my absolute favourite thing to contribute is food; that should be fairly obvious. what you may not know is that my favourite food to contribute to any big holiday meal, is perogies, pyrohy in ukrainian… of which I am descended from on both sides of my family. I didn’t grow up with any particular ethnic culture, but had a few little things around the house that symbolized the heritage my parents had to show they were proud: painted easter eggs, pysanky, a tiny traditionally painted vase, and a very special book: Traditional Ukrainian Cookery by Savella Stechishin.
This book was given to my mom by my dad, with an inscription referring to it as a ‘cookski bookski.’ within these hallowed pages was/is a recipe so good, so fantastically awesome that I can’t keep it to myself. PYROHY – the most heartwarming, stomach pleasing, happy-fun-time-dumpling EVER. My absolute favourite food, yep, I love them even more than macaroni.
unlike so many others, I follow this recipe exactly, so I felt it unnecessary to retype it for you here. Rather, a photo of the real thing!
BUT, before you make the dough, you need to allot yourself a good three hours or so to making these overwhemlingly lovely little bastards. simply put, it’s worth it… so make lots. I make triple the amount of dough the recipe calls for.
so, either the morning of or the night before you want to make pyrohy, you need some nice russet potatoes. I like russet because when you mash them, they stay super fluffy and don’t need any butter or cream. you could use other potatoes, which I also did this afternoon because I was short on russets, but cook them separately. in the below picture, you can kinda see the difference in texture. I used the more gluey ones for the dough and it worked like a charm!
For the filling… for my filling you will need:
10 LARGE russet potatoes
3-4 C grated sharp cheddar, the older the better… but not, you know, moldy
2 tsp table salt
. boil potatoes as you normally would for mashing
. drain and then dump back into pot
. put salt cheese on top and then lid on top to steam the cheese all melty
. mash
. set aside to cool, or if you’re doing this the night before, cool and then refrigerate
when the potatoes have cooled, start on the dough recipe pictured above. Keep in mind, the filling guide above is for triple the dough, so if you only want to make a few, make much less filling.
. when your dough is nicely put together and has had a nice rest, divide it into three balls (or don’t if you’re doing the single batch)
. lightly flour your rolling/cutting surface
. put a big pot of water on high, so when you’ve got a few pyrohy ready, you can just put them in to boil while you fill more. it’s efficient
. take one of the balls and squish it down a bit with your hand on the rolling surface, let’s say, the counter
. keep in mind this is a fairly elastic dough, like a very rich pasta, so no matter how you roll it, it will spring back a little, which is good
. roll the dough to the thinness shown below… I don’t know how thin that is in numbers. basically, thick enough to have some stretch for the filling process, but thin enough so that the pyrohy isn’t all dough with a little potato
. with a sharp knife, cut the dough into squares… or rectangular triangle shapes. I like it rustic, so there are no glasses or cookie cutters used here for perfect little semicircle nonsense
. take one of the dough-shapes and grab a bit of filling as such:
. not too much, but maybe a little more than you think would fit in one. pull all the edge together in whatever way you find easiest. just folding them over, or with the trickier looking pieces (long triangles) fold them more like a samosa. whatever you choose, make sure to cut off the excess bits of dough that gather where you’ve pinched it all together. I also like to kind of reshape them a bit with my hands so they’re somewhat compact
. when you’ve got 4 or 5 done, gently place them in the pot of boiling water. after a minute or so, give them a stir to make sure they’re not stuck to the bottom. also, never crowd them: max 5 per pot, and if they’re biggins, only 2. trust me
. grab a cookie sheet that has edges and a wire cooling rack
. when they have floated to the top of the water and are circling about, they’re ready to come out. gently place them on the cooling rack so the water can drip/steam off them and they can cool for 10 minutes
. when they’re cool enough to handle, very lightly coat them with oil so you can put them in a big casserole dish or roasting pan without them all sticking together
. when it comes time to cooking them, I like to COAT them in onion butter, which goes like this:
1 big ol’ yellow onion, grated
1 lb. unsalted butter, cut into meltable pieces
. in a pot over low heat, chuck in the butter and grated onion
. let this simmer away until the solids of the butter come to the top and it absolutely reeks on onion
. pour this all over the pyrohy, and maybe set a little aside for pouring on at dinner iffin you like
cover the pyrohy with tin foil or a lid, and bake at 350 until heated all the way through. keep in mind they’re already cooked, and shouldn’t stay in the oven so long that they get tough or leathery
it’s a lot of work, but I think to make these twice a year for thanks giving and xmas is a pretty fabulous treat for you and whoever you’re feeding. funny, these are normally an easter thing for ukrainians, but being a ukrainian canadian without much schooling in traditional ways, I do them this way for the people I love.
thefirdge 