259 replies to this topic

[Pierogi]

And then there was dinner.

Dinner inspiration tonight was this:


THE most beautiful package of beef short ribs I've seen in manys a year. Seriously. These were stunning. And only in SoCal in FEBRUARY (when I bought them) could you find a package of short ribs labeled "Excellent Bar-B-Que" !

And the recipe was found in this:


I know a lot of people rag on Ina, and yeah, sometimes I do find her schtick a bit annoying. OK, so it should be "GOOD" vanilla and "GOOD" olive oil and "GOOD" whatever, and her giggle is really, really getting on my last nerve....and yeah, she's on Food Network, so that automatically means she's got no cred.

But she writes good, solid, relatively uncomplicated recipes that 99.99% of the time turn out great. I have 5 of her cookbooks and love them and use them all. I can't really think of an Ina recipe that I've tried that has failed. And most of them are stellar. As was "Scott's Short Ribs" from "Family Style".

Which led us to this cast of ingredients:


First I trimmed the ribs, which really, didn't need much work. But they were better after a quick session with my boning knife:


Then they got the S&P treatment, and browned real good in the ol' trusty LeCruset:


That was one step I deviated from Ina. She wrote to brown the ribs in a hot oven on a sheet pan. First off, my bread was still in the oven, and it was at a different temp. Second, why on EARTH would you not want to develop that lovely fond? So into the LC they went.

Brown 'em hard on all sides, baby:


Remove the ribs from the pan, and set them aside.

There's that fond I'm talkin' about, then dump in some veg.....celery, carrots, fennel and a leek. Large dice on them, and smaller on the onion.




Yes, there were veggie handouts given....

Throw in some garlic and let it cook for a bit. Pour a goodly amount of red wine (I used a Paso Robles Rhone style red) over the sauteed veg, and let reduce by half. Drop in an herb bouquet (rosemary and thyme), and return the ribs. Pour in some *GOOD* (thank you Ina) beef stock/broth, almost to cover the ribs, bring to a boil, cover and shove into the oven.

Almost time (good, 'cuz I'm hungry):


Wonder what's in the LC?


Why beefy, rib-y, brothy goodness !


But first, we gotta rest the ribs (rest, REST, wait *I* need rest)...


And reduce the sauce....


But 'twas worth it. With polenta and roasted asparagus and the balance of the bottle of wine that went into the rib stew.








And that's evidence of a well-cooked short rib !


Yes, there was beefy goodness handouts dispensed as well !!! But y'all knew that.

Edited by Pierogi, 07 March 2011 - 01:14 AM.

[Pierogi]

Simultaneously, we also used these:


To make, at various stages, this:














And ultimately this, which will also be used tomorrow.


I mean, seriously, how bad can anything made with bacon, onion sauteed in bacon grease, potatoes and cream cheese be? Really. That's about as good as it gets.


Oh, and I really, really love the label on the TJ's gold potato bag:


I just love them. They have such a cool vibe about the whole enterprise....

[Pierogi]

One more, and then I'm going to go collapse in a corner and twitch for a bit.

The dishwasher tonight was only slightly less impacted than last night:



But that also didn't take into account what I washed by hand.....


Night all.

Stick a fork in me, please, I am well and truly done.

[Blether]

Great work ! Enjoy the rest.

[Shelby]

You were a busy woman yesterday!

The ribs look great. I never make polenta for dinner...I need to do that.


Oh and your bread. Seriously beautiful.

It's going to snow here for the next two days. *SIGH* Already a winter storm watch in effect. I really enjoyed all of the outdoor market pics. Everything is just so...green and pretty.

[Dejah]

Thanks, Roberta, for answering the questions about Long Beach and QM.
Love the casual way you write - a conversation peppered with appropriate expressions.

I was so thinking of you and your bungee cord last night while I was replacing the duct tape on one of my condiment shelves in the fridge! Made a note on the shopping list: buy bungee cord!

Could do with a bowl of that stew and a slice of your bread right now even tho' it's not even breakfast time!

[lancastermike]

Outstanding work with the bread. As a home cook nothing is more satisfing to me than when I can make a good loaf. It is not always easy not always a success but you got that one. And the short ribs look great too.

Keep on going. Love your home cooking blog.

[llc45]

Love the bungee cord idea - the holder in my basement fridge keeps popping out sending all of our mixers onto the floor. Amazed out how organized your fridge shelves are.

Hey, like I said, it looks ghetto, but it's a) cheap and b) it works !

