Pelmeni - Siberian Potstickers

I have finally found a perfect dough recipe that must be documented for my (and possiby yours?) future use.  Typically, the dough part leaves me rockign back and forth in the corner at the end of the night.  It's either too sticky, or too crumbly, too stretchy, or not stretchy apart.  Ghastly, really.

I picked this up off a Russian message board, where a woman allegedly got it from an old Siberian babushka.  After seeing 70 more women chime in, I figured I had nothing to lose.  If it failed, I'll resort to eating crappy dough or buying them at $8 a package (small package) at the Russian gorcery shop. 

Stories have it that in the old times a village would gather to make these potsticker type things for the winter.  They would then store them in their cold attics and survive a winter on them.  My mom used to make the family gather, because traditionally, to do them entirely by hand, you do need a small army.   (Of obedient children, typically)

I cheat, with a little aluminium form.  The look isn't quite the same, but it cuts prep time by 2/3rds, if you're working alone.

For the magical, possibly Siberian dough:
half cup hot water
half cup hot water with tablespoon of full fat sour cream dissolved.  (Or just half cup milk)
3 cups flour
tsp salt
1 egg
1 tsp olive/vegetable/sunflower oil

For filling:
1/2 lb beef
1/2 lb pork
one (grated) onion
salt and pepper

I made a mountain of 3 cups of flour on the table, with a well in the middle, into which an egg is dropped, with the hot water/milk mixture and salt and kneaded a quick doug.   I've watched my grandma do this, so I like the tabletop method, but a bowl is probably safer.  Less space for a runny milky floury egg disaster that way.  I know this for a fact.. 
I wiped tiny bit of oil on top of the dough ball, and stuck it in a plastic bag to hang out at room temperature for 40 minutes.  When it came out of the bag, it was like dough magic.  I didn't even need to knead it anymore. 

The rest is..

The thinner the better.  About 2mm is just right. 

 This was my last batch, so I have some empty spaces in the form.  The recipe yielded 4 forms of pelmeni.

It needs a tap to get them to come out.

They hang out on a floured baking sheet in the freezer for a few minutes, until the dough gets hard enough to pile them into plastic bags for storage.

I drop them in salted boiling water (with bay leaf) and 7 minutes later, plus some sour cream - dinner is served. 

Aebleskivers!!

Sometimes they start out OK:

And then it all goes wrong.  Like when you use your new (but old)  cast iron pan, but it's not really seasoned, but you think it'll be ok, cause you put some oil on it:

May be if I covered them in enough powdered sugar? 

Nope.  They're pretty messed up. 

And they defiled my 'new vintage' pan:

Not to mention Jesse's laughter and taunting, because the whole reason I wanted the 'old new' pan, was because I claimed it would stick less than my existing Lodge, which has been known to produce perfectly spherical pancakes.  

Take 2, after coating pan in oil head to toe and heating in oven for a few hours.  4 hours at 400'F produced a nice hard coat, not sticky.  Upped the butter content as well.

Ha!!  (Going conservative this time, in case it goes poorly again). 

And a 3/4 turn..

And, spherical pancakes!!

A whole pan of them, even:

Never mind the batter bits, those aren't stuck and will come right off, I got a little ladle happy. 

They are supposed to be coated with powdered sugar, but Jesse has a nasty Orange Crush + Reese's Peanut Butter cups habit he can't seem to break, and he's therefore denied sugar in the house. 

Jesse likes the ones that aren't fully closed, he stuffs them with lingonberry preserves.  I like to inject mine with whipped cream.  They're kind of like pancakes, but lighter, and airy-er.  Success!!!

Blue Cheese Burgers, Chicken Livers, and Bread

I cook at home, mostly. We go out for sushi and stuff, but I enjoy cooking. I grew up in Ukraine where going "out" for dinner was unheard of. When I visited a few years back, it was still uncommon to go out with the expectation of eating out. People pack sandwiches if they plan to be out a little while.

I remember when my grandmother brought bags of sandwiches for me and my cousins to a Nut Cracker ballet. It may have been Swan Lake. I only remember giggling over the tights the boys on stage wore, their fluttering legs, and how appalled my father was at the bag of sandwiches.

So, I like to cook, any day I can, our dinners. This weekend I made gorgonzola chesse burgers and livers and Jesse did the bread.

I love gorgonzola anything. I would probably drink in a milkshake form, if such things were available. Jesse doesn't share this passion, but he tolerates it and allows it in his fridge. I blend onions, garlic, and sour cream into a paste that I fold into the ground beef. It makes the burgers soft and tender and spares me from cry-cutting the onions. This time I blended some carrots into the meat. They are indiscernible in the end result, but I felt good about sneaking vegetables in, regardless.

