Pierogi

I enjoy reading through my issue of Martha Stewart Living each month. Martha’s ideas for making the ordinary extraordinary are truly inspirational. She makes everything look so easy and wonderful. The latest issue of her magazine featured an article and recipe for pierogi. The glossy pages of the magazine showed some beautiful pictures of the pierogi-making process and the end result. I was tempted to try but the article said they were tricky. If Martha admitted something was tricky it would certainly be too much for me.

As I was catching up on the shows on my DVR, I came across an episode of Martha making pierogi with her nieces. It didn’t look that hard to me and they all just raved about how much they loved them. Feeling up to the challenge, I pulled the issue out of the recycling bin and decided to give it a try.

A pierogi is actually a dumpling. The outside is dough and the inside can be filled with cabbage, potato or a variety of fruit. The potato pierogi seemed like a good choice for dinner. The dough was a very simple mix of flour, egg, milk and water. After kneading it for the required 8-10 minutes, the dough was ready to “rest”. I was the one who needed the rest; kneading dough is the perfect exercise for arms and abs. I know I’ll be hurting tomorrow!

With the potatoes cooked and mashed with cream cheese and butter and the dough rolled to perfection, I was ready to start assembly. Three inch circles of dough were filled with the potato mixture, crimped and then dropped into a pot of boiling water. They looked just like the picture. Well, close enough anyway. When they were finished, I fished them out of the water and set them on a plate with butter. I drizzled browned butter on the top and was ready to give them a try.

Let’s just say that boiled dough is not my thing. The filling was very tasty but the consistency of the dumpling bothered me. Even though I only made half of the recipe, I have many pierogi left to eat. I think tomorrow I will deep fry them to crisp up the soggy dumpling part. Fried pierogi, I hope it’s a good thing!