Organized.....oy. It feels like I'm constantly removing half the shelf to find what I'm looking for. My whole problem is I'm a condiment slut, I can't resist 'em. Or I'll find a really, REALLY cool recipe I just HAVE TO MAKE and it will need the one sauce/paste/rub/mix I *don't* already have in the fridge.

You have a kindred spirit here with the condiments - mine so over take the fridge that we can't find anything. We always joke that when we win the lottery the first purchase will be the largest fridge we can find, and then a larger space to fit it! Loving the blog and the way you write.

[Darienne]

It's only 9:30 am where I live and already I feel a certain exhaustion simply from reading about all the great dishes you made yesterday. Surely you don't work at that pace all the time??? Or maybe you are a Kerry Beal clone. That woman is indefatigable. And you are too it seems. I think I'll go and have a little lie down...

[robirdstx]

Robirdstx, hadn't thought about the connection to LA, but I LIKE it since Long Beach is, in fact, the largest "suburb" of LA.

I hadn't thought of it either until your teaser photo from Signal Hill - just looked like the LA coastline to me. Must be in the DNA - being a native Californian, Santa Monica born. My father's parents were long time residents of Long Beach and I still have family in Huntington Beach and surrounds. Loving your blog!

[judiu]

And then there was dinner.

Dinner inspiration tonight was this:


THE most beautiful package of beef short ribs I've seen in manys a year. Seriously. These were stunning. And only in SoCal in FEBRUARY (when I bought them) could you find a package of short ribs labeled "Excellent Bar-B-Que" !

I realize that California folks look down on us as "that other citrus producing state" , but here in South Florida we actually get packages of meat marked "Great for the Grill" even in January! Those short ribs sure look good! Thanks for the blog and I appreciate the vicarious visit to SoCal .

Edited by heidih, 07 March 2011 - 12:32 PM.
Fix quote tags

[Pierogi]

Great work ! Enjoy the rest.

Thanks Blether ! Believe me, I did. I think I was asleep as my head was on its way to the pillow.

[Pierogi]

You have a kindred spirit here with the condiments - mine so over take the fridge that we can't find anything. We always joke that when we win the lottery the first purchase will be the largest fridge we can find, and then a larger space to fit it! Loving the blog and the way you write.

Thank you llc45, that is very sweet of you....

[Pierogi]

You were a busy woman yesterday!

The ribs look great. I never make polenta for dinner...I need to do that.


Oh and your bread. Seriously beautiful.

It's going to snow here for the next two days. *SIGH* Already a winter storm watch in effect. I really enjoyed all of the outdoor market pics. Everything is just so...green and pretty.

Yep, it was a looooong day. You know, I don't make polenta all that often either, and everytime I do, I think....why don't I make this more often?

Thanks. I am pretty proud of that as well. As I said, it must've been Blog Karma.

[Pierogi]

Thanks, Roberta, for answering the questions about Long Beach and QM.
Love the casual way you write - a conversation peppered with appropriate expressions.

I was so thinking of you and your bungee cord last night while I was replacing the duct tape on one of my condiment shelves in the fridge! Made a note on the shopping list: buy bungee cord!

Could do with a bowl of that stew and a slice of your bread right now even tho' it's not even breakfast time!

Dejah, thank you so much. Means a lot to me.

[Pierogi]

Outstanding work with the bread. As a home cook nothing is more satisfing to me than when I can make a good loaf. It is not always easy not always a success but you got that one. And the short ribs look great too.

Keep on going. Love your home cooking blog.

I've gotten to the point where I can consistently turn out a decent loaf with some regularity. *Touch wood* I haven't had a real failure in a while. I even took the plunge and made a sourdough starter a few months back, and have managed to keep it going. That was sort of the scary final frontier for me and bread. Well that and the high hydration doughs, but I know that will come as I gain experience. It's still a great feeling even when the result is stellar, but when the stars align it's out of this world.

So glad you're enjoying the postings. All ya'll's feedback is making it very worthwhile.

[Pierogi]

It's only 9:30 am where I live and already I feel a certain exhaustion simply from reading about all the great dishes you made yesterday. Surely you don't work at that pace all the time??? Or maybe you are a Kerry Beal clone. That woman is indefatigable. And you are too it seems. I think I'll go and have a little lie down...

No, I usually do NOT do that many big projects right in a row, you got that right. One of the consequences of my RA is that I fatigue very easily. So I normally will do a big blowout project only once or twice a week. But I've been wanting to do a King Cake for a long time, and since Mardi Gras is tomorrow, I thought the blog would be a perfect excuse. And the bread just seemed to be a perfect partner for the ribs. Usually I'd have split those apart and not done them back to back.

I agree, Kerry Beal is amazing. I want to be her (or Andiesenji) when I grow up !

