Determination

After almost an entire day without power (besides the generator used for the tv, internet, and a few lights) I felt that I needed to cook this meal....just because!  I got this meal idea from a friend who has a great blog.  She is a pastry chef but posts lots of non-dessert recipes on her blog.  She blogged her way through pastry school so if you want any inspiration or just want to look at some beautiful desserts, check her out whitehotoven.blogspot.com

So the menu was pretty simple, Wellshire Farms Keilbasa, saurkraut, and peiroges.  The only complicating factor was that everything I cooked had to be done on the grill!

 

Here I am with Molly and Cole cooking up the sauteed onions and boiling the potatoes.  

 

Margot's recipe for pieroges starts with a pretty simple dough and a very tasty filling including yukon gold potatoes, sauteed onions, cream cheese, and cheddar cheese.  After I boiled the potatoes outside I riced them and mixed the other filling ingredients together.  The dough was the only problem I really encountered.  Margot's recipe said to roll out the dough to 1/8th inch thickness.  This is critical.  Several of my pieroges were a bit thick and the final dough was a bit tough.  The thin skinned pieroges were amazing!

Wellshire Farms keilbasa was a great pick.  Wellshire Farm products are all nitrate free and available at whole foods. 

 

Here's my final product.  I tried my best to crisp up the boiled pieroges but by the time we got around to eating the temperature had dropped and I couldn't get the grill to make my skillet hot enough!  Still I was very happy with this recipe and I'll do it again...with power and a stove next time.

Check out Margot's recipe at her blog:

http://www.whitehotoven.com/2010/02/ukrainian-perogies.html