Ania Bielecka

I am happy to hear it :-) And pls if anybody would have any questions around polish cusine I will be happy to answer. My style of cooking is a little more modern, because I traveled a lot and have been living in two other countries (ireland and spain), but I do hold in respect to the traditional cooking and know quite a bit about it.

Hi ! I hope I can help with this one, being polish. When it comes to the dough recipe, traditional one is just flour, water (Important: you add warm water!!) and salt . And thats that. Some add one egg, which is what I like to do - it gives nice color and structure. The only situation in which I would add milk or cream would be if you are making sweet taste pierogi, although it wouldn´t be traditional. When it comes to typical taste you are aiming to the more salty taste, and this gives it more of a pancake structure. Of course I understand that some people prefer it differently, and thats understandable. Thats traditional way. Proportions of course depends on the type of flour, the one I know is 300g of F and 200g of water, of a traditional one. In case you add egg, less water is needed. There is really nice and old recipe using the egg and butter: 500 g flour 1/4 l of water 50 g of butter (added at room temprature, but not cooked before. 1 egg 2 yolks 1 teaspoon of salt You first add butter to the flour (you can help yourself with the knife, cutting the butter) just the same as in shortcrust pastry. Add eggs, salt and water (slowly). Work the dough until is is elastic. The typical feeling is: Potato, Friend Onion (loads! as somebody said and black pepper) and cottage cheese. I prefer when there are more potatoes, again you aim for salty and spicy not sweet in taste. Another with the sour kraut normally is mixed with mushrooms. This are traditionaly made for the Christmas Eve. You probably can get dried forest mushrooms, what I do, is I soak them in water (not too much) for an 1h or so, sometimes more. Then I fry onion, add the sour kraut. I remove the mushrooms from the water and cut them small, add them to sour kraut with the water that has some taste in it. You cook it until the water evaporates, and of course season at the time of cooking. White mushrooms in my personal opinion cannot be used in this case. Making pierogi is also a nice way to use left over meat from the broth cooking (Rosol) but you need to use some spices, as the taste has been given away during the process. Might be an idea to add some strong in taste meat (like lets say liver) and again loads of onion. Another typical feeling less known is Buckwheat with cottage cheese. Allthe best, Ania