shadowspar

Filling:

• potatoes
• cheese or cheese-like substance

Peel, cube, boil and drain potatoes.
Add cubed cheese, cheeze whiz, or what have you, while still hot, so as to melt the stuff.
Wait a bit to let the cheesy stuff melt, then mash it all together.
Add a bit of salt and a lot of black pepper. Stir well. Adjust to taste.

Dough:

• ~ 3 cups flour
• 1 egg
• ~ 1 cup water

Mix together, turn out, and knead.
Roll out fairly thin and cut into squares.
To pinch perogies, first roll up a ball of the filling then place it in the middle of a square. Fold over to form a triangle, then pinch the edges together to seal.

To cook: Boil about 5 min. They're ready when they all float to the top of the boiling water. If you like them crispy, you can then pan-fry them.

To freeze: place them on trays, with a bit of space between them, and stuff them in the freezer. Once they've frozen, you can take them off the trays and freezer bag them. (If you just bag & freeze them, they'll stick together.)

My parents & grandparents usually served these fried in butter or bacon grease, with fried onions and bacon on top, and a generous dollop of sour cream on the side. That being said, there are untold numbers of variations. This recipe's pretty easy to bend to your whims, and perogies are traditionally peasant food, besides. If you want to make perogies filled with shallots and paneer, or refried beans and salsa, or whatever, go for it! The Perogie Police will not show up with a warrant for your arrest. The Perogie Preservation Society will not picket your house. Seriously. =)

This is a hand-me-down recipe from my Papa (grandfather). Not only it is one of the best damn desserts going, it's hands-down the easiest, too; even easier than boxed pudding mix from the grocery store. Best of all, it lets you make something awesome out of the godawful strawberries we get during winter in the Great White North, bereft as they are of any hint of sweetness after their multi-thousand kilometer journey here.

So easy, it's hardly even a recipe:

• Wash, clean, and dry strawberries; slice them into a bowl.
• Dredge them in sugar: generously dust with granulated sugar, toss to mix, and dust again.
• Set them aside for a half hour or longer. The sugar makes the juices leach out of the strawberries, yielding a sort of strawberry syrup.
• Throw in a few dollops of sour cream (14% preferably) and stir the whole mess together.
• Divvy up into bowls & serve.

The timing on this often works well at dinnertime: slice & sugar the strawberries while the main course finishes cooking, and by the time the end of the meal rolls around, you're ready to lob in the sour cream and dish it up. If you want to turn down the fat numbers, better to go with a mild yogurt than some of the nasty reduced-fat "sour cream product" that lurks on supermarket shelves. Here, we just recently got a wonderful 2% yogurt that's almost as good in this recipe as full-fat sour cream, at least in my estimation.