My friend Heather just gave me the most amazing blender/food processor CuisineArt thing. I am a little in love with it, and what it does to my onions (and carrots, in this case, or beets, but that's another post). I crumble Gorgonzola cheese and fold that in the meat. We like pineapples on our burgers, so we get canned pineapples. I cook the burgers on my awesome cast iron griddle that has become a fixed..fixture on my stove. It's magical-ness can not be described and will need a post of its own, along with Heather's blender.



On the OTHER end of the griddle, far away enough to not 'contaminate' (he'd melt down)Jesse's burger I fried up a bunch of chicken livers with onions in some olive oil. Jesse just about fainted when I put a container of chicken livers in the shopping cart. But I think they're exquisite. And cheap. They probably sell them as puppy feed here.

We both had a side of rosemary baked potatoes - I baked mine, all sliced pretty like. I forget what it's called. H-something Potatoes. I saw it on Moderate Means' blog and had to try.



Jesse doesn't really like abrupt, unexplained and unsubstantiated changes in his menu. So he got the regular stove top version. I cube them, sear them, salt, pepper, use steak seasoning if I got it, and sprinkle lots of finely chopped fresh rosemary over the potatoes. Then I cover them and they either finish on the stove, or in the oven. I use giant cast iron pans, so they are good for stove top or oven, and I make enough to have leftovers for breakfast. Then I use the left over rosemary to brew tea for my hair, apparently.




Jesse loves bread, and he got me hooked on Trader Joe's Artisan Rustic Italian loaves. They are completely ridiculous, and practically climb in your mouth unassisted. And my ass compensates.. But, anyway. To make it infinately worse, he finely chops garlic, (Small quantities are key here, or you end up sweating garlic for a weeks straight. True story) drips in balsamic vinegar, pours in olive oil (pours for me, drips for him), and we dip the bread. Sometimes, I blend some tomatoes and into this mix. It makes a dip, kinda like hummus, but heaps ligter. About 7 seconds the loaf is gone and you're wondering exactly how many elliptimiles a half a loaf of white bread entails. Like, 20, probably. Many more than I will take upn myself, I'm sure.

Can you tell Jesse likes his things in certain order?

Giniling, a Philipino Delight

My best friend introduced me to this years ago, and it is one of my favorite dishes. It is SO good, served with white rice, and it is just as good fried up with couple eggs for a breakfast omelet.



1.5 lbs beef
half a yellow bell pepper, diced
half an orange bell pepper, diced
tomato, diced
1 carrot, diced
and onion, diced
1 potato, diced
few garlic cloves, diced
tablespoon ketchup
3 tablespoons soy sauce
¼ cup frozen green peas
a handful of raisins

I toss in the garlic and onions first, then add carrots, then bell peppers, and potatoes.



Each vegetable goes in and cooks on low heat while I’m chopping the next. I love that there’s really no prep, other than chopping up vegetables. I add the beef in last, add salt, ketchup, and soy sauce, and mix.



It cooks over medium-low heat (I use cast iron pans, so everything I cook requires lower temperature). I taste it for salt and add more soy sauce if need be. Drain the mix, if necessary. I cook with really lean beef, so there’s hardly anything to drain.
Once the potatoes and beef are done, I toss in a handful of raisins and the green peas. Cover the skillet, and let it stand for a few minutes.



Concurrently, cook a pot of rice (1 part of rice to 1 part of water).

Serve the beef mixture over or next to 'sticky' rice.



SO good.

Next morning - toss with some eggs for an omelet. SO good, part deux.

Stuffed Potato Nightmares - Cooking Fail

My grandmother put me up to this, probably just to have a good laugh. She claimed, that by boiling and mashing some potatoes, and combining them with an egg and some flour, a dough could be made, into which you fold a filling of meat, or mushrooms, or sauerkraut. Ha.

What I ended up with was a potato mix with a texture no unlike baby diarrhea.. It more or less told me to take a hike.



I called my grandmother in panic, who told me to just add more flour, because "you can't spoil it with flour". She took it back when I told her I used 4 times the recommended amount of flour (3 tbsp). Apparently, there IS such a thing as too much flour.

Anyway. It was awful. I tried spooning the potato mix onto the griddle, placing a spoon of meat mix in the middle, and covering with another spoonful of potato mix, but it didn't cook into a solid object, like, say, a pancake, and instead would move around on the griddle, like, say mashed potatoes.. with meat and mushrooms mixed in.

