Day in the Life of an Idiot

 ...if a little picky.  I would totally make them again, and I'm going to experiment with how long they could be refrigerated ahead of time. So here's Grandma Gretzky's Pierogi Recipe:

Ingredients

Filling:
2 large potatoes
1 onion, whole
1 tsp butter
1 small onion, finely chopped
1/2 cup cheddar cheese, grated (I used 1/2 Vermont White Cheddar, 1/2 Sartori Montamore cheddar--though I suspect any aged cheddar would work just as well.)
Ground pepper

Pastry:
1 cup flour
1 egg yolk
1 dash salt
1/4 cup boiling water

Finishing:
3 slices of bacon, chopped
1 tbsp butter


Preparation:

For filling: Boil potatoes and whole onion until potatoes are fully cooked.  Drain potatoes, discard onion, and mash. (I did this, even though I don't entirely understand the point, since you add sautéed onions as well). Sauté the chopped onions in butter until tender, but not browned. Combine mashed potatoes, cheeses, and sautéed onion. Mix well. Allow to cool.

For pastry: combine all ingredients for pastry and mixed together until mixture forms a ball (I found I had to add a tiny bit more boiling water, which I had on hand because I used our electric tea kettle to boil the water.) Cover and let stand at room temperature for 30 minutes. (One presumes to activate the gluten?)

Roll dough about 3 mm thick. Cut in circles of approximately 7 cm diameter.  (I just used a pastry cutter we had around. Given that I got a few extra--this makes 24, I ended up with 30--my cutter was a bit on the small size.)

Place filling on half of the circle, fold over, and press edges together well, slightly dampening the edges with water to help seal, if necessary.

Fill large saucepan 3/4 full with water, add oil and salt for cooking, and bring to a boil.

Add pierogis and cook, uncovered, stirring occasionally with a wooden spoon to keep from sticking for about 5 minutes until they rise to the surface of the water. Remove with a slotted spoon. (I had no trouble with sticking and mostly ignored them while they boiled, as I dropped them in in small batches, and I was continuously making more. A trick I have learned making kniefla.)

At this point I put mine in the fridge for a couple of hours. I dried them off pretty well, let them cool at room temperature, and then put them in a wax paper lined bit of Tupperware. (Like so much Tupperware, I've since lost the cover, so I just covered it with saran wrap.)

For finishing:
Sauté in a frying pan with bits of bacon and butter until browned or crisped to your preference.

Servings: makes 24

 Look, don't judge, okay?  Sure, it's 9 am, but I've already been up for four hours and borscht looks really good to me right now.  I'm sure there are places in the world where stew for breakfast isn't _that_weird. In Japan, I could have miso first thing in the morning and no one would blink.

When I have borscht again for lunch in another few hours? THEN you can judge me.

What can I say? I really like beets. And cabbage.  But, especially beets. Borscht is one of the few times in my life where I look at a stew and think: "Are potatoes REALY necessary???" (If you knew the depths of my love of potatoes, you'd be pretty shocked right now.) I've also accidentally made this particular borscht recipe without cabbage and I still loved it.  I don't even put beef in my recipe, so it's just kind of a giant mess of beets and spices.  

Okay, I'm judging myself: pathetic beet lover.

If you're curious, I got this recipe from the St. Paul Farmer's Market Produce Cookbook, 2005 edition. It's from Evelyn Kaiser, and it goes like this:

5 cups of water
1 1/2 cups beets, peeled and diced
1 cup potatoes, peeled and diced
1 cup carrots, peel and diced
1 tsp. salt
2 tbsp utter
1 onion, chopped
2 clove of garlic, minced
1 cup of green cabbage, shredded
1/2 put of tomato, chopped (or one can of diced tomatoes -or- one can of tomato sauce. Not being a huge tomato fan, I use either of these.)
1/2 cup beet, peeled and grated
1 tsp. dried dill (and a sprinkling of fresh, if available.)
1 tsp honey
1/2 tsp Worcestershire
salt and pepper (I add a beef bullion or two instead of the salt, because I like the meaty undertone that gives. Plus any bullion is super salty so I can skip any of the added salt.)

The rest reads:

Bring 5 cups of water to boil ad add diced beets, potato, carrots and salt (or bullion, in my case).  Reduce heat an cook covered over medium heat for 30 minutes or until vegetables are soft.*

In saucepan, heat butter and sauté onion and garlic until soft. Add the cabbage and sauté for 3 minutes. Sir in tomatoes, grated beets, and remaining ingredients. Mix well. Add sauté mixture to boiled vegetable. Simmer for 10 to 20 minutes until vegetables are tender. 

*adding the potatoes at the same time as beets often ends with completely mushed potatoes. I would recommend dropping them in 10 minutes later or so, IF you want firm and not completely pulverized potatoes. I suspect this is why the recipe suggests peeling them. I'm usually throwing things into the pot that I've gotten from the farmers' market THAT DAY, so it seems silly to peel the potatoes.... until I forget i should have waited and end up with mush attached to skin. The other option is to skip them entirely, of course, though, despite all this, I rarely do that.  Probably because I feel guilty admitting that what I really want is a giant bowl of boiled beets and the potatoes makes me feel like I'm making a stew.

:-)

I have served this to others and have been met with mixed results. Beets and cabbage are definitely an acquired taste.  It's hard for me to tell if this recipe is as good as It think it is, since literally it could read: peel and dice beets, boil until tender, add salt, and I'd be like WHAT IS THIS WONDEROUS CONCOCTION??

Milage may vary.

 

Ingredients:

1/3 cup mayonnaise
2 tablespoons of sweet pickle relish
1 tablespoon chopped shallots
1 teaspoon capers, chopped
1/4 teaspoon hot pepper sauce (I used "DoubleTake Hot Sauce.")
1 pound peeled and deveined large shrimp (I actually used what Kowalski's called 'salad shrimp' the little tiny ones.)
1 1/2 teaspoons Cajun seasoning (I used Penzey Spice's Cajun seasoning)
4 hoagie rolls
romaine lettuce
tomato slices (optional in our family)
4 thin red onion slices (forgot these, but would make a good addition)


Preparation:

1. Combine first 5 ingredients in a small bowl.  Heat a large nonstick skillet over medium-high heat. Combine shrimp and Cajun seasoning in a bowl; toss well. Add olive oil to pan and swirl to coat.  Add shrimp to pan, cook 2 minutes on each side until done. Mix into mayonnaise mixture.

2. Cut each roll in half horizontally. (I then toasted them in our toaster oven.) Top bottom half of each roll with shrimp and mayonnaise mixture. Add toppings.


NOTES:

Okay, actually I screwed this up and they still tasted great. Because I have a tendency to read recipes line-by-line, sometimes I miss important steps.  So, here when it says put the sauce in a bowl and then fry the shrimp, I mixed everything together and ended up frying the shrimp in the sauce which of course just sort of melted. On the other hand, since I was working with the smaller shrimp (which were also frozen) it gave me a chance to drain off excess water and kind of marinated them a bit in their own juices and extra spices, as it were.  It wasn't difficult to recreate the sauce when everything was done, either.  Also the original recipe had the shrimp sitting on top of a layer of the mayonnaise mixture, but it was a lot yummier to mix the little shrimp in to the sauce, IMHO.  If you use bigger shrimp it might make sense to do it their way.