Hoentay is made once a year and it belongs to the Haaps and Parops, the people of the Haa and Paro valleys, who keep their own new year. Lomba falls on the twenty-ninth day of the tenth Bhutanese month, in late November or December, and it marks the close of the agricultural year rather than the turn of a calendar. Households make hoentay together and then give them away, plates going back and forth between families through the week. Young people go from door to door singing Lolay, wishing a good year, and are paid in meals, rice, strips of meat, chillies, cheese or chugo, the rock-hard dried cheese people suck on for hours. The dumpling itself is buckwheat rather than wheat, because buckwheat is what grows in these valleys, and the filling is turnip leaves with fresh cheese, butter and amaranth seed. Urbanisation is thinning the practice, and fewer young Bhutanese now make them at all.
INGREDIENTS
- 300 g buckwheat flour
- ½ tsp salt
- 200 ml warm water
- 300 g turnip tops (kale or spinach leaves)
- 1 small turnip (coarsely grated)
- 2 tbsp amaranth seed
- 40 g butter
- 1 medium onion (finely chopped)
- 4 garlic cloves (finely chopped)
- 2 cm ginger (finely chopped)
- 3 spring onions (finely sliced)
- 1 tsp chilli powder
- 150 g cottage cheese (or feta rinsed and crumbled)
- 1 tsp salt (for the filling)
METHOD
- Mix the buckwheat flour and salt with the warm water and knead for 5 minutes into a firm, slightly tacky dough. Cover and rest for 30 minutes.
- Boil the greens for 5 minutes if fresh, or 25 minutes if you are using dried leaves. Drain, cool under the tap, then squeeze them out hard in your hands and chop finely.
- Toast the amaranth seed in a dry pan for a minute until it starts to pop, and tip it out.
- Melt the butter in a pan and cook the onion, garlic and ginger for 6 minutes until soft. Add the grated turnip and cook for 5 minutes more.
- Stir in the chopped greens, the amaranth, the spring onions, chilli powder and salt. Cook for 2 minutes, then take off the heat and leave until completely cool.
- Fold the cheese through the cooled filling.
- Divide the dough into walnut-sized pieces. Roll each between two sheets of baking paper into a round about 10cm across, keeping the rest covered.
- Put a heaped spoonful of filling in the centre of each round, bring the edges up and pinch them closed into a pouch or a fat half-moon.
- Steam in a lined steamer for 25 minutes, until the wrappers turn darker and set firm.
- Serve hot with ezay.