Pierogi

Thanks Chris (and Katie by default.........) I've been eyeing that thread and wondering if I should give it a go. I made Alton Brown's version about 4 months ago, and its been living in my freezer pretty happily, but I've thought it missed...*something*. Couldn't quite figure out what, but it wasn't what I wanted. It's almost gone, and I will be making this soon. Cool. And cool blog. Loving it so far, Chris. Now I just gotta remember to ROLL my pizza dough instead of try to stretch it. Aside from inherant clummsiness, I also am possessed by the vanity of relatively long nails (NOT talon-like...shudder), and that doesn't go well with thin doughs.

JAZ and Dave, YES YES AND YES ! JAZ, I have to admit I didn't read all of your tutorials on TASTE and TEXTURE (it's late, I've had one too many glasses of wine and I have a dog on my lap which makes typing and concentrating {well} a challenge) but I will, because in scanning them, they look amazing. Dave, I LOVE, love, love your music analogies. Even I, tone deaf though I am, could probably be taught to play "Chopsticks" on a Steinway, just by rote. Would it sound like "Rhapsody in Blue" played by Dave Brubeck.........eh, not so much, but it would be good for what it was. Culinarily (is that a word? it should be........) I can play "Chopsticks". I'm FABULOUS at cooking by rote. I know I'll never be able to play "Rhapsody" or be Dave Brubeck (or Jacques Pepin, or Rick Bayless, or La Diva Julia, but I can dream......) but I'd sorta like to be able to maybe riff on "Twinkle Twinkle Little Star". THAT's the sort of class *I'm* lookin' for. Again, in a nutshell, the challenges on all the reality cooking shows make me twitch. I'd like to be able to at least not go into a flop sweat when I'm confronted with good fresh ingredients, a pretty advanced pantry of canned and dried staples, and an above-average spice cabinet and be able to say *wow, I could do XXXXXX*. Right now, I really can't. I'm thinking in terms of art.....yellow & blue make green. Basil and garlic make...? Red and blue make purple. Thyme and lemon make....? Like a color wheel of flavors....... ....Maybe it's something that can't be taught? I hope not, because I'd really like to evolve along those lines.

I think, from a brief google of Nigella + mustard, in this recipe that she means mustard ready to use from a jar. She seems to indicate "powder" when that's what is required. Or you can just reconstitute the powder to make the mustard. Edited to make better sense, I hope! ← NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO !!! It IS dried Coleman's mustard. Realize its only 2 teaspoons of mustard for FOUR POUNDS of chicken, that's really not a lot. Especially since its esentially in a marinade which will become the sauce (sort of......) and then there's sausages thrown in the mix. It is NOT overwhelming hot as is. Really. It's not.

I would so agree about the improvisation part. Thinking outside of the box, as it were, to coin a cliche. I'm a FANTASTIC cook if I have a recipe to follow, and probably 85-90% of the time, I can read a recipe and know if it will work, and if I'll like it. But I am mostly totally flummoxed where there's no recipe. I've got the basic techniques down...I know how to make a pan sauce, a vinaigrette, a simple tomato sauce for pasta, roast veggies, etc. But which FLAVORS go with others eludes me....how to balance contrasting flavors and aromas and tastes, and which are complimentary or enhance each other. Those are a mystery to me and I've looked and looked and looked for a class like this in my area to no avail. I guess I'd describe it as developing my creative palate. If I were in Atlanta, JAZ and Dave, I'd be your first student !

BTW.........Ditto ! Emily_R , regarding Nigella's roast chicken & sausage, on the episode of her show (don't remember which, want to say it was Nigella Bites??) she threw some potato pieces into the pan, and the oil, after the chicken and sausages had an initial roast. So everything cooked together in the same pan, and the potatoes sort of soaked up (and exploited !) the excess oil and got roasty-crunchy brown. That was how I did it. The recipes *were* on Food Network's web site, if you can't find them, let me know and I'll either PM them to you or finally figure out how to post a link.........errrrrrrr. Which brings me to Dockhl ......sorry (hanging head, shuffling feet), adding links is still a skill which escapes me on this site. If you want any of the recipes I alluded to, let me know, and I will either try again (and again, and again) or PM it to you.

Oh man Bruce, those fish tacos look bodacious !! I gotta make me some of those again reallllllllllll soon ! Congrats, this daughter of SoCal gives you major props for some "proper" fish tacos.

