Food I Like: Pirogies

15Dec09

Back in October (the 8^th to be exact) was the first National Pirogi Day. My son loves them and so I decided I wanted to make them instead of suffering with a premade frozen version. So we emailed my Aunt and Uncle for a possible recipe. I remember that when I was younger, any big family gathering that was held at their house included Pirogies made by my Uncle. (Both my Aunt and Uncle were really good cooks, but the Pirogies were always his thing.)

He got back to me with a cooking lesson on Pirogies: “Latvian Pirogies are made with a softer yeast bread dough that is filled with cooked bacon crumbles and baked like bread rolls in the oven.  This is a different dough and a different cooking process than Pirogies from other parts of Europe than might involve an unleavened dough and boiling as part of the preparation process.  They are very different from the store bought ones. The bread is not intended to be particularly chewy (like an Italian or French bread) but it is not a sweet, crumbly pastry dough either.  The egg is the ingredient that will reduce the chewiness properties (but will also tend to make the dough a bit stickier than a straight, conventional bread dough). The filling that my grandmother used was just finely diced, cooked bacon.  She would dice it and flash fry it in a hot pan until the bacon white clarifies and begins to shed fat.  The bacon needs to be cooked, but you want it ‘juicy’, not dry, when it goes into the circles.”

Ingredients:

• 1/3 cup milk
• 1/3 cup water
• 2 tablespoons of melted butter
• 2 eggs
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 3 teaspoons of dry yeast
• 2 tablespoons of sugar
• 1/4 cup sour cream
• 3 cups of all-purpose flour
• 1 pound bacon, chopped and cooked

Mix all the ingredients except the bacon together and adjust the consistency as you mix it to get a relatively non-sticky, firm bread dough by either adding small amounts of water or flour. Mix/knead until smooth and somewhat elastic and not too sticky then let rise (an hour – maybe 90 minutes). After rising knock down the dough and roll it out to about 1/4″ thickness.  If it is too elastic at this point, and tends to pull back too much to roll out easily, let it sit for 10 minutes and then roll it.

When it is rolled out, cut out 3” circles from the dough sheet with a mason jar or water glass or whatever.  Put a tablespoon or so of filling in the center of each circle and then pinch the edges to seal them and then fold/roll them into football shapes. When you put the filling in you want to make sure not to get bacon or bacon grease on the edges you are going to pinch together since that will keep the bread from sealing itself and the bacon juices will leak out while you are cooking.  You get the football shape by taking the pinched together half circle that contains the filling and sort of folding in the “points” and putting the Pirogi on the baking sheet with the pinching seam down – the top of the Pirogi is the smooth part that was the original fold line. Let rise for about 30 minutes on their baking sheet brush with egg whites and water if you want a shiny surface. Bake at 400 until they look done.

When I got done assembling these for National Pirogi Day I turned on the oven and discovered it was broken! Our big plans for the evening were shot. The assembled Pirogies went into the freezer for a couple weeks until the oven was repaired. When I pulled them out, I just let them thaw and put them in the oven. They came out just fine. I plan to try this again soon when I can bake them fresh.

I made some with bacon and some with mashed potatoes (my son is a potato freak). I also put sautéed onions in about half of each. Next time we’ll probably use some Cheddar cheese in them and I might even try some “dessert” style with cinnamon apples.

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Food I Like: Rosemary Chicken with Honey-Pear Sauce

03Dec09

This is a recipe I threw together from some random things around the kitchen.  It was time to cook dinner and I desperately needed to make something different than usual.  My wife had gotten The Flavor Bible by Karen Page and Andrew Dornenburg on loan from the library and I picked it up.  The bulk of the book is lists of “flavor affinities” suggested to them by a host of professional chefs.  This book is absolutely perfect for my style of cooking.  I was half inclined that night to make a Hawaiian-style chicken (honey glazed chicken breast with pineapple) but I didn’t have any pineapple.  So I picked up the book and flipped open to the list for honey—“Hmmm, pears.  I’ve got some pears in the fridge.”  On to the list for pears and we find rosemary.  I know rosemary goes well with chicken, so now I suddenly have this loop back around to chicken.  And I’m off and running.

Ingredients:

• ½ cup butter
• 1 red onion (about 5 inch diameter) diced
• 1 Tablespoon rosemary
• 1 pound boneless, skinless chicken breasts
• 3 Tablespoons honey
• 1 cup pear juice
• 2 teaspoons arrowroot

Melt butter in oven proof skillet.  Sautee onion in butter until slightly browned.  Transfer the onions into a bowl and add the rosemary.  Sear chicken breast in pan, pour the onions on top, cover the pan tightly with foil or a lid and place in 350 degree oven.  Meanwhile, combine the honey and pear juice in a saucepan.  Add arrowroot and stir over medium heat until thickened.  When the chicken is fully cooked (about 15 minutes) pull the pan out of the oven and place the chicken on a serving platter (leave the onions on top).  Everything else in the pan gets added to the honey/pear juice mixture.  Whisk together and spoon sauce over chicken breasts.

The first couple times I made this I took fresh pears and threw them into my juicer.  More recently I’ve done it with purchased pear juice.  It’s only marginally more expensive and a lot less cleaning hassle.  The onion showed up because I love sautéed onion in just about anything (almost every night I cook dinner my first step is to chop up a red onion).  I had been playing with arrowroot as a thickening agent recently and chose it because I wanted the sauce to remain a little more translucent.  I didn’t use a traditional pan sauce method partly because I was still experimenting with arrowroot and wanted to make sure I got it blended well.  Also, since the chicken is cooked mostly in the oven there is very little fond to get out of the bottom of the pan so the whole deglazing step of most pan sauces is pointless.