My incompetence in this potato thing is compounded by the fact that, unlike my grandmother, I can't throw them into a formidable layer of oil to fry. I make do with a thin layer of olive oil on the griddle, because of my low-far cooking efforts to keep Jesse's gallbladder stones happy. May be they would fry up into one piece. But trying to flip them on the griddle was like playing with raw, clumpy pancake batter. SO gross.



Luckily, Jesse has no idea what the finished product is supposed to be like. He ate up both my sad attempts, probably trying to figure out why I'd go such a convoluted way to arrive at a really mangled shepherd's pie.

I tossed a couple into a tupperware container, and having given up pretending they are to hold any particular shape, I ate it at lunch with a spoon, like shepherd's pie.

My grandmother shared a lovely story - when she was a newlywed, her husband killed a couple chickens and left her to make them into a meal. Remembering that in the village, her mom steamed the chickens to pluck feathers, my grandmother poured boiling water into the bucket, covered it, and came back few minutes later, ready to pluck away. As she went to pull a chicken out by its leg, the leg came out, to reveal a half cooked, still inside-intact chicken. Apparently, not meal grade anymore. Turns out, the chickens are only to be briefly splashed by the hot water, and never actually immersed, until they are plucked, gutted, and soup-ready. I think it was supposed to make me feel better - which, it did. I am super glad that my first encounter with any chicken is completely defeathered. :D

I'm going to use the remaining stuffing for some vareniki (potsticker like things). Assuming I can mix up some decent dough. As for the potato mix.. since I'm not really into heavily flour-fortifed mashed potatoes, I might have to let it go. SIGH.

Thanksgiving, Ducks, and Whoops

I don't like turkey. I don't like any white meat in general, and turkey has so much of it, its annoying. I also find it tough and bland, and .. the list of its offences is really too long to indulge in. So, instead, like a good Russian, I make a stuffed duck on any qualifying holiday. Qualifying means it puts me in the mood to spend $17 on a bird. Spending $17 dollars on a fatty chicken like bird seemed appalling until a recent trip to Bristol Farms, where ducks come in at 9.99 per pound, so, $40-$50 a duck pre-tax. Jesse and I laaaaaughed and laughed our way out of the door, duck-less. I was on a duck research mission that evening, and found out that Whole Foods were $4.99/lb and Ralphs and Vons at 2.88 and 2.69 respectively. I got some nice fat 6 lb ones at Ralphs, and was pretty pleased. I still wonder - the ducks at Bristol Farms weren't frozen. What happens to these $40 ducks at the end of the night? I mean, do they toss them? Can I come in at 8:59 and make an offer? Are they available shortly thereafter at or around their dumpster? Just wondering...

Russian Holiday Duck:

a duck
4-5 apples.
a package of prunes
thyme, optional
salt/pepper

I wash the duck and trim as much fat as I can. Rub the inside of it with salt and pepper, and stuff with cored and sliced apples. I don't peel my apples, since they tent to turn into much when peeled. Prunes are mixed in with apples and going into the duck as well.
I prick the duck all over with a sharp fork, or skewers, if the forks are too gentle and child-proof, to help fat escape.
Stitched close with my best surgeon work, toss the excess apples around it, and toss in the oven at 375'F for 2.5-3 hours.



Ducks are super fatty, and as the fat drains out, it helps if the duck is elevated on a rack. I don't own such a rack, so Jesse kindly rolled some foil into thick bars, and the duck rested on 3-4 of these. This way, it's not swimming in a fat-lake when you take it out.


I must warn for $17, you are not getting very much meat. But what you do get is exquisite.

We had dinner with Jesse's family, complete with an enormous 26lb turkey. It was pretty magical, and I even found some turkey leg meat I didn't object to entirely. Afterwards, we headed to my Aunt Diane's for tea and pie, where my father and step mother were visiting from Northern California. The children had dug a giant hole on the beach to play in, and aunt Diane showed us some 90 year old toys passed down in the family.



Friday morning, despite my incoherent objections, Jesse stuck to our plan and threw me in the truck, shopped for camp groceries along the way, and we arrived at Spangler (Southern California high desert) to camp and ride.



Jesse got me a WR250 a few months ago, and I'm still breaking it in. I just discovered this trip, that it's true - if you take whoops at a high enough speed they don't rattle your wrists, shoulders, and neck, and instead, you almost glide over them.

It had rained at night, we listened to the rain and wind in our tent, keeping warm in a sleeping bag with 8 blankets "just in case". There was no dust the next morning. A little windy, but you can't pick your weather, and having lived in Chicago, I'm excited to be out and camping at the end of November. Riding was beautiful and dust free.



