Things wot I Made Then Ate: May 2015

Hot purple cabbage slaw, bacon, chopped pierogi

Shredded purple cabbage salted and fried with onions in butter, including rice vinegar, sugar, cumin, habanero sauce, black pepper. Bacon and pierogis chopped in thirds so that's nine bites, from yesterday fried separately. The two portions, cabbage and pierogis, combined. Tomato added off the heat.

It is unsightly but it does have everything all at once, fresh vegetable, cooked vegetable, twice cooked vegetable, pasta, bacon, cheese, sweet/sour, the ping of vinegar and the zing of salt, zap of onion, the pow of bacon and thud of potato and cheese, ping, zing, zap, pow thud, ping, zing, zap, pow, thud, ping, zing all the way through then it's gone. Forever. Because who is ever going to chop cooked pirogi like this and risk all that cheesy goodness oozing out? They sure are good when they're fried, and they fry really fast.

Rib-eye steak, grilled vegetables, baked potato dinner

Pierogis, baked bacon

This meal takes a lot of baking trays.

1) a tray to have the filling ready in little balls

2) a tray for a floured towel to hold formed raw pierogis. They must not touch or stick.

3) a tray oiled to hold boiled pierogis to slide around on, again to prevent sticking.

4) a tray with its rack for the bacon but that is extra.

They're basically pot stickers. You can line them up and fry them as such. This is how I prefer them. Fried in butter and crisp. They're much better to me this way. Sour cream, fried onions, what have you, all that is nice, but so is an Asian dipping sauce.

This mashed potato does not have any butter nor milk, to keep it kind of dry, it does have a lot of cheese to compensate.

This dough is similar to Asian noodle dough that uses an acid or base to adjust pH and mess with the flour forcing it to become much more cooperative, more elastic, and more cohesive and adhesive. The dough stretches around the potato and pinches shut easily.

My dough is made with about 30% semolina flour, the rest all purpose. I also don't bother with making a well in the pile of flour. I don't understand that nonsense. It's as if early foreign housewives devised ways to avoid cleaning a large bowl. Or maybe they didn't have a large bowl. I don't know. There is no advantage to not using a bowl.

Because the dough has a touch of acid, it is very easy to use. I do not have sour cream. But I do have regular cream and lime, that is what I used. Vinegar would work as well, just a tablespoon will alter the dough and its properties considerably.