Did you know the Sith Lords followed a strictly vegan diet? [SWFans food thread]

[Charley]

Blah blah blah lets talk about food because we like to eat and like to cook in this place. Also acceptable: tasty pictures.

Okay I'll start.

So it's autumn in the northern hemisphere, and Brian picked my brain for a few things to try and cook / eat this time of year, and it got me thinking of ingredients and flavors that are really good around now.

Ladies and gentlemen, you should all be eating more butternut squash.

Now there's a billion ways you can do it. I like them well roasted with salt, pepper, browned butter, and sage in a casserole pan, and paired with a good piece of pork or chicken. You can also puree them and use them as a base for a cream soup, using the flavors mentioned or something more exotic. It goes well with warming spices like cinnamon, nutmeg, and clove, so you could do a very holiday-oriented dish or even something with garam masala and a northern indian accent.

Another really good method is to make gnocchi (little pan-fried potato dumplings) and make a sauce out of squash puree and a sweet-friendly cheese like gorgonzolla or ricotta. Sticking with a northern italian theme, you can also add well-minced squash to a chicken-based risotto and would easily win with that combination.

I'd also suggest using the squash as a base for either a savory tart, with sweet onions or leeks on a short crust with a cream or cheese filling, or cubed with chicken, potatoes, peas, etc as a chicken pot pie.

If that's not useful enough, you can also wash and salt-brine the seeds from a squash overnight and roast them, to either make a tasty snack or a topping for a soup or gnocchi or whatever.

So yeah. Butternut squash. Eat it.

[Captain Untouchable]

Butternut squash is an absolutely fantastic ingredient. It, along with sweet potatoes (what you yanks would call a "yam", I think?) are the two vegetables that provoke a "Why are people not using these more?!" reaction.

If you're looking for a totally lazy dish that seems like you put a ton of effort into it, chop some squash / sweet potato / (preferably red) onion / normal potato / (preferably yellow or orange) peppers / whatever the hell you have in the cupboard into chunks, toss it on a baking tray with some garlic cloves, some rosemary sprigs, and maybe a drizzle of balsamic vinegar if you've got it around, and roast the sucker. Try and stick to vegetables that are the same colour as autumn leaves, and it makes a bloody fantastic side that looks all homely and rustic for the fall season. Whenever you'd conceivably add "and chips" to a food item, toss some of this on there and it'll instantly look like you've worked way harder in the kitchen than you actually have.

[Taataani Meorrrei]

Oh yes, that's awesome too. We call that a "hash" in the states. It's usually a country dish and a way we clean out the fridge of leftovers, but ours usually is griddled or done up in cast iron to put a crust on.

That's good with chops or a cut of beef like a hanger steak that's not too big.

[Captain Untouchable]

To me, hash is more of a finely chopped or grated thing; it seems wrong to use that word for something so chunky. File that under "anglo-american culinary terms to be negotiated". ;)

If I roast it in the oven, I tend to pair it with chicken: if you can manage to keep your chicken breast moist and juicy enough, it's a fantastic "Fuck, it's cold!" meal. I've done it in a pan before as well... when I do that, I tend to chop up sausages into chunks and toss that in there: griddle that sucker up, whack it in a bowl, and it's practically a meal in it's own right.

[Taataani Meorrrei]

I've been putting a lot of British and Irish cooking into my autumn mix (as if you haven't noticed) because there's something in this food that makes dreary weather really okay, apparently.

Whenever I can hop over to the asian market for some offal and pig's blood, I'll really get into something fun. Need some black pudding in my life.

[Captain Untouchable]

When you live in a country where dreary weather is the norm, you tend to specialise in food that makes up for it. ;)

Also, god damn you Charley. You've got me craving crumble so damn hard right now. :(

[Taataani Meorrrei]

if I wasn't going to make another round of Apple Dodgers tomorrow I'd probably throw down on a crumble.

Also seriously you jerks infected us with your dreary cool and moist weather because its been all we've known since you left.

