake” number two. What to do? Not one to ever waste leftovers, I put this filling into a skillet with scrambled eggs the next morning. Talk about an unexpectedly gourmet start to Saturday morning!
Speaking of leftovers, we had one (extra-large) lemon-sweet štruklji remaining. Want to start the week off right? Just top one of these with fresh strawberries and Greek yogurt. Now that’s what I call a good Monday morning! So good, in fact, that I ate this before I remembered that I had wanted to take a photo…
You can find the Baked Croatian Cottage Cheese Štruklji recipe here.
Originally published at www.cooksandbooksandrecipes.com on May 14, 2015.
