Bacon, butter and salt

Cafe Society
1

I picked up some cabbage and onions from the Pierogi Palace in Cleveland. Their pierogis are amazing. They make eastern European (Ukrainian) style which are much larger then the Polish style and have a hand braided edge.

The cabbage and noodles was a bit bland compared to my recipe. I cut up a few slices of bacon and cooked them then added the C&N plus butter, salt and pepper. Now we’re talking!

Various combinations of bacon, butter and salt will improve darn near anything! The photo shows Rachael Ray at the store, Wasn’t butter her main theme?

2

Interesting…the Ukrainian varenyky that I’m used to seeing are not particularly large, so now I’m trying to imagine how small the Polish ones are.

3

Not to deprecate bacon or butter (which I love) but I bet the flavor could be enhanced tremendously by just adding some MSG to the cabbage and onions too. Or even better, some marmite or vegemite which would add both MSG, salt, and a meaty savor.

4

Yeah, the wife adds MSG a lot but I never think of it. I don’t have any of the ***mite family but decided that soy sauce was the wrong flavor.

5

In the Cleveland area every grocery store has Polish style. I would say the ones from Pierogi Palace are twice the size. They are the size of your open palm and quite thick.

6

I always thought it was extra virgin olive oil (or E-V-O-O as she calls it). Paula Deen is the recent celebrity chef that I remember putting pounds of butter in every recipe she ever made.

7

I make Irish pierogis. We’re an Irish family, and we have a family recipe for pierogis, so…

(though I think the recipe originally came from Slovenian friends of my grandmother)

And one time, I was making a big dinner for some friends, and one of them (a Ukrainian) excitedly commented “Oh, you made varenyky, yum!”. So apparently, whatever nationality mine are, they and the Ukrainian ones aren’t all that different.

8

I must admit that bacon, butter and salt over cabbage filled pierogies sounds pretty good. My family does potato/cheese, a cottage cheese/green onion mixture, and prune filled. Saute some diced onions in butter, add the cooked pierogies and stir briefly.

Getting the salt right is definitely key.

9

Or better yet, a less aged (for a more neutral) miso paste.

God I love using miso paste, especially since the wife is now mostly vegetarian, it’s a better two person fix than adding bacon (which it would likely be if it was just me). And yeah, the MSG shaker is a great fix for a dish that just doesn’t quite live up to it’s potential.

10

Standard Polish style pierogi would be about 3-3.5" in diameter. But this will vary slightly by family. I like mine with a fairly thin dough, not overstuffed. The edges can be left flat, dimpled and folded with fingers, or impressed with the tines of a fork.

11

If you showed them to a Pole, they’d just as likely say “Oh, you made pierogi, yum!” They are all closely related and quite similar, and the person you’re showing them to will likely relate them to their ethnic foodstuff.

12

I did a bit of research on sizes. The standard frozen pierogis at the grocery are a dozen to the pound. I recall the restaurant made versions were a bit larger. The Ukrainian ones I get at the Pierogi Palace are 3 pounds per dozen, triple the weight.

13

The Irish would say, “Oh, you made small pasties!”

14

The standard size of ours is one tuna-can in diameter, and one of that scoop there of the filling (which, for us, is usually potato, cheese, and onion, or occasionally jam if we have a handful of rounds left over when we finish the potatoes). We press them together by fingers, unless it looks like one won’t hold closed, and then fold a few crimps in the edge.