Homemade Pierogi's

Seeing how I'm due to fly out from JFK in, oh, less than six hours this will be the shortest Daring Cooks write-up to date. This month's challenge was versatile, affordable and tasty -- my favorite traits in a challenge. Thank you to Liz and Anula for hosting it. Now for the required text - the August 2010 Daring Cooks’ Challenge was hosted by LizG of Bits n’ Bites and Anula of Anula’s Kitchen. They chose to challenge Daring Cooks to make pierogi from scratch and an optional challenge to provide one filling that best represents their locale.

My pierogi's won't win any beauty contests but they were delicious, especially when browned in olive oil for added flavor. They take some time to make but are well worth the effort. In the future I'm going to skip "simple" wonton ravioli's and make peroigi dough instead as it doesn't waste my time with egg wash or create a disasterous explosion of insides when you skip the said egg wash. Not that I've done that.

I chose to follow the Russian Style Pierogi dough recipe provided, free forming them by hand and filling them with the Heidi at 101 Cookbooks' fresh, light and lemony Plump Pea Dumpling filling. When my pierogi's wouldn't accept more than a half teaspoon of filling I made up for it by heating a bit of cream and adding the filling to it to create a simple sauce. On the side I mixed corn cut fresh off the cob, minced dill and lemon juice for a simple salad.

It was a great summer dish that reheated splendidly for work. If you don't like dill, don't mingle the pierogis with the simple salad as the dill takes over. Personally I liked the mingling as it added texture to the overall dish and an additional kick of flavor.

By the way, I'm experiencing the great outdoors in Big Sky Country i.e. Montana and Canada 8/13 to 8/24, so any responses will come when I return. Thank you for your patience and wish me luck seeing a moose with a rack.