Pierogi are similar to the Italian pastas I am very familiar with making, and yet oh-so-different.  Stylistically, the dough is more like a hybrid between biscuit and pasta dough, for one thing.  With typical tagliatelle, ravioli, lasagna, etc, the dough benefits from extreme manipulation. Biscuit dough (and similarly pie crust), on the other hand, should be touched as minimally as possible in order to ensure an airy texture.  Pierogi dough falls into the latter category in that its texture is better if it’s handled as little as possible, and yet you still have to roll it down to about an eighth of an inch thickness in order to cut rounds in order to form the individual pierog.  Yes, you heard me right, singularly they are pierog, and plural they are pierogi. Yes, you’ve undoubtedly heard American bastardizations including but not limited to perogis, perogies, perogy, pirohi, piroghi et cetera, but the accepted and accurate pluralization and spelling is pierogi.  I’m not sure why I’m going all soapbox on this word- it’s not as though I’m any kind of expert either by birth or experience, I just find it interesting I guess.

Anyway, in my effort to conquer the world of pasta I’ve decided to branch out beyond the land of Italia which I know and love so well into other areas with rich traditions of unleavened dough.  I’ve always admired the standard pierogi in all its cheesy potato glory, though I can’t exactly be trusted to leave well enough alone. Luckily this time the resulting pierogi were unimaginably spectacular, but traditionalists, you’d best turn back now.  Those of you who have read this blog for any amount of time know that I have an (un)healthy obsession with eggs.  I also happen to love tucking them inside dough. Pierogi and eggs are downright meant for one another, though the dumplings are small enough that the eggs must be of the quail variety.  I also decided some shaved raw asparagus would spruce things up a bit and help remind me that it is springtime, after all. It was a good call.

This recipe makes 12 pierogi.  The basic pierogi protocal is make the dough, make the filling, assemble, boil and finally fry.  The first thing to do is caramelize an onion by slicing it and putting it into a lidded dutch oven along with some butter.  Slide it into a 400° oven and don’t fuss with it for an hour.  You can make the dough and soften the potatoes however you see fit (I sous vide them) in the interim.  Once the onion has spent an hour sweating all its troubles away, transfer it to the stovetop and remove the lid.  Deglaze the pot with a generous splash of vermouth and scrape up all the fond that has developed.  Evaporate the vermouth, stir it all together and you have your caramelized onion.

Next, make the dough by mixing all the ingredients in a large bowl, kneading until it comes together, then allow to rest in plastic wrap while you prepare the filling.  Here are the dough ingredients:

Dough

• 2 c flour
• ¾ c sour cream
• 1 duck egg
• 3 tbsp softened butter
• ½ tsp salt

While your dough is resting, combine the cooked potatoes with the filling ingredients (except the quail eggs, salt and pepper) in a food processor and process until smooth.  Here are the filling ingredients:

Filling

• ½ lb Yukon gold potatoes
• 1 c cheddar cheese, grated
• 3 tbsp caramelized onion (or more, to taste)
• ¼ c sour cream
• 1 quail egg yolk per pierogi (in this case 12)
• Salt and pepper to taste

At this point remove the quail eggs from the refrigerator and set a large pot of water to boil.  Divide the dough in thirds and roll the first third out on a floured surface into a rectangle about 4” wide and 1/8” thick.  Using a large cookie cutter or glass (3-4” diameter), cut four rounds out of the first rectangle. You will be making 12 rounds total.  Drop a tablespoon of filling on each round and make a hole big enough for the quail egg yolk in the filling using your index fingers.  Brush each pierog with egg wash to make sealing easier.   Crack egg yolks into each pierogi (it’s ok if some white goes too- it helps bind the pierog) and seal by folding one side of the pierog over the other.  Crimping is optional, but if you want to do it you can do it with the tines of a fork.  In order to ensure even crimping, always place the first tine of the fork in the last indentation you made, like this:

Repeat this process with the remaining dough and move each batch to rest on a sheetpan lined with parchment paper.

Once you are finished filling your pierogi, boil in batches of four in lightly salted water for four minutes.  Remove with a slotted spoon.  Meanwhile, shave several stalks of asparagus and leave the shavings in lemon water to tenderize. Fry the pierogi in butter along with more of the caramelized onion on both sides until they lightly brown. Serve with sour cream and shavings of raw asparagus.

It’s springtime in Seattle and the land is engorged with possibility.  You don’t need to go farther than your own neighborhood to make a meal fit for royalty, let me show you.  I cook by feel rather than by rote more often than not, and it’s a good habit to be in if you want to focus on seasonality. Rather than go to the store armed with a nitpicking recipe and a fastidious commitment to detail, loosen up. Go with the flow.  Take a walk. That’s what I did, and two blocks from my house I ran across a patch of stinging nettle ripe for the taking.  There may have been a touch more planning involved as I was armed with gloves, shears and a bag for my bounty- all necessary for harvesting stinging nettle lest you desire prickly pain all day.  In fact if you’re not sure it’s stinging nettle there is one surefire way to check, though I don’t recommend it :)

I brought my nettle home and lightly steamed it to render it harmless, then plucked the leaves from the tougher stems.  Harvest younger, shorter nettle for best flavor and tenderness.  Once I had my nettles ready to go the rest of the meal fell into place readily.  I had a fresh fat duck sitting in the refrigerator waiting to be fabricated (broken down) and cooked sous vide, so I thought I’d make a pasta with the nettles and some kind of saucy meaty accompaniment with the duck. 

