Papanaşi

June 17, 2020

Famous for being one of the few inhabited medieval strongholds in the world and (allegedly) the birthplace of Vlad the Impaler, Sighişoara is a little town in Transylvania where I spent all my childhood holidays in the company of my paternal grandparents. It has always been a magical place for me; a place where time seemed to slow and impossibly warp in ways that news of my naughty deeds reached my grandma way before I got home. It was a place where city kids like me could escape the scorching Bucharest summers, enjoy the bountiful countryside, and forget the scarcity of communist Roumania.

The late 1980s in Roumania marked the decline of the communist regime, if for no other reason than because the country starved given that all of its food production was earmarked for export to help pay the foreign debt. I still remember buying bread with ration cards – we had 1.5 breads for a family of four per day - and routinely lining up for hours at the grocery store in the hopes of getting essentials such as eggs, butter, or meat. My grandparents (both maternal and paternal) were our lifeline, sending my older brother and me back to Bucharest at the end of the summer with preserves, potatoes, and meat to last us through the fall. My paternal grandparents, Mama-Mi (Lucretia) and Tata-Timu (Eftimie), raised pigs and chickens, tended a fairly large vegetable garden, and had an enormous pear tree that was a wasp magnet during the summer. As many Romanians of a certain age, Mama-Mi was an expert in managing scarcity. She was born in the heart of Transylvania, in the small village of Stînceni, where, according to family lore, our ancestors can trace their roots to two brothers who settled on both banks of the Mures River. Before the Hungarian occupation in 1940 and the communist expropriations after WWII, her family owned the only gristmill in town, and had cows, sheep, and horses as well as enough land to sustain the needs of the family. All of this property was confiscated during the Soviet occupation following the war.

Mama-Mi always differed to my grandpa as the ‘official’ family storyteller, but to me, she was the staunchest denouncer of Communist regime injustices. Most often, her storytelling began while she was cooking, canning, or tending the garden, when a particularly hard to get ingredient would prompt her to begin with “oh, Nană dragă, dacă ai şti tu” (oh, if you only knew, my dear Nana – Nana was my nickname). She would complain that my grandpa took too long peeling potatoes, only to reminisce about how she had access to food and community support while working at a synagogue cafeteria as a single mother during my grandpa’s internment after the war. And every summer, during family hay making in Stînceni, she shared childhood stories about living free and wild in the Transylvanian countryside, but also of the hard work on the land and the self-sufficiency it provided, especially in times of scarcity.

A couple of years after I immigrated to Montreal, I asked Mama-Mi to share her recipe for canned tomato sauce, and she promptly said, “Why bother with all that hard work when you can just buy it from the store?” I was disappointed because I assumed she would appreciate my good intentions of keeping a family tradition alive. I soon realized that my romanticized memory of the fall canning season did not match her lived experience of scarcity, nor her down-to-earth practicality with which she approached everything. So instead we settled on the recipe for papanaşi, which is a traditional dessert from Transylvania. The main ingredient is a type of soft whey cheese similar to ricotta, called branza de vaci (literally, cow’s cheese). Papanaşi is my favourite Mama-Mi specialty, and perhaps because it is difficult to get authentic branza de vaci in Montreal, it comes to mind, especially nowadays when I see certain essentials missing from grocery shelves. As we all shift our behaviours and thoughts to increasing self-sufficiency and strengthening grassroots solidarity during this pandemic, I find myself thinking of Mama-Mi often. She exemplifies not only resilience and tenacity during extraordinary times, but also reminds me of the priceless role grandparents and elders have in transferring invaluable life-skills to younger generations. My heart goes out to all the families that have lost their elders, and hope that they will be honoured as Mama-Mi will forever be cherished in my heart.

400g Ricotta Cheese (As an alternative you can use well drained cottage cheese that is a little blended, but don’t turn it into a paste)
2 Eggs
¼ cup/2 tbsp Semolina
¼ cup/2 tbsp Flour
¾ cup Dry Breadcrumbs
2 tbsp Butter
2 tbsp Sugar or more to taste
2 tbsp Vanilla Sugar or 1 tsp Pure Vanilla Extract
Pinch of Salt

Instructions:

1. Mix the drained cottage cheese or ricotta, egg and vanilla sugar in a bowl until you obtain a rough paste. Add the semolina and the flour and mix with a spoon. The dough should be soft and a little bit sticky, but still manageable.

2. Sprinkle the working surface generously with flour. Turn the dough onto the flour. If the dough is too soft and you cannot really work with it, gradually add a little more flour. Don't overdo it or the dumplings will turn out too tough. The dough should be very soft though it is ok if it is still a bit sticky. With the palms, form balls/dumplings the size of ping-pong balls and place them on a tray.

3. Boil about 2L of water with a pinch of salt.

4. While the water comes to a boil, melt butter in a large pan, add the breadcrumbs and stir for a few minutes until the breadcrumbs are golden. Transfer to a large bowl and let cool. When cold, add the sugar and mix well.

5. When the water is boiling, turn the heat down to medium low and add the dumplings. They might stick to the bottom of the pan, so make sure to gently agitate them. They are cooked when they rise to the surface (about 5 to 10 minutes). Once they raise to the surface, shut the stove element, cover the pan with a lid, and leave the papanaşi 5 to 10 more minutes.

6. Remove with a slotted spoon and drain. Roll the wet papanaşi into the breadcrumb and sugar mixture and serve immediately as they are best served warm. Serve as they are or topped with any kind of runny jam, more regular or vanilla sugar, or with sour cream.

Ioana is a first generation settler from Roumania who lives and works in Tiohtià:ke/Montréal. She is an interdisciplinary scholar whose research focuses on Indigenous wellbeing, knowledge mobilization, and oral history.