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Hoentay (Buckwheat Momos)

Hoentay (Buckwheat Momos) is a traditional Bhutanese recipe for a classic buckwheat dumpling with a soiced cheese and greens filling that's traditionally served at the New Year festival of Lomba. The full recipe is presented here and I hope you enjoy this classic Bhutanese version of: Buckwheat Momos (Hoentay).

prep time

20 minutes

cook time

25 minutes

Total Time:

45 minutes

Additional Time:

(+30 minutes softening)

Serves:

6

Rating:

Tags : Vegetarian RecipesSpice RecipesCheese RecipesBhutan Recipes

Hoentay is a traditional sweet buckwheat dumpling that is known have originated from Haa Valley in Bhutan. Similar to momos they are made from buckwheat dough wrapper usually combined with spinach or turnip leaves, amaranth seeds (zimtse), cottage cheese, butter, chilli powder, onion and ginger. It is usually eaten during the festival of Lomba, an agricultural festival that marks the end of the harvest season and for New Year celebrations. Dried turnip leaves (lom) are a Bhutanesee speciality, they are dried in the summer sun and then stored until winter. Many Bhutanese recipes, like this one, call for them. They are typically chopped and then boiled until they become soft (about 25 minutes). If you can't get them use fresh, steamed turnip leaves.

Ingredients:

130g Buckwheat flour
1/2 bunch dried turnip leaves (or the greens from 2 turnips)
1 tbsp amaranth seeds, ground
50g Cottage Cheese
50g Butter, melted and cooled
50g Black mustard seeds, ground
3cm length of Ginger, finely grated
1 garlic clove, minced
3 tsp chilli powder
1 tsp freshly-ground black pepper
1/2 tsp ground Szechuan pepper
4 spring onions, finely sliced
Salt to taste

Method:

Begin with the dough. Transfer the buckwheat flour into a bowl. Start adding water, mixing until everything comes together as a dough. Knead briefly then transfer to a bowl and set aside to rest.

Finely chop the cooked turnip leaves then set aside in a bowl. Mix together the ginger, garlic and spring onions in the bowl with the turnip greens.

Now mix in the ground mustard seeds, ground amaranth seeds, chilli powder, salt and Szechuan pepper. Season to taste with salt. Finally pour over the melted butter and mix everything to combine. Set aside to cool.

To prepare the dumplings:

Mix sweet buckwheat flour with water and knead to make a dough. Then put it aside. Mince the turnip leaves and cook for about 25 minutes then strain them and put aside in bowl. Chop ginger, garlic and spring onion. Mix these ingredients with the cooked turnip leaves. Then add cheese and ground black mustard seeds, followed by chili powder, salt and wild pepper to your taste. Finally, pour heated butter over all the ingredients and blend together. Keep aside to cool.

Final preparation: After this time, divide the dough into 2 equal pieces. Put one piece back in the bowl. Roll the other half on a floured work surface until very thin (you need them to be thin as they will plump during steaming). You should not need a lot of flour for dusting.

The traditional way of rolling these dumpling wrappers is by rolling the dough into a sausage and cutting it into evenly-looking pieces. Each piece is then flattened with a hand and rolled out thin. For this a smaller – thinner rolling pin is traditionally used. Another method is to roll out half of the dough thin and cut out circles using a large biscuit (cookie) cutter. This way all your homemade dumpling wrappers will look the same and so will your dumplings.

Roll the dough until 3 mm thick and cut them into round shapes with dough cutter. Next, add a tablespoon of the mixed ingredients into the round dough. Shape, fold or design the dough just like you would when making dumplings. After this, steam the hoentay for about 25 minutes.