I've been craving pirohy for months, now. Japan doesn't really do pirohy.
I can get piroshki everywhere, but even those are really more like Japanese
curry pan, but with a different filling. During the summer, it was much too
hot to make the dough (I live in Japan--it's hot and humid here and there's
no such thing as central air conditioning, so dough gets very very sticky),
so now that it's colder and drier (there's no such thing as central heating,
either), I finally took the plunge.

I started out with Barb's recipe--thinking I would make the dough but only
use half of it, then freeze the rest. Keep in mind, it was about 7 pm when
I decided to make them, so I didn't think I'd be willing to stay up all
night making pirohy. But then I dished out the 4 cups of flour required,
and thought it would be way too much, so I decided to just go with half a
recipe. I was a bit worried about the potato, as I do not have a food
processor so I didn't think I'd get it smooth enough. Well, I didn't.
There were small chunks of potato throughout the finished dough, but it was
not too bad. They were very small chunks and the rest was pretty smooth. I
had to let the dough rest, so I proceeded to make the filling.

For the filling, I just mashed up some potatoes, added about 1-2 tsp of
salt, and some shredded cheddar. I didn't know if I was supposed to do
anything else to it, so I that's all it was.

After the dough had rested the required amount of time (or maybe a little
less, since I was anxious to start/finish), I started rolling it out. It
was beautiful dough! (Despite the little potato chunks.) I might have
rolled it a bit too thinly, but it didn't break so I figured I was good to
go. I used a fluted pastry cutter to make my little circles of dough, since
I had no other. They were pretty circles, if nothing else. But as I was
filling them, I think I used a bit too much filling so they stretched out of
shape. Oops. But at least they didn't break!

Once filled, I boiled them, scooped them out, dried them on a kitchen towel
and froze them--all except for two. One monster one (equal to about 2
pirohy) that I made to use up the dough, and one just because I didn't one
the monster one to be lonely. I browned some butter (unintentionally) with
some onions, and sauteed the pirohy in it. Yum! All nice and
toasty-coloured! Wow, they were good! I was thinking about eating more,
but it was already 10 pm so I decided to control myself. Instead I browned
some more butter (again, unintentionally) with onions, and dumped the
remaining potato filling in it. That was good, too. I should also mention
that despite the thinness of my dough, not a single pirohy broke open while
cooking! Yay for me!

As Barb reminded me via e-mail, I was supposed to have bathed the cooked
pirohy in butter and onions. Oops! But I think they'll freeze better my
way :-). Two dozen are being Tilia-ed, and the other 2 dozen (1 dozen plus
10, actually) will be frozen for easy access. I'm breaking out my $8 pack
of bacon today and will have some pirohy sauteed in bacon fat for dinner!
Yuuuuuuuummmy!

Pics if you're interested!

http://community.webshots.com/album/266816507MguEha

And I mustn't forget to thank Barb, for her inspiration and her guidance!
:-)

rona
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