[Sansa]

I'm making butternut squash soup tonight. Finally got the other ingredients I needed - I roasted the squash a few days ago and it's been in a bowl in the fridge since then.

It has cream cheese in it. I couldn't resist. :)

[Ilias Nytrau]

I just made brownies because the man said that brownies would make his world. I feel like a lovely person right now.

Soon (read: within the next week or two) I will be making wild mushroom quiche, chile con carne, a random thrown-together casserole (because the last one was so yum, so simple, that I just have to do it again), french onion soup, and a rather meaty lasagna.

This is all because my schedule likes it when I plan and make things that will go well over several nights. Or mornings (in the case of the quiche).

[Pierce Tondry]

Thanks Chuck!

Just FYI to people, I have decided I want to get more exotic with my meals - I tend to fall back on tried and true regular favorites a little too regularly. If you have a recipe or a dish I should try, post it!

[Callista]

I thought this was actually a vegan thread, to which I was extremely excited! ...oh well :)

[Peter McCoy]

Just put my meat in the oven for Easter Sunday dinner. It's been in for half an hour already and has another 3 and a half to go. I've taken a few snaps and will continue to do so and post up the results.

[Charley]

You doing a roast or a prime rib? What to go with? I love a roast :)

Not really doing a big easter thing here, but I am putting together some homemade pasta with a sauce Christin whipped up, and having that with an amish salad.

Tonight will be ribeyes and stilton with rosemary new potatoes, because Christin doesn't want to wait for a shooter's sandwich and wants instant gratification.

[Taataani Meorrrei]

Who else is cooking today?

I've made biscuits, creme brulee, baguettes, onion & cheese tart, and I'm about to make bratwurst & roast potatoes, and then start curing bacon.

Whew. A long cooking day!

[Banner Laverick]

I have fresh yeast that I need to use up - eventually going to make bunny bread and possibly cinnamon rolls. I'll try to post pictures when I do finally make something. I need to bake more, but I don't want to have it in the house (because I will eat it).

I need an idea for something to do with a pound of ground pork though - any ideas?

[Charley]

Egg rolls, vareniki, house sausage, ravioli, all these things rule and use ground pork

[Loklorien s'Ilancy]

I bet a pork bolognese would be divine :yum

[Peter McCoy]

Made a very nice first attempt at Lamb in Black Pepper Sauce on Saturday. Never took any pics but it was really tasty. Next time I'll know more what I'm doing and so will be able to work quicker. As a result of slowness and lack of confidence, it was cooked a bit too much and while not dry, if I'd cooked for less time there'd be more sauce/juice in the wok when serving.

And I was surprised at how easy it was. This was the recipe I used.

Lamb leg (boned), though I used lamb steaks and cut them into strips.
Green peppers (my colour of preference), chopped
Garlic (I used Very Lazy Garlic, just a teaspoon of it)
1 teaspoon of salt
1/2 teaspoon of sugar
Spring onions, chopped
Coarse Black Pepper
Dark Soy Sauce
Oyster SauceMake sure the wok is nice and hot before adding plenty of oil to submerge the lamb. The oil shoud heat up quickly. Start by deep-frying the lamb for 2-3 minutes before adding the chopped peppers. Once the peppers are in, cook for around 20-30 seconds before removing the lamb and the peppers from the oil and place on a plate or in a bowl for a moment. Get rid of all but a tiny amount of oil from the wok, then add your chopped spring onions, garlic and black pepper. Cook for a few seconds until the awesome aroma hits you, then put the lamb and peppers back in and add a tablespoon or two of oyster sauce, depending on your own preference. Also, throw in a teaspoon of salt and a little bit of sugar. Cook for a few minutes and then add the dark soy sauce for colouring. After a few more minutes you're done.

The great thing about this dish is that its incredibly fast to cook. The lamb should be sliced quite thin so it'll cook through in no time at all. You're looking at around 10 minutes cooking time, though slightly longer is fine if you need to attend other things alongside it. Obviously the longer you cook it, the dryer it'll be and the less sauce you'll have.