Well, I told ya'll that I had plenty of candidates for this as well, and here we go. Since I would guess maybe 90% of the things I make are new recipes, that gives me the gamut from the sublime, to these, the wretched..... "Indian Ground Beef with Cauliflower, Potato and Curry Spices" from the Feb/Mar '08 edition of "Cooking Pleasures" (the magazine published by Cooking Club of America). The recipe was written by Bruce Aidells, and I love the sausages sold under his name, but this recipe was strangely, just.....blah. Bland. Oddly bland from a recipe that had cumin, corriander, tumeric, garlic, onions, cinnamon and cayenne pepper in it, plus a ton of cilantro, onions and tomatoes and some other spices I think I'm forgetting. It *looked* great, but just was, blah. I had hoped it would improve as leftovers, but I had some for lunch a couple of days later, and it was still........blah. Very. A meat loaf recipe from some "Big Name Chef" (don't remember who, but it was a name we'd all know.....) printed in the LA Times late last year. A LOT of work. A whole lot of work, for very little taste. Again, just...blah. I actually tried it twice, since I was sure it was me the first time. It wasn't, the clipping has been recycled. A Mexican chicken "lasagna" (mental note, don't mix cultures....lasagna isn't, and will never be, Mexican). From another one of those embarassing little cookbooks at the supermarket check-out. You know my dirty little secret now, I buy these. Frequently. Sometimes I hit gems, most times I hit, well, not gems. A beef stew recipe from Alice Waters printed in the LA Times early this year. It *sounded* fabulous......nicoise olives, orange zest, good, fresh herbs, I don't remember all the details. All I remember is it was a LOT of work, and expensive ingredients, and it was.......not good. Not really bad, just........not good. I have so many other, better, less labor-intensive (cheaper) recipes for beef stew that the clipping went straight to the recycling bin. This one I will admit to screwing up, a home-made ravioli , filled with ricotta and Grana Padano cheese, topped with sauteed prosciutto. I tried to make it with egg roll wrappers instead of pasta dough. Not a good idea, especially if you crowd the faux raviolis during the cooking. A gummy mess. And, drum roll please......my winner for the Suckiest Recipe of Q1 2008 is..... The "Crunchy Baked Pork Chops" from Cook's Illustrated Jan/Feb 2008 !!!! I was really surprised by this. Usually their recipes are, while maybe not cutting edge, good, solid home-cooking comfort food. This was AWFUL. At least in my hands. Maybe my cooking karma and Kitchen Gods and Goddesses were off duty that day. I followed the recipe to a "T". Used good pork. Made the bread crumbs from home-baked bread. The chops were dry, overcooked, chewy and flavorless. The breading fell off the chops in complete sheets as soon as I moved them when they were done. The breaded chops stuck to the baking rack. I tossed about 10 bucks worth of loin pork chops because these were so awful. Luckily the sides I made were good (and even more luckily I hadn't served these to guests.....oy !) because I couldn't finish even one. Yes, the breading *was* crunchy, but it didn't really do much for me when it wasn't attached to the chops. The dogs were happy, though.

Wow ! I can't believe how many of the recipes other's have cited I've made and also been impressed with.... Like.... Orange Chicken with Scallions from the Oct/Nov ‘07 issue of Fine Cooking and Nigella Lawson's chicken & sausage bake and Spicy Chipotle pork tacos with sun dried tomato salsa from Rick Bayless, Mexico One Plate at a Time ALL winners & repeat worthy, though they didn't qualify for me, since I'd made them a while back. And Sadie4232 I'm sure game for a disaster thread, I had a major one on Sunday ! Yes, Anna it does rock when it all works, doesn't it? SUCH a feeling of accomplishment and satisfaction !

JAZ, ditto and ditto (and Markk too). The Tarte d'Alsace is amazing, and the potstickers and the frozen pizzas are very good. I actually saw the chicken empanadas for the first time last week, and grabbed them for my end-of-the-week-its-Martini-Friday-and-I-ain't-cooking dinner, and thought exactly the same thing. Loved the filling but the crust was like wet cardboard. Had half of the package the day I bought them, and ditched the rest.

I've noticed this too. Even with the "refill" bags I've purchased, it seems to be rather hit & miss. I'm thinking their quality control on the bag manufacturing process may not be what it should be (hey...I'm a science geek and do quality assurance for a living, what can I say...?). Some work swell even two or three times reused. Some fail out of the box. It *is* annoying and I keep meaning to write to their customer relations folks, but well, life keeps getting in the way. The ones that do seal have held up for me for months. The ones that fail, fail within minutes, so I know pretty well immediately they're duds. ETA--but I still think this product is the best thing to hit the market in about a millenium or so. I can't believe how many things I've saved with it since I bought the thing.

