It has been at least two years since the Cheung family and I discovered we are mutual perogy fiends, missing this wonderful food (staple??) of cuisine from back home while living in Niger. Before I came to Niger, I stumbled upon a perogy recipe in a magazine and brought it along. So from time to time we have talked about and dreamed about having a perogy night. This fall, we decided that plans must be made for said cuisine extraordinaire!
I rarely eat potatoes here as they are usually tiny, dirtier than in Canada (thus requiring more work to clean and scrub) often rotten half way through. So I do not often deem the work of washing, peeling multiple tiny potatoes and cutting half away worth the effort of a yummy goodness added to a meal. But, the call of perogies is worth re-evaluating my view of potatoes in a meal. A few weeks ago, I mentioned to Cecilia that they were on "perogy stand-by" . . . if one day large potatoes appeared in the veggie stalls (which they do from time to time), I would buy said potatoes and we would have a perogy night. Never dreaming that such an opportunity would quickly present itself. However, on Monday, the Fulani veggie man from a nearby village, who rides around on his bike selling produce from his garden, stopped by the office. Immediately I saw that his potatoes were HUGE (biggest I have ever seen here), clean and good quality! I bought 2 kilos on the spot and called Cecilia that Operation Perogy Night was in effect for Friday!!
We had a lot of fun making and rolling out the perogy dough, filling the centres with a mixture of mashed potatoes, cheese and fried onions. It didn't take too long to figure out how to pinch the seals of the dough around the filling.
The recipe said that the perogies would float to the top of the pot once cooked - and sure enough, it was as simple as that. First batch cooking!! The recipe says it will make six dozen and we managed to roll out 70 perogies!
While home this summer, I remembered to bring back a few large bags of crumbled bacon (thanks to Costco for large packs!) . . . planned specially with perogy night in mind! What perogy does not need accompanying bacon, fried onions and sour cream??!?
Once the perogies were all boiled, we commenced with frying onions, frying bacon and creating the sour cream (1 cup whipping cream + 1 Tbsp vinegar)! And of course, frying the perogies. Supper was soon on the table! Complete with cole slaw on the side - I figured with the doctor coming for a meal, I should serve a vegetable! Cecilia taught me how to make her cole slaw and it was a yummy edition.
The finished product for our meal - the only thing missing is Mennonite sausage on the side!! But, I figured that would not transport well to Niger on the plane!!
From that one big bowl . . . this is all that remained! We five managed to polish off 64 perogies in one sitting!!!
But oh, we had such happy tummies relishing in the wonderful taste from home - and savouring each precious bite! Yes indeed, some things are definitely worth the hard work!!
No comments:
Post a Comment