[Pierogi]

I realize that California folks look down on us as "that other citrus producing state" , but here in South Florida we actually get packages of meat marked "Great for the Grill" even in January! Those short ribs sure look good! Thanks for the blog and I appreciate the vicarious visit to SoCal .

Florida.....? What is this "Florida" of which you speak ?

Yeah, that's probably a common occurrence in your neck of the woods too.

Glad you're enjoying the look at the other side of the country.

[Pierogi]

So, you remember this from the teasers, right?


And these from Saturday....




And this from yesterday....


Well, today, they got joined by these:


Which yielded this:


The group shot:


And along came some dough:


So let's see what happens next.....

[Pierogi]

Now, I knew full well, that, given my screen name, there was no way on Earth that I could get away with writing an eG foodblog without making...yep...pierogies !

Normally this is a once a year project for me. I make them for Christmas Eve. But, as I said, I knew I'd never get away with blowing them off this week, so here we go.

I make three different fillings. One is chopped onions, mushrooms and sauerkraut, sauteed in butter. This gets bound together by a bit of sour cream.



One is mashed potatoes, chopped onions sauteed in bacon grease (add in the grease too, baby !), crispy bacon pieces and cream cheese:



Normally I'd make the third one out of ground beef, chopped onions and mushrooms that are sauteed in butter, and also bound with some sour cream. But this time, I went back to my childhood, and made a sweet filling of ricotta, egg, raisins and cinnamon.



That gets a little melted butter thrown into the mix as well, 'cause you know there's simply not enough cholesterol in just the ricotta and egg. Nor in the butter, bacon, cream cheese and sour cream in the other two...

Although you certain can make the dough by hand, as the old Polish grannies used to (and which I did as well, when I was young & foolish), I figured even the old Polish grannies would take advantage of modern conveniences ifn's they had them. So, into the bowl of the sexy KitchenAid went a couple of lovely CSA-fresh eggs, a couple of cups of flour, some salt and 1/2 a cup of water:



I started out with the paddle and switched after a couple of minutes to the dough hook:





The dough worked with the dough hook for about 5 minutes. Then I did some hand kneading for another five or so. For whatever reason, I can't get the dough to the right consistency when I don't hand knead it at all. I think there's not enough mass in the KA bowl to work it properly, but the kick-start of machine mixing and kneading cuts at least a half an hour off the dough process. Which works for me.

You want the dough to be nice and firm. It's going to stay relatively sticky (that's a good thing), but it shouldn't be a mess to work with. After the kneading, the dough gets to rest.



Why does my *food* keep getting a rest, and I don't !

Seriously, as a side note, I think that the biggest lesson I've learned in the whole dough handling/making/shaping process (including bread doughs) is how important it is to let the gluten relax before you try to do anything with the dough. Once I got that firmly into my thick head, I started having success with baking and thought "huh, maybe I CAN bake after all".

[heidih]

Your pretty bowl over the resting dough reminds me of my great grandmother who was in charge of making the weekly batch of soup noodles. She made a flour mound with a well for the eggs and kneaded by hand. Then she turned a bowl over the dough - as a 5 year old I did not understand why the fun process needed to wait. Resting the dough makes such the difference. If I am having problem with a dough my first instinct is always to just give it a few private moments.

Looking forward to the assembly process and how you enjoy them.

That bread yesterday was really lovely.

I pass by that Farmers Market on the 3rd Sunday of the month going to Veteran's stadium for the swap meet. Good to know it is a legit FM- I saw the pony rides and food booths and was thinking "hype".

[Pierogi]

After the dough had relaxed and found it's happy place, it's time roll, stuff, seal and boil. But first *I* needed to relax and find *MY* happy place. This helped:



Divide the dough into 3 pieces:



And keep the ones you're not working with under a damp tea towel. If the dough dries out, you'll have problems sealing the 'lil' dumplings later on.



Take a rolling pin and start to roll the dough out. You'll need a good amount of flour on the board because of the stickiness of the dough. I started out using the humongo pin in the background, and switched to the French pin I'm using in the shot. For whatever reason (karma, planet alignment, phases of the moon, who knows...?), I was over working the center of the dough while the edges were staying quite thin when I was using Big Bertha back there. But whatever works will do quite fine.



I think, for me at least, and it was confirmed by by able-bodied assistant who was taking the pictures for me today (love you guys, but I really didn't want to goop up my camera with floury, sticky hands...) that the major difference between homemade pierogies and commercial ones is the thiness of my dough when I'm done. You want to get it as thin as possible, but with enough heft to hold up to those fillings (which are pretty dense) as well as the boiling water.