Abso-FREAKIN'-lutely !!! I have, for about 10,000 years, used the grocery store plastic bags for my kitchen trash can bags. I absolutely REFUSE to pay MONEY for something I'm using for my trash ! Since I'm single, the small grocery store bags work perfectly for me. One bag pretty much equals one day's worth of garbage. I would say in the last 2 years, I've noticed about a 50% increase in unuseable bags due to the little nasty holes. Those go right into the recycling bin, which fortunately, in my city, will take the plastic grocery bags. More annoying is when I *don't* notice the evil holes, and dump my coffee grounds or other goopy garbage into the can, and then discover the sludge in the bottom. ERRRRRRRRRR. I hoard the larger bags (like from Target or the home improvement places) for mega-cooking days. But I do use reusables about 50% of the time, since the small plastic ones do tend to ummmm, accumulate. I think they breed when no one's looking, but.... However, for this reason, I am so completely opposed to banning or charging for these bags. Then, excuse me, I'll have to *PAY* for *MORE* plastic I'm just going to throw away ! I don't think so...........

Absolutely impossible to answer with just one ! It varies by dish & by cuisine & by mood...... Spice........salt. Overriding, of course, but then there's black pepper and chilies and cumin and corriander and cinnamon and nutmeg and cardamon and really all the others. I can't imagine a *signature* dish without the appropriate spice. But if I really had to choose just one, it would be salt. Simply because it enhances everything else. But herbs, no way just one. Basil is incomprable in pasta sauces and Thai food and with fresh tomatoes and on top of Pizza Margharita and so on. I can't imagine life without cilantro for salsas and Asian foods and Indian food and with cukes & cabbage as side dishes. But the same for dill with steamed new potatoes and with cukes in sour cream like the Poles love or mint with a raita or tossed with melon during the summer. Fresh thyme and oregano tossed with roasted new potatoes and EVOO, best ever. Fresh rosemary with a simple roast chicken or grilled lamb chops, to die for. Sage in a poultry stuffing, or a saltimbucco, the best. Even the humble parsley (flat-leaf) lends a lyrical note that takes many-a-dish from "yeah, its good" to "WOW, that was GREAT !" Even if you don't know the pure taste, you know there's *something* there making everything else taste better. ETA---OMG, as I was literally crawling into bed, I thought......I CAN'T BELIEVE NO ONE HAS MENTIONED SAFFRON !!!! Seriously, imagine risotto or paella without saffron. No way. But use saffron in a picadillo, umm, not so much. But again, in dishes that need saffron, there is no substitute. So, no. There is no one favorite. They mostly each have their place, and are irreplaceable in their uses. Thank goodness we don't have to choose ! But I could really do without tarragon.........'tho I love fennel, go figure.

