As I promised here is the recipe for syrniks.
In case I just don't know the name for something in English that I can just buy, tell me, please. I'm too lazy to do something I don't need to do.
You need:
- milk: half a gallon
- flour: 70-80 gramms
- eggs: 1 1/2. I'm using 1 egg and 1 yolk. But you can also use 3 yolks.
- sugar: 3-5 tablespoons
- vanilla extract: 1 teaspoon (or as much as you want, it's not a required component)
- butter or vegetable oil to grease the pan
- sour cream as a catalyst and as a sauce
as a sauce you can also use some preserve (like strawberry preserve, apple preserve, goosberry preserve, black or red currant preserve and so on, it's better to have a preserve that contains only berries or fruits and sugar, not jam), when I was a child I also loved it with condenced milk, but it can be too sweet. :)
First we need to make tvorog (something like cottage cheese)
You need milk. I prefer whole milk. But fat reduced milk should work too. Pour milk into a container, add 1-3 tablespoon of sour cream and leave it in a warm place for 2-3 days.
It works without sour cream too, but in my experience without sour cream it can be not very tasty. Maybe, wrong bacterias.
2-3 days later you will see it starting to decompose to white granules and yellow liquid (sorry, I don't know English names for these things).
Pour it to a saucepan and cook it but not boil. I'm using InstantPot container for milk. This way I don't need to move milk between containers and I'm using saute mode to cook it.
After 15-20 minutes it becomes completely decomposed. Turn it off and wait for 20-30 minutes more.
Pour it into a cheesecloth, tie it, hang up in a fridge and wait before liquid is drained from tvorog. You can also put it to a sieve and press it. I usually just squeeze it out to have it ready faster. :)
Now you have tvorog. You can eat it raw, in Russian (actually in Slavic) cousine there are a huge amount of recipes with tvorog.
And we are ready to cook syrniks.
From half a gallon of milk you get about 320-350 gramms of tvorog. Put tvorog into a bowl.
Smash it. Ideally tvorog should be dry and soft without any granulas. But don't worry, even not ideal syrniks are tasty.
Add eggs (I use 1 egg and 1 yolk for this amout of tvorog).
Add flour (better through a sieve) and sugar, vanilla extract and a pinch of salt.
Thoroughly mix it all.
Now you have dough and can cook it.
Take a plate, add flour, wet your hands (it's important, dough will stick to your dry hands) and take a piece of dough enough to have a ball of 1 - 1 1/2 inches in diameter. Form the ball,
then flatten it, put on the plate with flour and make the next one.
In the same time warm up a pan (fire shouldn't be too high), put 1 tablespoon of butter (or a drizzle of vegetable oil) and place the syrniks onto the pan.
2-4 minutes later turn them on the other side. Cook them for 2-4 minutes more and then move them to a plate. They are ready.
When you have no dough you are ready to eat them.
Put sour cream or/and preserves to small plates, take the syrniks with your hands, dip in sour cream and eat them all.
(this plate is smaller than the plate from the previous image! Eat them with bare hands, the fork is for scale and for my son, he doesn't want to have my barbarian habits)
Yummy!