My father has always raved about pierogis my grandmother used to make, Kudłate pierogi. In english, we always called them fuzzy pierogis. She stopped making them before I was born because they were too much work but were my dad's favorite. I have tried to find them at polish restaurants or in recipes online but can't find anything feasible. A few recipes come up but the translations don't make sense. If anyone had a recipe or could point me to a cookbook that has a recipe, that would be great. Thank you!
This is just my quick translation (with notes in brackets) of the pyszne.pl recipe. Hope it makes sense, and let us know how the recipe works out.!
Ingredients
1 kilo of potatoes
1 pack of farmers' cheese (the one in my fridge is 250g, I'd make sure you've got more than that since some packs are bigger)
1 lightly beaten egg
2 tbsp potato flour (I suspect a lot of people just use normal flour instead with maybe a bit of cornflour added!)
Salt and pepper as required
A pinch of Vegeta (I'd not bother with this, just use a little extra salt. Maybe add a little parsley/cornflour which Vegeta - a post-war Czech food additive - contains together with MSG and onion powder; I'd not bother with those at all.).
200 grams of scrag end of pork (I'd use fatty bacon, called 'boczek' in Poilish)
Method
Peel, wash and grate the potatoes. Reserve any of the starchy juice that comes out while grating (if there isn't any, use a bit more potato flour since it's better to use too much flour than watch the pierogi fall apart when cooking.
Add salt and pepper to the grated potato and starch/potato flour.
Break up the farmers' cheese with a fork. Beat the egg and add to the cheese.
Take a spoonful of the potato and make a disk, holding it on the palm of your hand. Put some of the cheese/egg mix in the middle and fold into an oval ball.
Drop the dumplings in boiling water and cook for 20 to 25 minutes so they're cooked through; this is about the potato being cooked properly.
Dice the pork and fry slowly (I'd use diced fatty bacon for this).
Drain the pierogi and serve with the pork/bacon bits scattered on top.
Another recipe I saw has a filling of 700g of potato (that's a lot!), 200g of farmers' cheese and a chopped and softened onion. I'd use the onion instead of the 'Vegeta'. That one says to cook for on7 7 minutes. I'd cook for somewhere between 7 mins and the 20/25 mins in the first recipe. It all depends on what works for you when you try the recipe.
BTW there's a typo in the first line of the last post. I called it pyszne.pl (that's a food delivery service here) instead of przyslijprzepis.pl). That just has cheese/egg whereas the second one (from wielkiezarcie.com) has a potato/cheese/.onion mix. I'd probably go for the potato/cheese/onion, though with far less potato!
Worth experimenting with what works for you.
I also notice that the first recipe puts the egg in the filling and not the dumpling dough (hence the potato flour) and the second one puts the egg in the dumpling dough not the filling. I suppose it's whatever you feel comfortable with, and doubtless some people do both. There are probably a dozen variations.
