Pierogies a la Alice

Regis and I made pierogies today. We must have been channeling Alice because we had her recipe and when they were all done, Regis said they were just like she made.

Oh my God, what a lot of work, though. This is my Grandma Elsie's meat grinder which I have had for years and never used. We had to cook a roast yesterday, then today grind it up with a head of boiled cabbage, two onions, and a pound of bacon.

Then we made the dough. Things only got tense once in the eight hours this project took us and that's when we argued about whether to cut the dough circles first and then put them through the pasta roller...or roll the dough first and then cut the circles. I was picturing uncooperative dough but this was very easy to work with so I didn't have to represent my dough views so vociferously.

You can see this makes a real mess. After the dough circles were cut, we put put a spoonful of meat in the middle, wet the edges and sealed them up. Regis boiled them in a big pot for 10 minutes, then drained them with a slotted spoon.

About half way through, we realized we had more filling than we had dough so we made another batch of dough (7 cups of flour, 5 eggs, 2 1/4 cups water, and 1/2 cup shortening) so we could finish the filling. We'd also made a bowl full of mashed potato and cheese filling. I should have known this would be enough to feed the Russian army and a few other armies besides.

When they're done boiling and have cooled a little, you fry them in a pan with butter. They remind me a little of potato krub...lots of carbs and butter. You'd think the Poles and the Norwegians would have had enough to do in the winter without all this kind of labor.

Regis figures we made about 175 pierogies. That should last us into 2012 unless we find a market for them.