I paired this up with boiled basmati rice and green beans that I first boiled, then fried in some garlic for a few minutes. The rice was first boiled for about 5 minutes after soaking in cold water to remove the starch. Then I boiled 2.5cm of water in a pan and put the rice in a colander over the pan and covered to steam the rice for 10 minutes. I was left with the most perfect light and fluffy rice I've ever managed - it was better than the crappy microwaveable Uncle Bens rise I'm used to. From now on this is the only way I'll do rise unless I'm making something like chicken fried rice. And you can add things to the boiling water to add flavour to the rice. Such as a cinnamon stick or a green teabag, or other whole spices like Kala Jeera

[Taataani Meorrrei]

It sounds like you've got the knack for wok cooking. Speed is the key, and the order in which your food goes in. That sounds lovely!

I've got a bit of lamb myself to work with actually. Thinking about a yogurt mint sauce to go with, and some roasted micro carrots. I need to start cooking more lamb, it seems like unexplored territory for me.

[Peter McCoy]

Roast beef dinner on the go here!

Never done it this way before - cooking everything except my frozen vegetables in the one dish.

Ingredients


Big bastard of a Beef Joint
8 carrots, roughly chopped but not peeled
4 large onions, roughly chopped but not peeled
2 large leeks, roughly chopped
Around 2-3 sticks of celery, roughly chopped
1 bulb of garlic, chopped
A nice bunch of Rosemary
Salt
Pepper
Olive Oil
Your choice of potatoes
Flour
Milk
Beef stock cubes - I'm using Oxo cubes, 3 of them

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First, chop the carrots, onions, celery and leeks. Don't peel them but just give them a good wash in a colander. Give your piece of beef a wash and then put it in a dish for a moment. Cover it with the olive oil and then season generously with salt and pepper, rubbing it all over the meat. Put the washed vegetables in your roasting dish, make sure it's a decent depth as there'll be a lot of food and liquid in here when you're finished.

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[Peter McCoy]

Once the vegetables are in, sprinkle some Rosemary over then place the meat on top, adding more Rosemary. Then mix your stock cubes with boiling water. I hardly ever measure liquids but enough water to cover the bottom of your roasting tin by a few centimetres should be fine. I used two stock cubes for this stage. Pour the stock over all the begetables and a bit over your meat to baste it. Whack it into the middle of a pre-heated oven of around 200 Celcius. Leave that now for around 30 minutes to an hour depending on how you like your meat. That's because for the last hour of cooking we're going to add the potatoes so let's prepare those next!

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After 30 minutes cooking time, I took the dish out of the oven to see how things are getting along, as well as to baste the meat. I actually added some more stock at this stage - a single stock cube mixed with boiling water. It's already looking good!

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[Peter McCoy]

Peel your potatoes and put them in a deep saucepan. Pre-boil your water in a kettle and pour into the pan, submerging the spuds. Turn the gas on and boil them with a lid or cover for about 10-15 minutes. Then drain the water and prepare a bowl with some olive oil in it. Take your roasting dish out of the oven and place it somewhere suitable like on top of your hob since it'll be really hot and may damage your worktop/cutting board. You may notice more or less liquid in the dish than before. It all depends on how much stock you put in to begin with. Since I used quite a lot it didn't look like much had been lost at all. But I prepared another stock cube with some boiled water and added it to the dish, pouring it all over the meat and vegetables.

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Next, spoon your potatoes into the bowl of Olive Oil and cover them well before placing them on top of the vegetables surrounding your piece of beef. Once all the potatoes are done like this - or you run out of room - put the roasting dish back into the oven for the final hour.

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[Peter McCoy]

While that's going on, I put my frozen cauliflower and broccoli into a pan ready, making sure my kettle had water in it. I also mixed around 1/4 cup of flour into around 2 mugs of milk and whisked it thoroughly. This will be added once the meat is fully cooked to your liking, but for now place it to one side.

