Red, White, and Blue Potato Salad

Happy Independence Day to my fellow Americans!

I got this recipe from Bon Appetit magazine and first made it about 2 years ago. I love it - dill and caraway are two of my favorite flavors!  Making it with purple, white/yellow, and red-skinned potatoes gives it a little flair for the weekend cookouts, and tastes amazing, too!

Ingredients
2 lbs potatoes
1 shallot, chopped finely
1/3 C olive oil
S&P
1/4 C vinegar
2 Tbsp fresh dill, chopped
2 tsp toasted caraway seeds

Instructions

1. Cover potatoes with cold salted water, bring to a boil, and cook until tender; drain and transfer to a large bowl.
• I found that my purple potatoes needed more time than the others - I would recommend starting them a bit earlier or cooking the potatoes in color/type batches.
2. In a small, dry skillet, lightly toast the caraway seeds until warm and the aroma begins to fill the air.  Remove and set aside until later.
3. Heat oil in a medium skillet over medium-high heat. Add the chopped shallot and season with salt and pepper. Cook, stirring often, until soft.
• The original called for 1/2 an onion, chopped.  I'm not a huge fan of onion and find that I prefer the gentler taste of a shallot.  Use what you like.
4. Remove from heat and mix in vinegar.
• The original recipe calls for apple cider vinegar. I'm planning on playing with various vinegars to get a taste that I really love. I might try something more sweet and less abrasive. I love the bite of vinegar, but I don't like when it's all I taste.
5. Add to warm potatoes along with dill and caraway seeds. Toss, crushing potatoes slightly; season with salt and pepper.
• It's important to add the dressing while the potatoes are still warm or hot. They will drink up the dressing and infuse each bite with flavor.

This is wonderful served warm or even room temperature.  It's great for picnics and cookouts because it doesn't have mayonaisse (no need to try to keep it cool).

Homemade Pierogi Part 2: Assembling, cooking...and EATING!

When we last met our intrepid heroes... er... cooks...

Last night, we left you hanging.  We had packed up our ingredients and put them in the fridge overnight.  It was late on a Sunday and I had to be up early on Monday.

So then on Monday evening, we worked together (hubby helped!) to assemble and cook them all!

Date night in our kitchen

1. Form the pierogi.
• This took some patience.  Like... a LOT of patience.  Hubby was better at this than I was.
• Let the dough warm up before starting.  We were anxious to start and tried to play with cold dough.  It was not happy.
• We used my new pasta rolling attachment for my stand mixer.  Lots of places will tell you that the dough is too tender for this, but we were careful to not overwork it.  It came out beautifully.
• Roll the dough until it is about 1/8" thick.  Try to keep the flour on only one side of the dough.  Trust me.  It's important.
  
• Cut into circles.  We have a little gadget to do this, so we tried it.  It was almost more frustrating than helpful.  Cut circles: use a glass, or a biscuit cutter, or a cookie cutter.  Anything round.
  
• Scoop a SMALL amount of potato and cheese mixture into the middle of the circle.  Trust me - go smaller than you think you need.  I had a tendency to overfill them and had a very hard time getting them closed.
  
• Top with some bacon bits.
  
• Fold over and seal tightly.  This is tricky.  You really need them sealed completely or the filling will come out when you boil them.  I recommend wetting your finger and running it around the inside edge before folding them closed.  This will help form the seal.

  

  This is what happens when you do not use flour on the outside of the dough.  OOOPS!

• Pinch the edges closed with your fingers or a fork.
  
2. Boil.
• Bring a large pot of lightly salted water to a rolling boil.
• Lower a few pierogi in the pot at a time.  Do not crowd the pot.  Better to do this in batches.
• When they float, they're done.  This seriously only takes a couple of minutes - tops.  Fresh pasta cooks very quickly.
• Put the boiled pierogies on a wire cooling rack to drip dry and cool.  Do not do what I did and think that wax paper would help.  We lost 3 beautiful pillows of fluffy yumminess to the evil Wax Paper monster.
  
3. (Optional) Store for refrigerator or freezer.
• If you are planning to store them, you can absolutely bag them up.
• Allow them to cool completely.
• I wrapped them in wax paper (now that they're cool) to keep them from sticking to each other.
• Put in a ziptop bag and put in the refrigerator for up to a week (HAH!  As if!!)
• If freezing, I've read that it's better to freeze them on a sheet tray all laid out flat.  Once frozen, you can transfer them to a ziptop bag.  This is all to avoid them sticking together.
  
4. Sauté.
• Melt butter in a sauté pan.
• Add a few pierogi, taking care not to crowd the pan.  Crowded pans = steaming, not sautéing. They won't get all crispy brown and yummy.
• After a couple of minutes, gently turn over to the other side to brown.
5. Serve.
• There are plenty of ways to serve pierogi:
• Browned butter
• Caramelized Onions
• Applesauce
• Sour Cream
• Hot sauce (if you're my husband)

They were wonderful.  The dough is very tender and light. The filling was subtle with blue cheese (hubby and I agreed that we both wanted more blue flavor next time).  It was perfect with a bit of browned butter and a small dollop of sour cream.

I hope you enjoyed this longer adventure in my kitchen!

Let me know what you liked and what you might like to see next!

Homemade Pierogi Part 1: Preparing the pieces

Oh yes, you're reading that correctly!  Today we are finally tackling a project I've been dreaming about for months.  MONTHS, I tell ya!

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:

1. Gather your mats (I play World of Warcraft.  Mats is short for materials.)
   
2. 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.
3. 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.
4. 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!)

I'm such a tease...

Recipe is a bit complex, so I'll post it over the next few days - 

plenty of pictures and dialogue with that little voice in my head...

You know... the one who is always talking in italics?