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Thanksgiving

27Nov09

Here I sit near the end of one of the worst Thanksgivings of my life.  I’ll admit up front that I’m whining a bit, and I realize there are lots of people out there that have had crappier holidays than I will ever have.  But for me this one still sucks.  This is the first Thanksgiving of my life that I will spend almost no time with any of my family.   My day was occupied by the fact that I had to work today.  I am a restaurant manager and unfortunately for me, working most holidays is just something you have to deal with.  But this year I worked 9am to 7pm so it was pretty much hopeless for me to be included this year.  But rather than dwell on this holiday’s shortcomings, I will focus on the things I have to be thankful for.

I am thankful for my wonderful wife of almost 20 years.  She is the perfect partner.  We share many common interests, but complement each other in terms of personality.  We have traits that fill in each other’s holes.  She helps me remember to be an adult and get things done.

I am thankful for my too-smart-for-my-own-good son, now a freshman in college.  He helps me remember how to be a kid and have fun.

I am thankful for my family and friends who I can turn to in times of need, get advice from, learn from or just have borderline pointless conversations with.

I am thankful for the roof over my head and a warm bed to sleep in.

I am thankful for the ability to put food on the table.

I am thankful for my job (which helps with the last two items).

I am thankful for my health.

I am thankful to live in a place where I have many choices of what to do, what to be, what to think.  I am thankful I can express them (or not) in any way I choose.

I am thankful.

Filed under: Culture, Life, Philosophy   |  1 Comment

A Political Annoyance

12Nov09

I just got my mind tweaked into annoyance by something related a recent endorsement in the Minnesota Governor race.  The Minnesota Association of Professional Employees (the union for Minnesota state employees) just recently announced they were endorsing Minnesota House Speaker Margaret Anderson Kelliher.  It’s not the fact that I personally think there’s a better candidate—people can and should endorse/support whoever they want.  It’s not the ethical gray area that is being approached by a union of government employees endorsing a political candidate.  It is a quote by the union’s Executive Director Jim Monroe.  “We believe she is the most electable candidate in the race.” (From StarTribune political reporter Rachel Stassen-Berger http://twitter.com/RachelSB/status/5652362902.  Full story: http://bit.ly/7ggIn.)  Monroe continues with references to her ability to raise money and her campaign structure.  There is no mention of the simple question of whether or not she will do a good job.

 

Why does there appear to be no consideration of her stand on issues?  What she’ll do for the state’s education system.  How she’ll resolve the budget issues.  How she’ll promote the state as a great home for business.  What she wants to do regarding the health care/health insurance system.  I would even have been OK if MAPE had just flat out made a blatantly self-interested statement that she a strong supporter of the MAPE union.  But endorsing her because she can raise money?  Because she has won elections before?  When did the BEST candidate stop being the same as the most electable?  Worrying about “most electable” leads down the slippery slope of style over substance.  That’s a great way to really get things messed up.

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32 Weeks Later

14Sep09

Finally!   Thirty-two weeks after being dumped from my job of over eight years and my first time not working in over 22 years I am once again gainfully employed.  I had a really great interview just over two weeks ago.   It was another long one like I had back in May (ugh, four months ago!).   Then he called me in to do an On the Job Evaluation.  So last Friday I went in and spent the day, learned a bit about what the place is like, helped out on the shift and got an opportunity to see if it felt right.   This afternoon he called and offered me the job.

It is around a 20 percent pay cut over my last job, but that is a sacrifice I expected.   The pay scale is a bit different than at my last company.  When you don’t have a job it is really hard to negotiate for the same or even greater pay.  Then again I also look at it as a raise of over 40% over what I was making on unemployment.  Yes, I do often manage to find the bright side of things.

There are also some intangible benefits.  My last restaurant was open until 1am every night.  By the time I got home from a closing it was often past 3 and I wouldn’t be able to get to sleep until close to 4am.   Wife’s alarm goes off at 6 and I would have to make sure my son was up and off to school at 8.  Of course odds were that a couple days later I would be opening which meant getting up around 5 or so.  I think the only time I actually got a decent night’s sleep in 2008 was during the week or two of vacation I was able to get.  I just can’t make that dramatic a shift in sleep schedule.  The new place closes at 9pm.  I should be home and in my jammies by 11 every night!  In 2007 I ended up cancelling my vacation THREE TIMES because things happened to other managers on the staff (always DURING the GMs vacation).   The new place has enough flexibility that vacations should happen as scheduled.

Now the list of things to do: go to all the job boards and take my resume private (I don’t need people to be able to search it and companies get nervous when they see employees looking for jobs), turn off the RSS feeds from Craigslist and CareerBuilder, cut the Twitter feeds, double check the wardrobe for work.  My Honey-Do list is going to be huge this week.  I suddenly don’t have to spend all week job hunting and genuinely have free time.

(Yes, this post was written in September and not actually posted until November.  I saved it as a draft and forgot to go back and publish it.  I started typing this as I tried to get hold of my wife to give her the good news.   She was mad that when I got let go the first thing I did was get my job search started and didn’t tell her until she got home that evening.  I wasn’t going to make the same mistake again.   But I had to get some of the excitement out.  Then some phone calls/emails to friends and family to share the good news.  But my wife needed to be first this time.)

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