Papanași: A Romanian Dessert of Curd Cheese, Sour Cream and Jam
I'll admit I set out for Iași (also spelled Iasi) with one dessert in my head before I had even picked a hotel. It was on the list from the first moment I started planning the trip. I wasn't alone in that: in a ranking of the hundred best desserts in the world, compiled by a website from readers' votes, it finished thirty-third, the only Romanian entry.
Papanași are fried doughnuts made of curd cheese dough, shaped into a ring with a little ball on top and drowned in sour cream and jam - a dessert that is by now part of Romanian cooking everywhere. The word "doughnuts" is the trickiest part of that whole sentence.
Why You Almost Never Hear Papanaș in the Singular
The singular papanaș does exist in the dictionary, but you won't hear it in a restaurant, because they are never brought out one at a time - two to a plate. It is pronounced "papanash", with the stress on the second syllable. The Romanian dictionary traces the name to the verb a păpa, a child's word for eating - and a Czech can't help smiling at that, because our toddlers say "papát" for exactly the same thing. Whether both go back to the Latin pappa, or Romanian came up with it on its own, the dictionary leaves open - the certainty is something Romanian websites add on their own.
Just How Romanian Are Papanași?
Papanași are eaten all over Romania, but two different things go by the same name. The fried ring with the ball comes from Romanian Moldavia and Bukovina, the very region Iași sits in. In Transylvania and the Banat the curd dough is boiled in water instead of fried and rolled in toasted breadcrumbs - and there it goes by gomboți cu brânză, which is just a Romanianized version of the Hungarian túrógombóc. What Romania added to the whole family of curd dumplings that Hungarians boil and Austrians know as Topfenknödel is the oil: the ring is fried while everything around it is boiled. Romanian websites wonder how Romanian papanași really are, and answer with surprising composure: the dumpling came from Austria-Hungary, the deep fryer is ours.
English-language blogs call the dessert "Romanian doughnuts". That is a mistake. The shape fits, the dough doesn't. A doughnut, Romanian gogoși included, is yeast dough and air; a papanaș rises only as much as a pinch of baking soda lets it, and instead of air it has curd cheese in it. Nobody has pinned down when the first papanaș was fried. Romanian writers do say that the fried restaurant version only took off in the nineties - which makes a dessert that beat hundreds of older ones in a worldwide vote about as old, in this form, as the first episodes of Friends.
Curd Cheese, Semolina and Oil: What a Papanaș Is Made Of
The lead role goes to brânză de vaci, a dry, crumbly cow's milk curd cheese held together by nothing but an egg and semolina or flour. The semolina soaks up the moisture from the cheese, and in the oil it turns into a crust with soft dough underneath. The ball on top, moț in Romanian, is not decoration but the piece of dough cut out of the middle - the cook doesn't throw it away, fries it separately and sits it back in the hole. If you know the boiled curd cheese dumplings rolled in buttered breadcrumbs that Czech school canteens serve, you already know the boiled Transylvanian version almost exactly; the fried Moldavian one is the same dough, sent to the deep fryer instead of the pot. Then come two counterweights: smântână, a thick sour cream, and dulceață, a fruit preserve, most often blueberry or sour cherry. Apricot, which is what I got, is rare in recipes.
Papanași are a restaurant dessert and rarely made at home, because deep-frying takes a whole afternoon. They are ordered after the main course, and a portion of two rings with cream is a meal in itself; anyone having them after sarmale and mămăligă should have someone at the table to share with. On the menu, tell prăjiți (fried) from fierți (boiled) - even Romanians get caught out when another region serves them, under the same name, something completely unlike what their grandmother used to make.
The Dessert I Came to Iași For
I had my papanași in Iași, at Restaurant Rustic (see Where to Eat in Iași), after smoked ribs with country potatoes. Two rings arrived, each with its ball, under such a layer of cream and apricot jam that I didn't see the dough until I cut into it. It was soft and moist, without a trace of a dried-out doughnut, with a curd tang that the cream doubled into something sourer still, and only the jam broke through that wall of sourness with something sweet. The ball on top had more crust than the ring underneath. A portion that was really meant for two cost 4 EUR.