We met some friends from ThumperTalk, a message board where I met most everyone I know. There was a band playing - for $600 they got a trailer and will follow you anywhere. There was a sea of toyhaulers and trailers. Jesse and I camp the old fashioned way, but we aren't proud, and are happy to hide out in a trailer when needed, watch Star Wars, even, and have Dave's biscuits and gravy Thanksgiving Trailer Dinner Special. (Thanks Denise and Dave!!) Not to mention the bathroom. Sometimes, and especially in 40'F, it's just nice not to have your butt hanging out in the wind.

I am thankful. Super thankful for all the happy things and people and blessings in my life.

*pictures to come

Golubtsy - or, little pigeons

Golubtsy

(Gołąbki in Polish, Holubtsi in Ukrainian) means little pigeons, although they look as unpigeonlike as possible. It is a popular Russian dish that involves wrapping meatballs into cabbage leaves and either simmering or baking for a long time on low heat in a tomato or sour cream sauce, served with sour cream.

Since I try to adapt most recipe’s for a low fat version in honor of Jesse’s gentle gallbladder, I have to cook with fat free sour cream (reminiscent of milk Jell-O..yuck) and I use ground lean turkey breast with lean ground beef. They came out OK. My grandmother’s are better, but she’s got 70 years on me, so I’m not too butt hurt.

My very basic recipe (makes 20 rolls, assuming the cabbage cooperates and has at least 20 leaves)
Cabbage
½ lbLean Ground Turkey Breast
½ lbLean Ground Beef
Onion
Carrot (2)
Sour Cream
Salt
Pepper
Half gallon of milk
4 tablespoons of rice
Dill, parsley, green onion, etc.

I cut around the ‘stem’ part of cabbage – the idea is to give a head start to the whole leaf separating process. The Cabbage gets dropped into a hot pot of water, and as the outer leaves soften up, you pluck them off with a fork. I actually pluck them off with bare hands and swear a lot, but a fork would probably do the trick and lend a more ladylike atmosphere to the whole process.

Stuffing is combined turkey and beef. (If it was up to me, I would use, as intended by nature, history, and culture, half pork, and half beef. But, alas) I grate the carrots and chop up onions finely, and sautee them in some olive oil until they’re half done. During same time I bring 4 tablespoons of rice to a boil. When in Russia, and meat was scarce, a lot more rice was used, but beef is afforadable here, so, less rice. (I don’t even want to talk about the affordability of “lean ground turkey breast” but I would have liked to pretend-faint in the aisle of Vons. But whatever, we’re being all.. healthy, and all).



By the time the onions, carrots, and garlic have cooked, and you have thought of 8 ways to spend $8, none of which include lean turkey breast, and all of which are funner, you can take the rice, drain it, and with half sauteed vegetables fold them into the meat. I mix it well with sea salt and black pepper, and I also add a few tablespoons of sour cream into the meat to keep it soft. (And Lord knows you need it when dealing with the above mentioned turkey breast. That was my last turkey breast shot, I promise). I don’t know that Fat Free sour cream does the same thing Normal Sour Cream does, but I’m mentally willing it to. Some people throw in an egg for same purpose, I don’t, I like my eggs to manifest themeselves someplace eggy, like French Toast crust.



I line the pan (I use cast iron pots, enameled is probably better, but I was going in the oven with this, and my enameled LeCreuset has plastic lid knob) with couple cabbage leaves. Most recipes advocate envelope type assembly, but my grandmother taught me to simply roll the 2-3 tablespoons of meat into the leaf (I shave off the thick part to make leaf uniform) and tuck in the ends. This asembly doesn’t unroll like my previous envelope rolls.



I stack these into the pan, seam side down. During this, I heat my half gallon of milk (a little less), salt it, chop up green onions, dill, and parsley, a bit of butter, if you can, (I can’t) and some flour to thicken.

When the pot is full of ‘mini pigeons’, I pour in the milk broth, to cover, and bring to boil. As it comes to boil, I put it in 350’F oven, for a couple hours.



They came out good. Again, I thought they were a little dry, but largely because in the oven, some milk escapes from under the tight lid, and my top layer wasn’t really covered anymore. I may try stovetop simmer next time.

A lot of recipes call for tomato sauce, I may try next time. Instead of milk, one uses water or broth, sautee more onions and carrots in it, also a sliced apple, and into this combine either diced or fresh sautee tomatoes (with lemon juice), or simply ketchup dissolved in hot water – 1 to 2 parts. This sounds intriguing and chopped onions and carrots make a nice addition to the broth.

Serve with sour cream, enjoy! Jesse americanizes his with ketchup, which is vile, in my opinion, but seems to work for him.