Polish Pierogi

#easyfoodcreations #PolishChristmas #pierogi

Pierogi, one of the most famous Polish dishes. They can be stuffed with vegetables, meat, fish, fruits, or any combination of these. Polish pierogi dough is quite a bit different than Ukrainian dough, it resembles more Chinese dumplings dough. 

Traditional Polish Christmas pierogi are stuffed with either cabbage and mushrooms, or just mushrooms. This year I made three stuffings - cabbage and mushroom, salmon dill, and spinach and feta.

Ingredients:

Dough:

All purpose flour

Hot water

proportions are 2:1 (flour to water)

Filling 1:

0.5kg  of sauerkraut
650 g of fresh mushrooms
100 g dried mushrooms
Cook all finally chopped ingredients for about 4 hours.

1. Make the dough in the food processor. It goes really fast as you can use boiling water; doing the same by hand takes more time as your water is much colder. The dough is fairly hard to work with by hand; even rolling it I find to be quite a workout.

2. Divide the dough into manageable sections, keeping the remaining dough covered so it does not dry out. Roll the dough into thin sheet (about 2 mm), then cut into round shapes with a cookie cutter. You an use pierogi making gadgets that would take the whole sheet at once.
3. Stuff each round sheet with about 2/3 teaspoon of filling.
4. Boil a large pot of water. Cook pierogi in a boiling water for about 5 minutes until start floating on top.
5. In Poland, generally we do not fry them. We serve them with a little bit of fried onion with butter or just butter or olive oil.
6. Enjoy!

Planning ahead: mushroom sauce with spinach

#easyfoodcreations #healthyeating

I started planning meals for the first two weeks of January as my work schedule is completely crazy then and I know that finding even 20 min to prepare a meal is a luxury that I might not be able to afford on many days. During these days I want to make sure we have something healthy on hand, ready in a few minutes, so we do not need to resort to packaged food that we try to avoid as much as possible.

I made a batch of mushroom sauce with spinach, which can be served with potatoes, kasha, barley, pasta, or kopytka, to add some variety.

Ingredients:

680g fresh mushrooms

100g fresh spinach, you add more or less

1 onion, chopped finely

2-4 garlic cloves

4 tbsp butter

2 tbsp dried thyme

1 tbsp dried majoram

3-4 tbsp whipping cream (you can use soft goat cheese instead)

1-2 tbsp lemon juice

Salt, pepper

1. Melt the butter and cook onion and garlic on a low heat for about 5-7 minutes.

2. Add finely chopped mushrooms and spinach, cook for another 15 minutes, stirring occasionally. 

3. Add remaining ingredients, lower the heat to 1.8 and cook for another 40 minutes.

4. Enjoy!

Breakfast Dessert: Rice Apple Cake

#easyfoodcreations #healthyeating #leftovers

This recipe is inspired by one of my childhood favourite dishes and probably most Polish kids  favourite dish - rice baked with cinnamon apples.  I put my own spin on it and it ended up being a great success. 

Typically we eat it as a dessert or a last evening meal; I like serving it for breakfast.

Ingredients:

1.5 c leftover rice (it is an estimated quantity), you can use whatever you have left

0.5 c milk

4 tbsp butter

2 ripe bananas

3 apples

1 tsp cinnamon

0.5 tsp vanilla powder

2 tbsp ground flax 

Grated nutmeg

1. Preheat oven to 180c

2. Grate apples on a large eye grater

3. Mix flax with 2 tbsp of water, let it sit for a couple of minutes (you can substitute with 1-2 eggs)

4. Melt half of the butter

5. Mix all ingredients together

6. Spread butter in the baking form 

7. Put mixture in the baking form, level it by pressing firmly

8. On top place few slices of butter

9. Place in the oven for 45-50 minutes

10. Serve warm or at room temperature

11. Typically we serve it with fruits, jams, yoghurt, cream, or whipping cream

Mushroom Miso Soup

#easyfoodcreations #healthyeating #soup

I had some leftover chopped carrot, celery, and a mushroom. It turned out they are a perfect match with a plan miso soup.

Serves: 4

Ingredients:
1L of veggie or chicken stock
4T miso (I used genmai miso)
50g chopped mushrooms (I used portabella)
10g dried wild mushrooms
50g dried wakame, reconstructed
150g tofu (silken, soft or medium would be best)
1 carrot
1 stalk celery

1. Soak dried mushroom for 10 minutes, then chop into smaller pieces.
2. Julien carrots an celery stalk and cut into 1inch pieces.
3. Chop fresh mushrooms into smaller pieces.
3. Bring stock to boil and add julienned vegetables and mushrooms. Cook on a gas mark 3.5 for about 10 minutes.
4. Take a little bit of hot stock and mix it with miso. Add mixture to the stock.
5. Take tofu out of the packaging, dry it lightly with a paper towel and cut into small cubes (1cm x 1cm).
6. Cut reconstructed wakame into smaller pieces
7. Once soup starts boiling add tofu and wakame pieces. Lower heat to gas mark 2.4 and cook for another 5 minutes.
8. Enjoy!