But thin it needs to be:


Once you've got it thin enough, take a biscuit or cookie cutter (this one is about 3&3/4") and cut out circles. You can, to an extent, do "abstract" circles to maximize dough use as well. When we seal them, it will almost self-correct:


Save your scraps, you can re-roll them for the next round.

With a pastry brush (and for this application, one of the silicon-bristle brushes don't work so good....) very, VERY lightly brush the circles with water:


Use a light hand with the water, otherwise you'll literally glue the dough to the board ! Don't ask me how I know....

Put a rounded tablespoon or so of filling in the middle of each circle:


Fold one side of the circle over the filling, and you'll need to stretch the dough a bit, and also simultaneously push the filling in, and then press around the edge with your fingers, sealing the dough edges well. Try to also press out any air trapped in the center, which causes the dreaded Pierogi Blow-Out in the boiling water.




Don't ask me how I know about Pierogi Blow-Outs, either.

Once all the dumplin's are preliminarily sealed, take your official pierogi pinching fork, and press around the edges to give them a final seal. Be careful not to puncture the middle with the tines of the fork (see dreaded Pierogi Blow-Out, above):




Next: We boil !

[heidih]

Lookin good! So is your whole counter top a wooden surface that you can work on or is there a designated section? I looked at the kitchen shots but was unclear.

[Pierogi]

In order to boil the beggers, ya gots to have a big ol' hangin' pot of boiling water (no.....really???). Like pasta, pierogies like a lot of room to swim around. They like salt water, too.


In they go, but don't crowd them. The don't mingle well...they need their space, man:




Give 'em a stir so they don't stick to the bottom, or to each other:


Since we rolled them so thin, they'll float almost immediately. Let 'em bob around a bit, when the dough looks done, then use your Official Chinese Pierogi Drainer to scoop 'em out of the water:


And drop 'em onto a cooling rack set over a sheet pan (or, if you like a slimey wet mess on your stove, you can skip the sheet pan... )




When they've cooled off enough to handle, put them on a plate. Don't stack them on top of each other, they will stick, even after being cooked.


You can use wax paper between the layers, though, so you don't have to dirty every plate in the house to store them !


Keep on rolling, stuffing, sealing and boiling until you reach the last pierogi:


And your insider trick 'o' the day: How do you tell which stuffing is in your identical looking pierogies?

Easy Grasshopper:


For one type of filling you leave the pierogies in a full half-moon shape (doesn't that sound like an oxymoron...a full half-moon...). For the second variety, take your trusty kitchen shears, and clip off one of the corners. For the third type, clip off both corners. Best done after boiling, they tend to lose the definition when cooked.

And that's how you make pierogies. By Pierogi

[eldereno]

Your blog has been great so far!!!! Just sat down to read the whole thing this evening. Was out of internet access for the last 10 days. Looking forward to the rest of the week!!!

[Shelby]

OMG now I have a real step-by-step tutorial!! I'm so excited. Thank you!!!

All I've been thinking about is making those...and then I get lazy...or something




I'm going to sacrifice myself and offer to eat all of those since I wouldn't want you to have to do it yourself.


I LOVE the tip about cutting the corners so that you know what flavor it is.

[LindaK]

Thanks so much for making your namesake dish, I'd hoped you would! They look delicious. I haven't made them in a very long time--since my college roommate and I would prepare an annual Polish dinner for a motley group of friends with (real/imagined) Polish heritage--kielbasa (from a good butcher in town), stuffed cabbage, and of course pierogies. I think we made them with potato and sauteed cabbage (not sauerkraut). Maybe it was just the frozen vodka, but I remember them as excellent meals. Thanks for the memories!

[christine007]

Thanks so much Roberta, every single thing you have cooked so far has been something I'd love to eat! the Beef looked amazing.
You didn't mention if the stuff you have by your sink is bothersome, but I was thinking if it was, you could always go to your local doityourself store and get those baskets that hang from hooks in your ceiling? Just throwing that out there. they are really nice and handy. I love seeing your kitchen, as after years of living in a single family home, I'm getting ready to move into an apartment,which will no doubt have a kitchen styled like yours.

[nickrey]

Hi Roberta, those Pierogi look exceptional. Looking at the work involved in rolling the dough, I was just wondering if you've tried putting it through a pasta machine? Janni Kyritsis said in his book that he makes handmade filo using one and the pierogi dough looks suitable.

[Pierogi]

Your blog has been great so far!!!! Just sat down to read the whole thing this evening. Was out of internet access for the last 10 days. Looking forward to the rest of the week!!!

Donna,

No interwebs for 10 days !!! Poor you !