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After the spuds have been in the over for half an hour, take the dish out and turn them over. Also take this opportunity to baste the meat some more, getting all that stock and lovely veggy juice to coat all the food together, spooning it all over - even over the spuds, though at this stage you probably can't help that since the roasting dish will be jam-packed with awesome food! Then whack it back in for another 30 minutes.

When that 30 minutes is almost up, boil the kettle ready for the cauliflower and broccoli (or whatever veg you prefer, or none at all if the contents of the roasting dish are enough!). Then as you place that pan on the hob to start it boiling, take the roasting dish out of the oven. Remove the beef and place it on a plate and cover it with tin-foil and also place a tea towel over it to keep it warm. Leave it like this for around 20 minutes, though up to an hour would be alright. You should leave your meat to cool for this time because as meat heats up the muscle fibres tense up and all the lovely juice retreats from the surface to the centre. By allowing the meat to relax and cool before you start to carve it, the muscle fibres have time to relax and that juice will return so that its evenly distributed throughout the hunk of beef you're just dying to sink your teeth into.

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While the beef catches its breath, we've got work to do. All of those vegetables that you lined the roasting dish with are now needed to make our gravy. Before you go any further you may want to cover your potatoes to keep them warm like the meat, or place them into a separate roasting dish if you want to crisp them up some more.

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GRAVY TIME!

Spoon all of the vegetables form the roasting dish into a colander in a bowl. Then get a good spoon and start to press down on the vegetables, squeezing them hard. Or if you have something more suitable that's fine - I used a potato masher!

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This crushes them and gets all the juices out of them - both their own as well as the stick they've absorbed while cooking. Do this for a good five minutes or until you're satisfied you've bled them dry as much as you can. Then pour them back into your now-empty roasting dish. Turn the hob on - two of its a big dish - and add a little water or wine. Then start to scrub the dish with something suitable - I used my large serving spoon - to remove all of the lovely caramelized bits of food stuck to the dish. Once done, pour in all of that juice you just collected. With the heat on, this will start to reduce and thicken and really release its flavour.

Sorry but I forgot to take photographs of the gravy-making stage!

Now it's time for that flour/milk concoction we prepared. But don't just pour it in. The shock of the cold mixing with the hot isn't good so we're going to temper the milk by adding a small amount of the hot stock/juice combo from the roasting dish into our bowl/jug of cold milk/flour. Do this a bit at a time, stirring well. This is tempering - gradually raising the temperature of the liquid so the difference isn't as great when we mix the two together in the roasting dish. I added about a cup of juice to my milk/flour in total before pouring it in slowly, making sure to stir with my whisk as I went. This will really thicken the gravy we're making!. You can even add more wine if you like. Once you're happy with it, pour it into your gravy boat or serving dish. By now, if you're boiling more vegetables or your spuds are back in the oven crispening up, they should be about done. At any rate, the beef should be ready for carving and you can serve your awesome Roast Beef Dinner!

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PS: Before you start mashing the vegetables up to steal their juices, you might want to put some to one side and serve them with the meal. The missus asked me to do this and she really enjoyed it. I tried some of the carrots and they were tasty as hell! That same lovely flavour was in the potatoes as well - I'll definitely be cooking my potatoes in with the main meat from now on!

[Peter McCoy]

So tonight I didn't know what we were going to have for dinner. The freezer is pretty bare at the moment since I'm planning to defrost it as soon as it's empty before we stock up again. A handful of frozen spuds, half a bag of frozen chips I'm not keen on, two tins of peeled New Potatoes and a bag of instant mash was the potato content on offer. For meat, other than frozen fish and some tinned hamburgers, the only things I was in the mood for was mince (Spag Bol sometime this week perhaps!) and the two frozen lamb steaks I'd had in there for a while. And as for vegetables, the only things I had were a tin of baked beans, nasty frozen sprouts (yuk!) and a tin of cut green beans.

So I decided to go for lamb, potatoes and green beans.

But instead of my initial plan to grill the lamb, roast the spuds and boil the beans, I had an epiphane!

