as i said the announcement, during the month of february i will be posting some of my favorite dominican dishes to honor the dominican republic’s independence on february 27, 1844.  this first recipe is called domplines ahogados en queso which translates literally to dumplings drowned in cheese. yes, that’s right, drowned.in.cheese. i don’t know about you, but i think that anything that is drowned in cheese is bound to be delicious. 

a bit of history on these: dumplings drowned in cheese (ddc for short) were originally brought to my town by cocolo workers. the term cocolo refers to caribbean descendants who went to the dominican republic (dr) to work on the docks and sugar cane plantations at the end of the 19th and the beginning of the 20th centuries. some say they were called “cocolos” because the largest group came from the west indian island of tortola. according to dominican folklore, somehow, native dominicans thought they were hearing “cocolo”, when these workers answered where they were from, and to this day the name has stuck.

the cocolos brought their culture, music and of course cuisine to towns like the one i grew up in.  domplines ahogados en queso/dumplings drowned in cheese is part of their heritage!

INGREDIENTS:

for the dumplings follow the recipe from my previous post. you will need:
flour
warm water
salt

for the cheese sauce:
1 medium tomato
1 green pepper
1 medium white onion
16oz of mild cheddar cheese
1/2 small can of tomato sauce
milk or heavy cream
2 or 3 cloves of garlic
salt & pepper to taste
vegetable or canola oil
dry/ground oregano

(i am missing a lot of ingredients in this ingredients’ picture - sorry about that)

INSTRUCTIONS:
make the dumplings following the recipe (mix together flour, salt and warm water. boil).

start by shredding the cheese. if you don’t have a shredder the cut up the cheese in tiny squares so it melts faster.

chop up the onion, tomato, pepper and garlic.

in a large pot, heat 1 teaspoon of vegetable or canola oil. add the garlic and onions. season the onions with a little salt to help them sweat.

once the onions start becoming translucent add the peppers and tomatoes.

season with oregano and ground pepper. stir to mix.

add the tomato sauce and mix well.

once the tomatoes start getting mushy (yes. mushy is my technical term) add the shredded cheese and 1/4 cup of milk or heavy cream.  i used heavy cream.

stir the pot and cook an low/med heat to melt the cheese. add another splash of milk/cream. about 1/4 cup.

be careful not to burn the cheese. burnt cheese is difficult to wash out.  anyway, cook the cheese sauce, stirring constantly, for about 5 minutes. the sauce will be ready when it is smooth and easy to stir. taste the sauce and season to taste, season before adding the dumplings. once you like the taste, start adding the dumplings.

be careful when stiring so the dumplins don’t break appart. coat all the domplins slowly.

cook them for another 2 minutes and serve.

every time i eat these i am reminded of the two years of high school i did in the dominican republic. this is difficult for some of my friends to understand, but growing up i was extremely shy. when i got to high school i was faced with the task of making friends but being extremely tall and lanky with pigtails and thick glasses is not helpful. so in order to make some friends, and without asking my parents for permission (or giving them a heads up), i started offering my house for study groups…

and these study groups would consist of about 10 teenagers who would undoubtedly become hungry. one days one of our male study group members (who thankfully does not read this blog) suggested we made ddc.  none of us knew how to make them, but he did. so he made a batch of these (with our help chopping and mixing) and i have been hooked on ddc ever since.

you can see that with all that cheese some may think this is not the healthiest of dishes. to those people i say… cheese is a great source of calcium!

and besides, these domplines helped me make pretty fantastic friends!

hope you try making ddc.  thank you for stopping by!

and as we say in dominican republic, buen provecho!