So Many Dishes

I promised, when I mentioned in a previous post that we were having a pierogi party, that I would write an entry about the party, so here it is. The good news: everyone had a great time. The bad news: there are no leftover pierogi.

Ken and I have made pierogi before, but not in a long time. It’s definitely not something to do from scratch for just two people. And, although one person can do it, making pierogi is much easier as a group effort, not to mention a lot more fun.

We decided on drawing on several Central/Eastern European cuisines for our menu. For our appetizer, I made chlebicky, little open faced sandwiches that we were served many times when we were in Prague. Thin baguette slices are topped with potato salad and an artfully arranged thin slice of deli ham. The potato salad and the ham were more or less mandatory; the toppings were optional. I added dill pickle slices. Other toppings included sardines (a hard no), pimento slices, and cheese. For us, this was pretty typical, and everyone seemed to like them.

We decided to do two pierogi fillings, potato and cheese, plus mushroom and onion. Potato-cheese are what most people know as pierogi, and it’s a very simple filling to make. I do my standard mashed potatoes using russet potatoes, so that excess moisture is inhibited. I mash the potatoes with butter and milk, as I would normally. Then it’s only a matter of adding grated cheddar cheese. I cooked two pounds of potatoes and added 6 ounces of grated Cheddar, which worked pretty well. Over the past couple weeks, I have looked at lots of different pierogi recipes, and one of them said of the potato-cheese filling, “the more cheese, the better.” That, actually, is a good approach to life in general 😄

There are so many versions of the mushroom and sauerkraut filling, and it took some time to settle on one. Some call for dried mushrooms, some for fresh, and a few used both. I chose a dried mushroom version from The Frugal Gourmet Cooks Our Immigrant Ancestors. This was an absolute winner. I soaked dried porcini mushrooms, then drained and chopped them, and sautéed them, along with chopped onion, in a bit of butter. I added drained and chopped sauerkraut and a little ground pepper, and simmered the mixture until most of the liquid cooked off, but it wasn’t dry. The difficult part with this was not eating the filling before adding it to the pierogi. It is that tasty. Ken and I agreed that you could make this as a side dish.

For the pierogi dough, I went back to the Frugal Gourmet’s immigrant ancestor cookbook. When I first made pierogi, I used the dough recipe in the original Frugal Gourmet cookbook. That was good, but this is definitely better. It incorporates sour cream into the dough, which adds two whole, one egg yolk, some melted butter, vegetable oil, and salt to the flour, along with the sour cream. I did not take a picture of the dough because I was literally up to my elbows in it. I kneaded it for several minutes to get all the flour incorporated and achieve the soft, pliable dough that resulted.

I had lots of help to actually roll the dough and cut and fill the pierogi. That was part of the fun of having the party! Friends Chris, Kristin, and Tim pitched in and took over most of the assembly, while I shuttled trays of filled dough crescents, managed logistics, and got everything ready to boil the pierogi. We didn’t pan fry them after boiling, but served them with lots of sautéed onions and butter.

In the rush to get everything ready to serve, I forgot to take pictures of the serving bowls until everyone had their first helping (we served buffet-style).

In addition to the pierogi, we had a cucumber salad using a recipe from a Slovak-American cookbook that my mother-in-law gave me many years ago. Ken said this was very similar to what his mother made when he was growing up. The dressing was a sour cream base; I don’t think we’ve ever had so much sour cream in the house as we did for this meal. I also had cooked and sliced turkey kielbasa for the meat lovers, but that was the one item where we had leftovers. There was one pierogi left when I went to clean up.

Dessert was simple: two kinds of brownies, courtesy of Ghirardelli mixes. It was the perfect ending for a fun evening, as evidenced by the smiles in the group photo.

Happy eating!