I got the roasting dish out of the cupboard and tried my hand at the same thing I posted about last time - doing everything in the one pot. I wasn't sure how successful it would be given that the lamb and potatoes were frozen and the vegetables were of the canned variety.

First up - ingredients!

Extra Virgin olive Oil
Knorr stock cubes - Lamb
Green Giant Cut Green Beans in water (or any other green beans for that matter!)
Rosemary
Lamb Steaks
Potatoes (mine were frozen but fresh peeled ones wold be fine if boiled first)

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Preparation

Put the green beans in the roasting dish. I must say that the one tin I had on hand was just barely enough but I'd have liked to have used two if I'd had another. It looked a bit empty! Then place the the lamb steaks on top and surround them with the potatoes.

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Then, take a small bowl or something suitable and put two teaspoons of olive oil in, and crush two of the lamb stock cubes and add that to the mixture. Then stir and mash thoroughly until you end up with a thick paste.

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[Peter McCoy]

Preparation continued...

Once you're happy with the consistency of the oil/stock mixture, whack it over the lamb steaks! Then take your Rosemary and sprinkle as much as you like over both the lamb and the potatoes. I used about a teaspoons-worth.

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Then put the dish into the oven. I had mine on the middle shelf at 150.C

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Be ready to boil some water and mix it with a single lamb stock cube - around half a pint of water should be fine. You'll be adding this to the dish after 30 minutes cooking time - make sure you coat the potatoes as well as the lamb. The green beans are going to taste fantastic too as they'll also absorb the stock.

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At the 30-minute mark when you add the stock, raise the temperature of the oven to around 200.C and leave it for another 30 minutes or so. Once this time had passed, I turned the oven off and left the pot roasting for a final 10 minutes to ensure it was all cooked through since I was concerned that I'd worked with frozen food and wanted to be sure.

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Apologies for the awful quality of this final image - no idea why it's like that.

For such little effort (the paste was the only thing that took any time!) this was a fantastic meal. I could have eaten a plate full of the green beans by themselves, they were so full of flavour! One of two of the larger spuds were a bit drier than I like but overall I was very pleased with this little experiment. I remember seeing a Knorr advert on TV with Marco Pierre White and he was making a paste with the stock cube and olive oil then covering chicken with it before frying it. I always thought it looked like a cool thing to do and decided to give it a go. Very tasty!

Obviously, adjust cooking times and temperatures for not only your own oven but the cuts of meat and and the amount of food you are cooking. When you add the stock to the dish, be careful if you're pouring from a jug - my potatoes were right up to the rim of the roasting dish and to avoid a spillage I spooned the stock over the spuds and lamb to ensure an even coating.

So far I've tried two dishes with everything cooked in the one pot/dish and they've both been very very nice. I may have to invest in a Crock Pot!

[Kei'suke Zendu]

Crock pot supremacy. For real.


I always make roast/potatoes/veg in one roasting pan. That way the potatoes roast in the juice of the meat, yum. All of your posts look amazing though (although I can't eat lamb >_<).

I just got home from all you can eat sushi, which isn't really cooking. But it was delicious!

[Charley]

Peter you've done some wonderful things here :) I'm seriously impressed how far you've come culinarily!

It's been a while since I've talked cooking here, so here's one recent dabble:

http://i127.photobucket.com/albums/p156/LoungieMu/Mobile%20Uploads/2014-03/F9B7634A-3C9A-44B0-8621-A08926E89555_zps7nbdsibj.jpg (http://s127.photobucket.com/user/LoungieMu/media/Mobile%20Uploads/2014-03/F9B7634A-3C9A-44B0-8621-A08926E89555_zps7nbdsibj.jpg.html)

Jamaican-style chicken curry wrap. No scotch bonnets so I used eight habanero peppers instead. The tortillas were hand-rolled, like Robert Rodriguez taught me :)

[Morgan Evanar]

I should take pictures of the house's brewing setup.

