Fiddly food

If you’d asked me before hand, I think I’d confidently have said that I’d spend all of Lockdown cooking immensely complicated things. In reality, it’s taken me until week … umm … whichever week this is, and week 4 of furlough, for the muse to strike.

But boy-oh-boy is it here now.

Readers, I have been making pierogi (stuffed Polish dumplings, the food of my people). The arrival of so many Poles, and their marvelous polskie sklepy (Polish shops), in the UK since 2004 has meant that frozen pierogi are available to buy as a convenience food. Well, they were. My regular polski skelp is 12 miles’ walk away (or 10 minutes on a plague-tube, I mean train), and while I love me some pierogi and dried mushrooms and salted cucumbers and buckwheat black pudding … it doesn’t seem wise to trek to the next city for them.

However, my whole outlook on the faffiness of home-made pierogi has been changed by this marvellous video by Dorota, who makes marvellous videos about Polish cooking. There are English subtitles, for this key and foundational text in the pierogi world. She has turned the process from ‘frightful and messy’ to ‘clean and simple’. I love her.

So, in the last few days, I have made blueberry-filled desert dumplings, and ham-n-mushroom (non-traditional filling) main course versions.

A jam jar makes a great rolling pin for these little lumps of dough.

Sealed using the 'pinch and ruffle' method (number 3 in Dorota's list).

It’s still a slow process: making a filling, letting it chill, making the dough, forming and sealing the parcels, boiling them, draining them, frying them… But a feasible one, now the dough doesn’t leave a trail of flour and stickiness across every kitchen surface.

Boiled and unappealing looking.

All Polish food includes a 'fry in butter' stage. Do not be like me. Use your best non-stick pan.

Not satisfied with  one lots of multi-stage starchy food, I also launched on the potato croquettes, too. Now, these aren’t the delightful kroketten of Belgian holidays, but much more akin to the sort from the potatoes freezer aisle. Much more potato, and rather less cheesey sauce.

But still: the sort of thing you dip in egg and breadcrumbs, and plenty time consuming and rather satisfying. These were flavoured with mustard and cheese. The ham from the pierogi would have worked rather well, too, but I’d already committed it elsewhere when I realised.

So, who else has been getting convoluted in the kitchen? We could make it a challenge theme?