laura@gwchem.waterloo.edu (Laura Pylypow) (06/26/90)
In article <1990Jun11.164658.25455@mthvax.cs.miami.edu> rb4p+@andrew.cmu.edu
(Robert Luther Brumfield) requests a recipe for perogies. Below is the
file that I send out to anyone who asks me for the recipe. Hope it's not
too wordy for inclusion in this group.
So, you want to make perogies? Well, if you have no Ukrainian
grandmother to show you, here's what you do.
1) Make some filling. Traditional savoury ones are:
Mashed potatoes
Mashed potatoes mixed with dry cottage cheese (New-World Ukrainians
often use grated cheddar, which is nontraditional but excellent)
** the potato-based fillings are easiest to handle for beginners **
Dry cottage cheese mixed with beaten egg
Sauerkraut fried with bacon and finely chopped or ground
Finely chopped mushrooms sauteed in butter with onion and dillweed
(this filling is delicious but is especially difficult to handle so
not recommended for beginners)
Savoury perogies are usually served with sour cream. (in addition to the
butter on them; that's just there to keep them from sticking together so
the calories don't count :-) ) Also very good are are caramelised
onions; finely chopped onions sauteed VERY, VERY, SLOWLY in butter
(what, MORE butter?! Yes. Welcome to Kiev, cholesterol capitol of the world)
until golden brown and sweet. Bacon bits (real, of course) are excellent,
especially with sauerkraut perogies.
Some sweet fillings:
cooked pureed prunes flavoured with allspice and lemon
poached apple pieces sweetened and flavoured with vanilla
poppyseed filling (recipe from laura@gwchem.waterloo.edu on request)
fresh fruit pieces, sweetened if necessary. A particular favourite
is to use whole prune plums; split, remove stones and fill centre with
sugar, then wrap the whole plum in the dough. Other good choices are
pitted fresh cherries (use two or three in each perogy), apricots,
strawberries, or raspberries. It is NOT a sacrilege to cook fresh fruit
this way; the gentle poaching they get inside the perogy skins enchances
the flavour wonderfully. However fresh fruit is difficult to handle, so
I would not recommended it for your first try at perogies.
Sweet perogies must ALWAYS be served with LOTS of sour cream. The fresh fruit
ones especially. They're at least twenty times better with the cream
than they are without. Trust me :-)
Tips: Whatever your filling, make sure it's COLD before you start.
You can usually get a dozen or so perogies out of a cup of
filling.
2) Make the dough It's hard to gauge amounts, since the handling is so
variable, but I generally find that the dough made from 2 cups of flour
gives me enough "skins" for about two dozen medium size (2.5 inches or so)
perogies. Your mileage may vary. The best flour is unbleached bread flour,
but most all-purpose flours work fine. I have experimented with whole wheat,
and have obtained good results only with very finely-milled stone ground
whole wheat bread flour, which is extremely difficult to come by.
But, anyway, choose some flour and put two cups of it into a large mixing
bowl. Add about half a cup of water to the flour and mix it in. You
might as well not bother using a spoon or anything since you're going
to have to get your hands dirty anyway. When you have a gluey mess
(depending on the moisture content of the flour, you may have to add
more water...it should be a medium-soft gluey mess, not a stiff gluey mess)
turn it out on the counter and knead it for a few minutes. Now, overturn
the mixing bowl and cover the dough with it. GO AWAY FOR AT LEAST HALF
AN HOUR. (The longest I've ever left it is about three hours, after which
the results were still fine. This is a good time for final preparation of
fillings.) When you return, start kneading the gluey mess again. It will
turn into a smooth, stretchy non-mess that comes away cleanly from your
hands and the counter. If it doesn't, try leaving it a little longer,
and if that fails, kneading in a LITTLE extra flour. It should be quite
soft; much softer than pasta dough, if that helps any. Stop kneading
as soon as it loses its stickiness. From now on until the end of the
operation, the dough must always be kept well covered, since if it dries
out it loses its elasticity. (You can also do this in a mixer with
a dough hook, but be careful not to overknead.)
3) Now assemble the perogies. This is the tricky part, since if the skins
are not flaw-free and perfectly sealed, water will leak in during the cooking
which both ruins the perogies and makes a horrible mess in the pot.
First prepare trays or something to receive the filled perogies; cover some
flat surfaces with dish towels or paper towels and dust evenly and
generously with flour. Fill your biggest pot with water and put it on
to boil. Perogies need even more water than pasta.
Now, take a handful of dough and roll it out about 1/8'' thick on a lightly-
floured board. Cut it into 1.5'' circles with a cooky or ravioli cutter,
or glass or tin. (I used to save tomato paste tins until I found a nifty
round ravioli cutter) COVER the dough with a dishtowel or something; it
must NOT dry out. It's also good not to roll out too much at a time;
especially at first.
Flour your hands, pick up a circle and stretch it evenly, especially the
edges, until it gains about an inch in diameter. Put a heaping teaspoonful
of filling in the center of the stretched dough, and fold two opposite edges
up. Pick it up and flatten slightly, then pinch the edges together carefully,
making sure that there are no holes and no bits of filling sticking out,
forming a semicircular package. I usually go around each edge twice with
thumb and index finger. Experienced perogy-makers use a big lump of filling
and s-t-r-e-t-c-h the dough around it; this gives you a thinner skin which
is much more palatable (who, after all, wants to eat lots of cooked flour-
and-water paste?) but the thin-skinned perogies are very fragile. Start
with small wads of filling, and try and work up. Put the finished perogies
on the prepared trays; making sure that they don't touch each other.
If they have to stand for any length of time, dust with flour and
cover with another cloth.
4) When you've finished assembling them, prepare some bowls with melted
butter in the bottom to receive them after cooking. I usually just
warm bowls (pyrex) and butter in a very slow oven, since the warm
bowls keep the little treasures from cooling off. Make sure the water is
boiling vigorously, then drop the perogies into the boiling water, a few
at a time, slowly so the water keeps boiling. Stir VERY GENTLY to keep
them from sticking to the bottom. You don't have to dump them in
simultaneously or worry about timing them, because they will float to
the top when they're done. Fish them out with a runcible spoon, and
put them carefully into the buttered bowls. Swirl the bowls every
so often to make sure they perogies get all coated with butter. It's
usually a good idea to have extra butter available in case emergency
lubrication is required.
When they're all done, serve immediately, and prepare to become very
depressed. They will vanish in a tiny fraction of the time it took
to prepare them. But I think it's all worth it :-) Na zdorovje!!
--
Laura Pylypow | If you would take from something
Chemistry, University of Waterloo | You must first give to it
laura@gwchem.waterloo.edu |
laura@gwchem.uwaterloo.ca | - Tao Te Ching