Jan 22, 2012 3
Pongauer Fleischkrapfen
Last Friday, we celebrated the multi-national culture at Opera Software with a Global Village, an event where employees served samples of traditional foods from their native countries. I’m the only Austrian at Opera, so I got to choose what to serve on my table. 
I grew up in the Pongau district of Salzburg (Salzburg is both the city and one of Austria’s 9 states), in the middle of the Alps. A very typical dish for the region is ‘Pongauer Fleischkrapfen’, a sort of meat dumpling, typically made with smoked meat. So for Global Village, I created a modern rendition of the dish. It is 100% vegetarian, though I must warn you: that doesn’t make the dish much lighter. 
The recipe is for 6-8 people. Fleischkrapfen take quite a bit of time to prepare, so it does make sense to make a bunch. The good thing is that you can make them in stages. I did it like this:
- Day 1: prepare the filling
- Day 2: make the dough and make the Krapfen
- Day 3: deep-fry the Krapfen
The measurements are not very exact, since I usually cook by approximation rather than by book.
The Filling
- ~100g TVP (Textured vegetable protein)
- 2 blocks of smoked tofu (the smokier the better)
- 2 onions
- 2 cloves of garlic
- 1 large potato, cooked
- vegetable stock
- soy sauce
- vegetable frying oil
- herb salt, pepper
- parsley
Cover the dry TVP with boiling water, add a dash of soy sauce, a whole bunch of vegetable stock, and herb salt. The liquid should be a lot saltier than the usual vegetable broth. Let the TVP rehydrate for a couple of minutes (the package will tell you how long exactly). Mince the smoked tofu and mash the potato. When ready, drain the TVP and press it with your hands to remove all excess liquid.
Finely cut the onions and fry them in oil until lucent. Then add some more oil, the TVP and the tofu, and roast for a little while. Then add the rest of the ingredients (potato, crushed garlic, spicery). To make it taste authentic, make sure to use a whole bunch of oil and salt. The filling shouldn’t taste dry. Let the filling cool down before you use it. Ideally, leave it over night, so the TVP can take on some of the smokiness of the tofu.
The Dough: “Abbrennteig”
- 250g wheat flour
- 250g rye flour
- ~ 250ml unsweetened plant milk (e.g. soy milk or oat milk)
- 100g milk-free margarine
- 1 tsp ground caraway
- salt (1 tbs?)
We call this dough “Abbrennteig” (burn-up-dough?). The idea is to ‘burn’ the flour with the hot liquid, so it thickens immediately. It can be a little tricky to get the amount of liquid right, since you shouldn’t have to add too much flour or cold liquid later on. The dough should be hard enough so it doesn’t stick and is strong enough to hold in the filling. If it is too hard, it will be tough to roll it out.
To make the dough, mix the dry ingredients. Boil up the milk and margarine, then mix the hot liquid into the dry ingredients. Knead a little and let the dough rest for a little while, so it can cool down. (I had it rest over night even, covered with plastic foil).
The Krapfen
- Cooking oil for deep frying (I used coconut oil)
Take a bit of the dough and roll it out thinly, around 15cm in diameter. Put filling on the lower half of the circle, and fold over the other half. Make sure there’s no extra air in the pocket. Press the edges shut with your fingers, leave around 1cm of edge; you don’t want the Fleischkrapfen to open up while you deep-fry them. Cut off excess dough with a pastry wheel.
If you end up with leftover dough (or if you want a simpler/faster dish), roll out the dough and cut it into large squares. The deep-fried squares are called “Blattlkrapfen” (leaf krapfen). We’d usually wrap them with Sauerkraut and eat them with our hands.
Deep-fry the Fleischkrapfen (brown them a little on both sides), and put them on kitchen roll paper to remove extra fat. Serve them immediately, together with sauerkraut. Good luck!