[Draiya Naaianeya]

Yes please do

[Loklorien s'Ilancy]

Macaroni and Chori-Cheese



In true fashion, I had the notion to do this while at work and trying to figure out what I had in the kitchen that could make a quasi-decent dinner. Originally I was going to use ground beef, but Charley recommended that I use chorizo, and realizing that that was the better option, I agreed.

Ingredients:
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2 boxes of macaroni and cheese dinner
2 or 3 chorizo links
Half of an onion, roughly chopped
Nacho cheese sauce
2 to 3 tablespoons of butter
A Mexican spice blend. You can make your own or use taco seasoning packets. I prefer to make my own.


Start by putting a little bit of vegetable oil in a pan, and once it's warm, drop in your onions. Let them get a nice coating in the oil, then add in your spice blend and stir. This will probably be the longest process in the entire thing, since you want the onion to be soft. So you'll need to sweat them and occasionally pour in a little bit of water so that they soak it up.

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While your onions are cooking, turn on the heat for you macaroni water. Also, go ahead and grab a large bowl and drop in the butter and cheese packet.

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Then take your chorizo links and squeeze the meat out of the casing onto a plate. The best way I've found is to mush a small section and slide it out one end of the casing. You'll end up with a plate full of chorizo balls, and be sure to squeeze out any remaining bits of meat from the casing. It's not the most dignified of ways, but it's easiest for me to do it that way, plus I don't dirty up my scissors trying to cut the casing open. Less dishes to clean is better :D Once you've got your chorizo ready, check on your onions again to make sure they're softening up. Once they're soft, go ahead and add in the chorizo.

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Once your chorizo is cooked, turn the heat off and start tending to your macaroni. When it's done, pour the noodles into a strainer, and transfer them directly to your waiting bowl of butter and cheese powder. Mix everything up, and once it's evenly mixed, add the nacho cheese sauce. You can add however much you want. The cheese sauce I normally use is Rico's, but when the process pictures were taken I had some Newman's Own cheese dip. Any kind works. Mix it all up until it's delightfully cheesy.

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Now add in your chorizo and onions and mix it all up.

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If you're like Charley and myself, you want a teensy bit more zing, and nothing works better than a little salsa rojas. We make sure there's a bottle of Taptillo's in our fridge at all times.

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And now you can enjoy your delicious Macaroni and Chori-Cheese dinner :yum

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[Dasquian Belargic]

I suppose I should start photographing things that I cook since they're starting to look nice.

[Loklorien s'Ilancy]

Doo eeeet ^_^




Scallops and Fett "no disintegrations" uccine
Hah!



Last night's dinner surprise was conceived while grocery shopping. I didn't have time to make anything super fancy, but I still wanted something special, so I went with cheaply decent, hehe.

Ingredients:
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1 can of Cream of Shrimp soup
1 jar of classic alfredo sauce
1 cut onion
3 tablespoons of butter
1 pound of fettucine
Half a bowl of scallops
Small single of merlot

Pour the alfredo sauce into a medium sized sauce pot, then add in the cream of shrimp. It's not going to look very pretty, but that's ok. Turn on the burner to low heat, then stir until they're pretty well mixed together.

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Now brown 3 tablespoons of butter in your pan, then add in your onions. Coat them with the butter, and put in a little bit of salt and pepper before stirring them some more.

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Now it's time to add the wine. I used a little less than half the bottle. Now just let them soak up that merlot goodness. Feel free to put on the lid once more, but be sure to leave it a little cocked to let a little bit of steam escape.

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Also, don't forget to stir your alfredo shrimp sauce :D

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[Loklorien s'Ilancy]

Once the onions are nice and soft, we're going to add in our scallops. Make sure that your burner is on low, since we don't want to flash fry the little guys. Once your scallops are in and stirred up a bit, go ahead and put the lid back on. This time though, make sure it's on all the way. This way your pan acts as a sort of steamer that lets the delicious merlot onion aromas seep into them.

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When your scallops are done, pour the alfredo shrimp sauce into you pan and stir it with the onions and scallops.

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Just in case you are confused as to where your pasta will be going :D

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BAM!