Ditto the sentiments on the greatness of the thread, I will be searching for the other's recommendations....... Me....I'm a recipe nomad. Some might even say a 'ho, or a *gasp*....s!ut. I keep searching and searching and searching for *THE* recipe. Like you Maggie, sometimes I find it, sometimes I wonder what the heck the author was thinking. But since I try new recipes so frequently, I have a passel to contribute. And we're only through the 1st quarter of 2008 !! **The slow roasted pork shoulder from the last edition of "150 Best American Recipes", rubbed with equal parts salt & chipotle powder, plopped into a roasting pan, sealed with foil & slow-roasted at like 250° for 4 hours. A-freaking-mazing for tacos the day its roasted, and fantastic for enchiladas later in the week. A real revalation. Soooooooooo simple, and sooooooooooo good. **Alton Brown's "Very Basic Bread" recipe from the Food Network website (yes, I know, but Alton's cool.....). I have never, in my 35+ years of cookingness, been much of a baker. This was my New Year's resolution, to teach myself to bake good bread. This recipe rocks. It takes 2 days to make it (you let the starter preferment overnight in the fridge), but so worth it. SO worth it. Best bread I've ever made, and made me think there's hope for my bread-making skills after all. Close runner-up in this category, the Mini Baguettes from the last "Fine Cooking" (the web site says #91, I want to say it was maybe the March or April edition, NOT May......). Some technical difficulties handling the dough due to my ineptitude, but a decent loaf of bread that can be par-baked and frozen. **Coffee'd Brisket from the Los Angeles Times food section some time last year. A beef brisket, rubbed with finely ground coffee, salt, sugar & chipotle powder. Let to sit in the fridge with the dry rub overnight, then roasted the next day low & slow (350°) with onions, carrots & a jus of beef stock & espresso. Again, a revalation. The coffee rub and espresso in the jus gave it a bitter edge that you really couldn't identify, but somehow, intrinsically, knew. Leftovers were amazing in .... **Pot Roast Hash with Fried Eggs from the Food Network website (yes, I know. I'm so ashamed. The recipe is credited to Gourmet magazine, does that redeem me??) The BEST hash recipe I've found. Ever. Anywhere. The only one I'll ever make again. Confirmed with some leftover roast beef filet from the freezer a couple of weeks ago. A keeper, which is my highest praise. **Pasta with Tomato-Gorgonzola Sauce , from the 10/07 edition of "Cuisine at Home". So easy. So very very easy. So very very good. Maybe the perfect after-work meal, and the leftovers were Da Bomb for lunch at work a couple of days later. **Corned Beef Brisket with Horseradish Sour Cream , ok, this one is REALLY embarrassing......from one of those little recipe booklets on the checkout stands at the grocery store. In the crock pot, the corned beef is plopped on top of thick-sliced onions, sprinkled with dried red pepper flakes, and has a combo of beef broth & Worcestershire sauce poured over it. Et voila, 8 hours later, pull that bad boy out, serve with sour cream mixed with horseradish and its the best corned beef ever. Ditch the seasoning package and rinse the meat before cooking it, btw......not that I'm giving you the recipe or anything....... One of the few recipes I'll pull the crockpot out for. And finally......tonight's dinner......... **Seared scallops with spicy aioli and grilled asparagus , from of all things, the most recent Williams-Sonoma mailer. Good, dry pack scallops, S&P and pan-seared. With an aioli (ok, I cheated.....I used Best Foods mayo) doctored up with the called for garlic, ground cumin, ground corriander, lemon juice, S&P and some cayenne instead of the requested hot paprika.......and grilled fat asparagus, seasoned with EVOO, S&P and a mere sploosh of lemon juice (again, I cheated, I tossed 'em in a 450° oven instead of grilling them, since I had the oven going for my baked potato). Probably the best scallops I've ever eaten. It was a dish I'd pay big bux for in a restaurant. Again.....so simple. So very very simple and easy, and a perfect after-work *special* meal.

Oh..... God......... Dark chocolate Bordeaux are the BEST thing in the world. EVER. They are what I want on my lips when I die.

Aware of this thread, I tried to use egg roll/wonton wrappers to make a very simple, ricotta stuffed ravioli last weekend. I specifically chose the wrappers that had egg in them, rather than the ones that were just flour & water (and a bunch 'o' other stuff, assumed to be preservatives.........). I had hoped the egg would give substance to the dough, and more mimic European pasta doughs. They were..........gelatinous is the most flattering thing I can say about them. I think I slightly overcooked them, and didn't handle them as gently as perhaps I should have. That being said, even if they'd been cooked perfectly, and then drained without piling them up, I doubt they'd have been "ravioli" in any sense of the word. The dough is just too different.........texturally and structurally. They'd have been fine potstickers with some goyza sauce and Sriracha dribbled over them. Or fried egg rolls, yeah, I can definately see that. With brown butter, prosciutto and Grana Padano grated over them, well, not so much. I had had a fleeting thought last Christmas where my pierogi fillings far outweighed my pieorgi dough that perhaps egg roll wrappers would work as a substitute. Lesson learned, its not an option. They're great for their intended use. For ravioli, you need a ravioli dough. No time to make your own, buy some fresh, prefilled ravioli instead. For pierogi, make your own, or suffer through the stuff from the freezer.

Random catch-up thoughts...... Yes, way looking forward to Rick Bayless as the guest judge. I love his food sensibilities, so this should be excellent. Count me in on the TCDG (Top Chef Drinking Game)©Dockhl. BTW, Dockhl, get a bigger glass !!!! And best line of the evening, perhaps in the history of the show, was when Tom Collichio and Wylie Dufresne were discussing the olive "BLEE-knee" and Wylie said something like "it sounds like it should be taste good" and Tom shot back with "sounds". Classic, I fell on the floor for that one.

Is it just me, or did Andrew seem to have a complete and total personality transplant since last week??? No, or very little, profanity, he seemed like he wanted to work with his team, seemed to keep the ego monster in check...tonight I actually sorta liked the guy. Unlike last week when I wanted to reach through the TV screen and wash his immature, 12-year old mentality, potty mouth out with a bar of some really heavy duty industrial-strength soap. However, if I recall the promos for next week correctly, I do believe the Original Andrew surfaces next week. Or maybe that was Spike. As another poster said, they do seem sort of interchangeable. I liked the quick fire challenge, that was a good one. The elimination, meh, not so much. And yes, if I heard them call "BLINIS" "BELINIS" one more time I was going to launch the TV set. Yikes.....they're pancakes, who wants to eat room temperature pancakes? And those mushrooms did look, ummmmmmmm, like something you'd find in a litter box.