Cabbage Mishmash (Bigos)

#easyfoodcreations #healthyeating #leftoversstation

This is another recipe for leftovers - today we are using leftovers meats, in my case Italian sausage, mushrooms and sauerkraut. This recipe  draws from my Polish roots where cabbage is frequently consumed.

Ingredients:
1.5c Fresh cabbage, grated
1.5c Sauerkraut
1t caraway seeds (you can use powder if you prefer)
2 Portobello mushrooms, chopped
leftover sausage, and any other meats, chopped
3T butter


1. Add a little bit of butter and cook caraway seeds until they start popping, do not let them burn. If you are using powder caraway add it in step 2.
2. Add cabbage, sauerkraut, and butter and cook on a medium low heat for about 15-20 minutes.
3. Add meats and mushrooms and cook for another 20 minutes.
4. Enjoy!

The best part is that you cannot overcook it, the longer you cook it the better it is. It tastes great the following day after being reheated. There is no need to add any other spices as your meats will already have some.

Nutritious Broccoli: Broccoli Tart

Here is another recipe I created with my broccoli supply obtained at $1 this week.

#easyfoodcreations #healthyeating #broccoli

Tart:
1c unbleached white flour
0.5t salt
25g butter, softened
0.25c cold water

1. Mix all the ingredients and work them with you hand until smooth. It will take about 15 minutes.
2. Roll the dough with a rolling pin until fairly thin. If you worked the dough really well you will not need to add extra, else you may need to add some to help you roll.
3. Put the dough on the tart pan, press it to the bottom and then roll it will the rolling pin so any access dough cuts off.
4. Mark it with the fork, and place in the freezer for 10-20 min.

Tart toppings:
1c broccoli
1c of other veggies I used leftovers from making pizza - yellow pepper, spinach leaves, tomatoes. Also I had a little bit of tomato sauce left so I used it.
0.5 medium onion, chopped
1 egg
3/4c milk
1T cheese, grated

5. Preheat the oven to 177c.
6. Cook tomato sauce with onion for about 5 minutes.
7. Place cooled tart crust in the oven for 7 minutes.
8. Spread the tomato sauce, then add mixed remaining toppings other than milk and egg.
9. Beat an egg with milk until fluffy. Pour over the toppings. Sprinkle with cheese.
10. Bake for 40-50 minutes.
11. Enjoy!

Leftover chilli with a face lift

We had chilli for a couple of days, I don't think we would be able to handle another day of the same ... Too booting for us! Today we only had some left, which was not enough to feed even one of us. Usually that would most likely end up in the bin as it was not enough for anyone to bother with reheating it (we don't have a microwave) and no one wanting to eat chilli once again.

Since I starting paying more attention to what we throw away I noticed that number one reason is leftovers in smaller quantities. Since we cook on daily basis we do not tend to throw away as much in unused spoiled produce - we do inventory eve two days what has to be used within next 4 days - it seems to be working well.

I am going to share how the boring chilli received a facelift. For this recipe you can use any other one-pot dish that you are left with.

#easyfoodcreations #healthyeating #leftoversstation

Preparation: 5 minutes

Baking: 25 min

Serves 3

Ingredients:

6 slices of bread, for this recipe white bread works best as it has higher gluten content and will hold together better. I used Ezekiel and it was quite challenging to work with. 

Leftovers chilli or any other one-pot dish

2T cheese, grated

Some water

1. Preheat your oven to 177c. In a meantime prepare you muffin form by spreading a little bit of butter.

2. Cut out bread crust from your bread slices. Roll bread slices flat with a rolling pin. If you bread is not very fresh or if it not a white bread you will need to use some water.

3. Put rolled bread in the muffin forms. Make sure you don't have any major holes. Sprinkle a little bit of cheese if you have any holes. Place in the oven for 5-7 minutes.

4. Take muffin form out of the oven. Fill forms out with your leftovers and sprinkle some cheese on top. Put in the oven for another 15-20 minutes.

5. In a meantime prepare veggies to go with the dish. I prepared blanched green beans and some chopped tomatos with whole olives.

6. Enjoy!