You may previously have heard me mention my love of all foods Polish & in particular pierogi, a food I grew up eating thanks to my Grandma. Pierogi are little filled dumplings, everyone has there own version, we had ours with a potato & onion filling. Sadly my Gran is no longer with us & you may find it hard to believe but I am always too lazy to make this myself as I have memories of it being such a mammoth task. My gran would make hundreds so that whoever dropped in not only could eat a few but could also take home a bag for later! To make them involves making the pastry dough which needs to be kneaded for quite a while & then you make little balls (about golf ball sized) which then have to be rolled flat, these are then filled individually by hand. As a kid the most help I usually offered was to take a ball or two & make them into different animal shapes.
So a while back my mum & I had a craving & she being as bad as me at actually getting around to these suggested a quick fix. We used wonton wrappers & those little plasticy wonton press thingies you buy for a couple of bucks from the Asian grocery store. So we made our filling by boiling a load of potatoes in salted water, frying up a few chopped onions in lashings of butter & mashing the whole lot together. We then set up the assembly line. For each pierogi we stuck two wrappers together with water (one is too thin), lay the wrapper flat on the press, in goes a teaspoon of potato, wet the edges with water & press to seal, continue until you have hundreds & all of your wrappers or filling is gone. To cook, bring a pan of water to the boil, drop them in a few at a time & cook until they float or a few minutes each. When cooked, swirl around in some butter until melted & nicely coated & serve with lashings of good sour cream, we prefer Jalna. When you eat them the next day, fry them up in some more butter (yes this is definitely heart attack material) until crisp & golden on both sides & serve with sour cream again. Absolutely delicious & tasted the real deal too, now that I have my ‘cheats’ version, I can see myself making these more often which is very dangerous indeed.
So a while back my mum & I had a craving & she being as bad as me at actually getting around to these suggested a quick fix. We used wonton wrappers & those little plasticy wonton press thingies you buy for a couple of bucks from the Asian grocery store. So we made our filling by boiling a load of potatoes in salted water, frying up a few chopped onions in lashings of butter & mashing the whole lot together. We then set up the assembly line. For each pierogi we stuck two wrappers together with water (one is too thin), lay the wrapper flat on the press, in goes a teaspoon of potato, wet the edges with water & press to seal, continue until you have hundreds & all of your wrappers or filling is gone. To cook, bring a pan of water to the boil, drop them in a few at a time & cook until they float or a few minutes each. When cooked, swirl around in some butter until melted & nicely coated & serve with lashings of good sour cream, we prefer Jalna. When you eat them the next day, fry them up in some more butter (yes this is definitely heart attack material) until crisp & golden on both sides & serve with sour cream again. Absolutely delicious & tasted the real deal too, now that I have my ‘cheats’ version, I can see myself making these more often which is very dangerous indeed.
4 comments:
Very strange question but where did you buy your plastic wonton press? We lost ours when moving house a few years ago and when I've been into Asian grocery stores to ask about them I am met with blank looks.
Truffle - my mum bought them for me years ago from a $2 type of shop
either pan frying them o cooking them in boiling water, I enjoy eating them too!
My wife has a worse cheat - she bought hers from a Polish friend! Even after I bought the wrappers and we already have the press in the cupboard.
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