I fabricated the duck into four parts and seasoned each quarter with homemade salt, thyme, smoked garlic powder, bay leaves, and oregano.  I packed each quarter into food-safe bags and sous vided the legs and thighs for 15 hours at 180° and the breasts at the same temperature for five hours. Normally you can get by with cooking duck breast at 140°, but since I kept the bone-in I maintained a higher cooking temperature as I was looking for more of a fall-off-the-bone tenderness rather than a firm breast.  Funny, kind of the opposite as you’d want in a human, no? 

Initially I thought of making gnocchi with the nettles, but settled on its ricotta-based cousin called gnudi (which means nude in Italian and is short for gnocchi gnudi- aka gnocchi nude of the pasta itself).  Some folks refer to gnudi as malfatti, which means badly made, but I like gnudi better, plus I take time in forming each gnudo, so they’re not really as roughly made as some malfatti can be.  As I see it, a main difference between malfatti and gnudi (though this varies regionally and is hotly debated) is that malfatti can be made by simply dropping dollops of dough into boiling water (you can even plop them out using a pastry bag) whereas gnudi tends to be formed using spoons or hands.  I thought gnudi rather than gnocchi would bring out the flavor of the nettle as it wouldn’t be competing with potato. I thought correctly- who woulda known? 

Making gnudi is fun. That sentence wasn’t meant to sound sexual, I promise.  First you press out all the liquid from one tub of ricotta and the nettles, then whir them in a food processor with either two duck egg yolks or three chicken yolks.  Plop the goo into a mixing bowl and add salt, smoked garlic powder if you wish, and flour as needed to form a light dough.  A cup and a half of flour should more or less suffice.  (tip- the amount of flour needed in most recipes will vary with your humidity and altitude. Learn to adjust by feel rather than rely on a specific number). 

To form the gnudi roll a teaspoon of dough between your palms into a little oval. Place on a parchment-lined sheetpan and repeat with remaining dough. Cover while waiting for the water to boil and finishing the duck and sauce.  Cook gnudi as you would gnocchi- by dropping into salted boiling water and removing with a slotted spoon once they float to the top.  Keep in warming oven while boiling the remainder. 

Rhubarb became the base for the duck sauce because it is seasonal and growing like mad all around Seattle.  I chopped it into small pieces and reduced it in moscato wine, chicken stock and the juice of one orange. After ten minutes I strained it, tossing the rhubarb chunks.  I poured some duck fat and jus from one of the duck pouches into the saucepan and lightly sautéed a spring onion in it. Then I added the rhubarb sauce and reduced a bit further, adjusting seasoning as needed.  To finish the dish, I crisped up the skin on the duck by deep-frying them for two minutes. Then I plated the gnocchi, a quarter of duck, and drizzled rhubarb reduction over both. 

This dining experience is an example of how relatively simple it is to incorporate local, seasonal elements into cuisine.  Rhubarb and nettles were foraged and duck eggs come from a local farm as does the duck itself.  Herbs all came from my garden, salt I made from Washington waters, garlic powder was made and smoked at home.  While I buy my ricotta from DeLaurenti in Pike Place Market and they make it themselves, I easily could have made it too. It’s one of the quickest cheeses to make; in fact it’s a byproduct of many other cheeses.   I hope this post inspires you to take a walk and cook off the beaten path.  Your diners will thank you for it.

Buonissimo! Finger-licking buonissimo is what you’ll be raving into next Tuesday if you step out on a limb and venture to make this crowd-pleasing pasta.  Just don’t tell your squeamish friends it’s made with duck eggs until after the first bite.  As is often the case with my culinary endeavors, I headed down to Pike Place Market to get some inspiration for what would be seasonally-appropriate to make for a fun dinner for five yesterday.   It could not be a better time of year to be at the market- every fruit stall is simply bursting over with bounty and the crisp autumn colors have us here at the Salty Seattle household all in a swoon.

 It was one of those days where just about everything I saw wanted to come home with me, from unnecessary gadgetry like a melon-balling set at Kitchen Basics to the absolutely gorgeous duck eggs from the Pike Place Market Creamery.  By the end of my unhinged spree, I wondered what on earth I would sort out for dinner from my unlikely mélange- definitely an everything-but-the-kitchen-sink kind of a journey. 

Read more

A couple of days ago, I woke up excited for my morning run and there was no mistaking it- autumn had decided to rear the drizzly tendrils of it’s rainy mane.  In Seattle especially, this comes with a touch of bittersweet irony every year since our summers are just so painfully short.  Because that particular run happened to be 9 miles, I felt justified in eating to my heart’s content when we were able to snag a last second reservation later that night at Cascina Spinasse - best seats in the house at one of the hottest newer joints in town.

I ordered the Tajarin al ragu(Tajarin being Piedmontese dialect for tagliolini) as my primo piatto, and it was without a doubt divine, but it got me thinking about what I truly love to ruminate on when it comes to steaming plates of pasta, and that is the element of fai da te or, do it yourself!

Read more