If you've been reading my posts this past week, I walked you through my process for selecting the various ingredients and adjusting this recipe for my preferences. Check them out:
- Monday: Making Choices in the Kitchen
- Tuesday: Blue Cheese
- Wednesday: Potatoes
- Thursday: Bacon
- Friday: Flour
Which brings us to today. Time to put it all to work and make the star of the show:
I was inspired by Bacon & Blue Cheese Pierogies from SugarDishMe. With a couple of changes (which was the point of the whole last week of posts):
- I decided to use the Pierogi dough recipe from Tasting Poland. As is mentioned there: "Usually we make the pierogi dough without eggs as ingredients. However, in some recipes there are eggs, and indeed, they are used in some Polish households. The truth is that the addition of whole eggs (or just yolks) to the pierogi dough makes it more rigid when cooked. For most people it is not an advantage, so we recommend using the traditional recipe, without eggs. It results in a softer dough, which – despite its delicacy – will not fall apart." I also prefer that it is a simple dough without sour cream or yogurt added. We want the stuffing of these pierogi to shine here.
- For the filling, I made several adjustments:
- No onions (and therefore, no olive oil)
- No mushrooms (YUCK!)
- Different potatoes
- Different cheese
- But I'm keeping the traditional American bacon
Ingredients:
- Dough
- 3 cups all-purpose flour
- 1/2 tsp salt
- 3/4 cup boiling water
- 1/4 cup cold water
- 1/2 tsp oil
- Filling
- 3 pounds Yukon Gold potatoes
- 1/2 cup milk
- Fresh ground black pepper
- 8 strips bacon
- 4 oz Gorgonzola cheese
- Finishing
- Butter for sautéing
- Sour cream for topping
- Additional bacon bits and Gorgonzola, if desired
Instructions:
- Gather your mats (I play World of Warcraft. Mats is short for materials.)
- Cook your bacon.
- You can fry it on the stovetop or bake it in the oven. I chose the oven method because it meant I could be prepping other pieces while it cooked. I also find it less messy.
- Line a baking sheet with foil (don't skip this step or you'll be cursing me when you clean up). Place a cooling rack on top of the foil so that the bacon will be held up out of the dripping grease. Bake @ 400° for 15-25 minutes. The length of time will be determined by how crispy you like it, how thin or thick your bacon is, and how hot your oven is. I had thick cut bacon and cooked it for 20 minutes. In the end, I wish I'd cooked it a wee bit longer to get it more crispy.
- When it's done, it'll look sooooo pretty! Crispy and sizzle-y and still nice and flat!
- Transfer the bacon to a paper towel lined plate and let it cool completely.
- Chop into bite-sized pieces to be put inside the pierogies.
- Make the filling.
- Peel and cut the potatoes into even sized pieces.
- Bring a large pot of salted water to a boil. Be gentle with the salt. It's important because this is when you're going to get flavor inside the potatoes, but remember we're adding blue cheese and bacon which are both salty.
- Add the potatoes and cook until just tender. They won't be cooked much longer in later steps, so they should be at the texture that you prefer. I choose to leave them short of mushy because I like the soft-but-still-holding-together potatoes.
- Note: If, like me, you don't have a pot big enough for all the potatoes, cook half at a time and keep the peeled-but-not-cooking potatoes in a bowl of cold water. This will prevent them from oxidizing (which is a fancy word for turning brown because of contact with oxygen).
- Drain and transfer to a large mixing bowl.
- Add the milk, fresh ground black pepper, and 4 oz of blue cheese. If you want the cheese to completely melt in, add when it's still piping hot. If you'd rather the cheese still have some larger chunks, wait for the potatoes to cool slightly...but it should still be warm.
- Taste it. Add a piece of bacon and taste it again. Make sure that there is enough salt and spice for your tastes. Be very careful with the salt.
- Make the dough.
- Put the flour and salt in the bowl of your stand mixer. It is totally possible to do this without one, but I love how much easier doughs have become now that I own one!
- Pour 3/4 cup boiling water into the flour and vigorously stir/mix. It doesn't look like dough yet. Trust the process.
- Cover the bowl with a tea towel and wait 5 minutes.
- Pour 1/4 cup cold water into the mixture and vigorously stir/mix. Still looks odd. It'll get there.
- Cover the bowl with a tea towel and wait 15 minutes.
- Add 1/2 tsp oil (I used olive oil) and knead. Knead knead knead. Generally 5-10 minutes. Of course, I forgot to take a picture of the finished dough! I ended up adding a bit of water to bring it all together.
At this point, we packed up our ingredients and put them in the fridge overnight: dough into a ziptop bag, potatoes stayed in the bowl covered with foil, bacon pieces in a sandwich size ziptop bag. It was late on a Sunday and I had to be up early on Monday.
Tune in next week! Same Bat time, same Bat Channel!
(Just kidding... the rest of the instructions will be posted tomorrow!)
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