Oh. My. GOD. This is so wrong, so very wrong, on so many levels. Mercifully I have never seen, nor, until this thread, heard of such a thing. Now I just need my mental Etch-A-Sketch to make it all go away.

Chris Hennes - yes, that's the recipe for the chicken and the pilaf ! Leftovers were lunch today (I shredded the chicken into the rice) and they were very good even a couple of days after the fact. Live it Up - that was a clemantine clafouti from Mark Bittman that I pulled off the NY Times website. I will either a) figure out how to post a link; b) figure out the policy on reprinting copyrighted recipes in this forum, or c) PM you the recipe sometime over the weekend. Or all of the above, if I'm ambitious. LOL ! Bruce - yeah, the bacon gets ground up, uncooked, in the processor when you're buzzing the mint and I think the garlic (hey, it's been more than 1/2 an hour since I made this, give me a break....) and it lends a nice background smokiness that enhances the inherant smokiness of the chipotles. Plus it gives the mixture some much needed moisture and fat, since pork is so lean these days. Thanks for the props on the Indian feast, and good eye ! Yes, I did sprinkle some additional toasted, ground cumin seed on top of the raita, because I was a bit short on what I mixed in to it. Tonight was so very easy to make and so very very satisfying, and I *finally* broke my streak of brown protein and white starch ! The starch is still white, but the rest is well, colorful ! Pasta with Creamy Tomato/Gorgonzola sauce: and green & white asparagus, steamed, with Trader Joe's Mustard Aioli Sauce as a dressing: Yes, I know I said I only do roasted/grilled asparagus, but I was VERY tired tonight, and didn't want to fuss with another pot/pan on the stove top, so into the nuke-meister these went. They actually turned out pretty well, and I have enough of the green spears left for a salad over the weekend. The pasta was awesome. All enjoyed, robustly, while watching UCLA win the Pac-10 basketball championship. GO Bruins !

REALLY over the top Shepherd's Pie. It's what I'm going to do this weekend with some left over (frozen) tenderloin roast from Christmas.

One more thing I'm lovin' about this blog, your notebook ! And this especially. And I give you HUGE kudos for the effort you make to try to reduce your garbage. It's something close to my heart, for sure. It gives me great comfort to see someone on the other side of the world from me making such a concerted, focused effort. Edit to add question: Is your level of environmental consciousness common in Japan? Because it sure isn't (unfortunately...... ) in the US, at least not in my circle.

*THAT* is toooo cool ! What a fabulous idea.

Suzilightning, I agree with Toliver, that shrimp looks awesome ! Nishla, it IS good to see you back, your photos and your platings are works of art. They give me inspiration. Tupac, I really don't like squid, but your dish could sorely tempt me to give it one more shot. Just gorgeous. Chris, I want that croque monsieur and I want it now......omg, that melting cheese......... Ann & Kim, lovely as always. Here's some of my efforts from the past week. Strangely enough, they all look pretty darn similar ! White starch, brown meat and some sort of sauce ! But they were all very VERY tasty. Polish soul food, kielbasa, pierogis (store bought, sadly......) and sauteeed mushrooms & onions on top. Missing the sour cream I plopped on the pierogies before eating: Oh Bruce, if you haven't made these from Rick Bayless' "Mexican Everyday" you must ! The boys may find them too spicy, but you & Mrs. C. will love them.....Meatballs in Chipotle Sauce (continuing the meatball theme as well !): AND they have BACON ground into them.....gotta bacon Indian spiced chicken with pistachio pilaf: and raita: And finally tonight's effort was pork chops with mushroom sauce and egg noodles & peas: Good for a quick, after work, weeknight dinner. BTW, the meatballs in chipotle sauce were the leftover lunch today, and even better the 2nd time around. The flavors really really melded together.

Judiu, that is my absolute favorite way to cook asparagus. Forget the steaming, nuking, sauteeing, whatever. Roasted, or GRILLED, is the way to go. Try them on the outdoor grill in the warm weather, treat them the same way and throw them on (across the grates so they don't fall through, lol !). Or even on a grill pan. Yeah baby.

*LOVING* your blog Smallworld, absolutely loving it because it is so very different from my life. And (standing and placing my right hand over my heart, and my left hand in the air, and using my very very BEST Scarlett O'Hara voice......)...."As God is mah witness, I'll never complain about mah small kitchen again !!!" I am in awe of the meals you prepare in that space. Absolutely in awe. ESPECIALLY without an OVEN fercryin'outloud !!