A Celebration of Mundanity

After the inspiration hit to make and freeze large quantities of pierogies this past week, I realized I had never actually recorded this recipe. The inspiration hit while I was tagging and labeling the photos from my baby shower, which my mother-in-law had made a batch of home made pierogies for part of the lite buffet. They were so good and I then realized it had been months since Mark and I had had any and we were over due to make some. The nature of the dish and the recipe lends itself to just making a lot and freezing batches. For the dough, generally use my usual fresh pasta recipe. Mark thought it tasted a little too strongly of olive oil, so for this batch we substituted with vegetable oil. Pasta Dough 10 oz. flour (by weight) 3 eggs 1 oz. oil I combine these ingredients in my mixer and mix until they just come together in relatively smooth ball, it doesn't take long at all. I then remove the dough onto a floured surface and gently finish the process until you're left with a silky ball of dough. Again, this doesn't take long. Cover in plastic wrap and let the dough rest while you take care of the potato filling. Potato Filling There is no great secret to this. Make a batch of mashed potatoes. Then add as much grated cheese as there are potatoes. This particular batch of cheesy potatoes we used two blocks of Red Leicester, one block Double Gloucester and one block of Mature Cheddar. It's not an exact ratio. Keep adding cheese until it's cheesy enough. Some like only a small amount of cheese (heathens), but we tend to go heavy on it. Longhorn style colby cheese was what we typically used in the US. And if you want a non-traditional pierogie... you can use just about any filling you'd like, from meat, to sauerkraut, to cottage cheese... whatever. I've never bothered experimenting... because the nostalgia factor is significant in my enjoyment of the pierogie, anything different is going to have a hard time being better. Once you have the filling made it is time to roll out the dough. I use my old school hand cranked pasta machine. I divide the dough ball into four and take each portion down through the size thickness 8, 6, 4 and then 3. Lay the sheets of pasta on a lightly floured surface. Dole out the cheesy potato filling. I use a 1 tsp cookie scoop to ensure even distribution of filling and ease of folding the tasty packages of dough. Space the dough balls an inch or two apart, leaving enough room to fold little packets. Slice the dough between the filling scoops and brush the edges with a little bit of milk, this help seal the dough when you fold it over and pinch the edges together. Any extra dough can be trimmed off and the pile of trimmings can then be re-rolled to a few more pierogies out of the dough. This is the point you will want to freeze them. I divided them up into bags of 10 pierogies. They may be small, but they are deadly. Five pierogies is a sizable portion. To cook and serve you will need to caramelize and onion in butter. Be sure to take the time to properly caramelize the onion, it is well worth it. The pierogies themselves are cooked in boiling water, toss them in and they are finished when they are all floating. I like to just give them a minute or so on the boil after they've reached the float. Once the onions are ready add one last pat of butter and add your drained pierogies and toss to generously coat in butter and onions. Enjoy immediately as a side or as we did, as the main meal!