Before last weekend I had eaten perogies only once. They came pre-prepared, frozen and they tasted like starchy little hockey pucks. Since that regrettable experience I have been meaning to try my hand at making them from scratch. You can find the recipe I used here but there are a ton of different recipes on the internet.
The dough was very straightforward: eggs, flour, salt, water and olive oil. I’m used to making dough with butter so using olive oil instead was a change.
The dough was super stiff even after kneading it for a while. I could have probably thrown it at someone and given them a concussion. Not that I would ever lob dough at anyone.
Sautéed onions are the traditional accompaniment but I decided to use French shallots since they had been kicking around the pantry for a while.
This is a terribly unflattering photo of my mashed potatoes/cheese mixture. The original recipe calls for cottage cheese but I decided to use a mixture of marbled cheddar and aged cheddar in the filling. I like this combination since you get the melty texture of the marbled cheese but the stronger taste of the aged cheddar.
Even though my dough was very stiff after resting in the fridge for half an hour it was quite easy to roll out. I cut the circles out with the smallest biscuit cutter I have.
Filling the perogies was a little messy but I managed to do it without having too much of the filling ooze out.
Once my water was at a galloping boil I dumped my perogies in.
They started bobbing up on the surface when they were ready. Unfortunately at this point a couple of the perogies broke open, I guess I hadn’t sealed them properly.
After they were done I sautéed them in butter in the same pan in which I had cooked my shallots. I should have done this in two batches since the pan was rather crowded but I was rather hungry at this point.
I served my perogies with Toulouse sausages which I had cooked in the oven, Greek yogurt in place of sour cream and the sautéed shallots scattered on top. It always amazes me how sometimes the simplest recipes can be so good. As you can see from my blog I am a big fan of the classics rather than more exotic fusion foods and I am really glad that I tried this recipe. I’m thinking about buying some Eastern European cookbooks this year and seeing what else that cuisine has to offer. Anyone have any recommendations?