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I had chosen a red blend which, while ended up not being a good pairing for this meal, was still really really tasty. Blueberry and blackberry with chocolate and coffee. Was a stellar wine.

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A fancy dinner waited on Charley when he got home :) The heavier merlot notes blended very well with the lighter scallops, and the whole dish came out wonderfully. It was subtle, but delicious :yum

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[Tamil Retief Alen]

Pierogi



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We ate kale before it was cool.

Now, I don't mean back in the early 2000s, when wheatgrass started to take hold in the metrosuburbs of the Cape. We're talking back in the 80s, when we were still miles off from talking and our housekeeper Beauty would skim the stuff out of the weekly stew and add it to our mealie pap. The wonderful thing about being a poor family in an isolated rural setting is that independence tends to breed an entirely different kind of wealth. We didn't wear shoes when school wasn't in session (bare feet were always preferred and, in the case that we were invited somewhere fancy, we did what everyone did and slapped some velskoene) because that kind of cash just wasn't available, but our family farm meant that we grew up with fresh, full fat dairy - none of that pasturized stuff, either; as Gramps used to say, 'fresh from the tit is the only way to go' - and reams of organic produce and whatever game meat our father and uncles caught. Gran was an incredible gardener, somehow managing to tame the thin and brittle soil and coax from it everything from strawberries to foals lettuce. Borecole Nero (or as the rest of the world knows it, cavolo nero, an Italian variety of kale) was one of the many candidates in what she called the 'goods' section. As in, 'why do we have to eat this kak, Gran?' 'Because it's goods.'

At our table, we most often ate it raw, massaged with a paste of olive oil and mashed, roasted scotch bonnets and then dressed with citrus juice and salt and pepper. During the winter it was a likely suspect in pots of soup or hidden in North African peanut curries. When we visited our uncle in Mozambique, Gran would wrap prawns and fish fillets in kale parcels and bake them in a pit oven on the beach. We didn't care abot how healthy it was. We just knew it (sometimes) tasted alright and that it was always plentiful.

Over the years I've grown to love kale and eaten it in an endless variety of regional preparations. One of my favourite incarnations is the grünkohl and pinkel dishes found in Northern Germany in the winter. Cooked long and slow, the kale takes on an almost creamed quality and melts in your mouth. After a wonderful holiday supper with friends in Bremin, I found myself gifted with a massive basket of leftovers to take home with me - among them, a big bowl of Oma Ulli's grünkohl with Cabanossi sausage. Just for the sake of variety, and with most of the work done for me by way of having a perfect filling ready and waiting to be used, I decided to whip up a batch of pierogi.

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Pierogi dough is ridiculously simple. Traditionally, it only has three ingredients: flour, salt, and warm water. Some add egg, or sour cream, but most of the older women I met as I traveled through the Ukraine, Poland, and Russia didn't bother, so I tend not to either. If it ain't broke, don't fix it, right? There's no measuring. Just sprinkle a pinch of salt in a bunch of flour, add a bit of water, and slowly work it together with your fingers until a soft dough forms. If it's too sticky, add some more flour. If it's too dry, add some more water. It's impossible to screw it up.

Once you've got a pliable dough, roll it out thin and use a drinking glass to cut out circles. Spoon a bit of filling (and here you can be as creative as you like; don't feel constrained to the traditional potato-and-cheese variety) in the middle, fold one end over to the other, and pinch it tightly shut. A little bit of water can help to close up the seam and glue it together, though it's not always necessary. This is slow work, perfect for cold days when it's best to stay inside with quiet, busy work.

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Once your pierogi are made - and you should make a bunch, because they freeze fantastically - drop a few into a pot of boiling, salted water. When they're cooked, they'll float to the top, and then you can toss them in a fry pan of hot butter. If you're better prepared than I am and have bacon and onions in, add those to the pan, too, and serve the crisped up pierogi with a dollop of sour cream.

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[Charley]

Oh man thank you for this beautiful pierogi write-up. I've been wanting to make these for a while and they're just so daunting from what I've seen. I'll get over that fear soon and give this a try!