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Friday Food and Drink Post: Weirdest Holiday Foods Edition
Well. Lugubrious Joe and Gurning Anthony notwithstanding, 2021 proceeds apace, and we’re on the cusp of closing out its first quarter.** Yikes.
But before we do, along will come St. Patrick’s Day, not a big seller in the land of my birth, but huge in the two areas I’ve lived in, in my adopted country–Boston and Pittsburgh.
It’s the holiday that always “springs” (see what I did there?) to mind when I think of revolting unusual celebratory foodstuffs. Green beer. Virulent green bagels. Green donuts. Artificially colored anything that can pass mustard (ouch, again) with enough FD&C Green No. 3 added to give it that special relevance on the day. Ice cream. Mashed potatoes (a bit of a twofer, there, at least if you’re Irish). Anything.
I usually stay home and enjoy my not-assistedly-verdant corned beef, carrots, and cabbage in peace.
Cry ‘God for Harry, England and St. Oprah!’ Umm….No.
Hoots mon and och aye! Whoops.
Cymru am byth! Blast. That’s not right either.
Éire go Brách! Phew. I think I’ve got it. Happy St. Paddy’s Day!
And before anyone else says it, and for as long as I can get away with it, Póg Mo Thóin!
A little more reflection sends me back to the very early 1980s, when Mr. She and I were still living in Pittsburgh, and one cold and rainy Easter Sunday afternoon that I was desperate to find something to do with the kids.
I can’t remember what else was on the menu for dinner, but Jenny and I decided to make pierogies to go with it. And as we kneaded the dough, and prepared the fillings, we decided to give the finished product a special little fillip to make it fit the day. Bring out the red, green, blue, and yellow food color!
At the end of our experiment, with a little care and discreet use of the dye, we had four little wads of dough in four different colors: pink, light green, pale blue, and delicate yellow.
Easter Pierogies. I wish I had a photo.
Here’s the pierogi recipe I always use. It’s on page 253 of Polish Cookery (I have an earlier edition than this one), by Marja Ochorowicz-Monatowa. She sounds as if she gets her Polish privilege authentically all round, so no pushback from the FJWs (Food Justice Warriors) on the site, please.
PIROGEN OR DOUGH POCKETS (Pierogi)
Basic Dough:
2 cups flour
2 small, or 1 large egg
Few spoonfuls lukewarm waterMix flour, eggs, and water and work dough until firm. [Pro tip: I stick it in the Kitchenaid with the dough hook and let it rip for about five minutes, until it’s firm and elastic].
Divide in two parts, and roll each piece into a thin sheet on a floured board. Arrange stuffing by the spoonful along one edge of a piece of dough, 2-3 inches from the edge. Fold over and cut out in the shape of semi-circles with a pastry cutter or glass. [Pro tip: No matter what recipe you use for pierogies, cutting them out this way (I use a glass) eliminates the need for a second round of “sealing” the edges of the dough, and almost completely eliminates any separation or leakage when they’re put in boiling water to simmer. Highly recommended. Also, don’t overfill the little pockets.]
Repeat until dough and filling have been used up. If necessary, scoop up, re-roll leftover dough and repeat. [If I have to do this, I give it about a ten minute resting period before rolling it out again.]
Cook in boiling [I use slow simmering] water like noodles, covered so they will steam. When they rise to the top, they are done. Serve with melted butter.
Unaccountably, she leaves out any mention of the food coloring.
There are countless fillings you can put in your pierogies, and she lists several. My family’s favorites are mashed potato with finely chopped and gently sautéed onions; ricotta cheese (substitutes for old-fashioned pot cheese) with egg and onions); and sauerkraut. They can also be filled with mushrooms, or even fruit for a sweet dessert.
After they’ve simmered and cooked, we fry them in butter, with onions. The ones that are left over (whatever filling is in them), we sprinkle with sugar and cinnamon.
What weird holiday foods have you made or enjoyed, either deliberately, accidentally, out of desperation, or just because? Please share.
**Pretty soon, I’ll begin to regret taking the Christmas tree down. I know I will. I always do.
Published in General
My mother would make fried calf brains for Sunday breakfast. She would put out a plate of what looked like gray scrambled eggs and tell me they were a delicacy. She claimed these were better than what her mother made because she did not add eggs to ‘stretch’ them (as my grandmother must have for her 11 children). Content with my bowl of Frosted Flakes, I never touched them.
Very wise. FTR, the description of them as “gray scrambled eggs” is exactly right. I must confess to have eaten “brains on toast” (the Brits will put ANYTHING on toast) many times in my youth. I went off the whole idea, though, with the “mad cow disease” problem, once it was proven that the human variant, Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease, could pass to people from the practice.
I didn’t get any pączki at all before Lent. I blame Biden.
Brit’s eat weird sh–. Brains, kidneys, livers, blood, stomachs, … I know, I know. I’m a spoiled American eating pure meat and nothing but meat — good meat. My mom would cook liver and onions once in a while, but my dad wouldn’t eat it, so neither would us kids.
My mother was a terrible cook, but her rendition of liver and onions (with bacon!) was divine.
Grrr.
Might as well. Although this has got me working on a tongue-twister: “How many paczki snacks could Psaki pack, if Psaki could pack paczki snacks…etc.”
We’ve always relied on old Ukrainian church ladies for our pierogis. But they’re getting harder to come by. Old Ukrainian church ladies that is, at least ones with the skill and patience, and thus good pierogis. Anything we’ve ever found in a store is a pale imitation. I’ll have to save this and give it a try. Thank you @She.
That is how I remember it, and the trick was to not over cook the liver. Once in a blue moon I will make a small serving of cow liver, onions, and bacon. Not too keen on the ones from poultry.
She will circle back to you on that….
Yes, the church ladies are the best. Also for galumpki (stuffed cabbage) and haluski (cabbage and noodles). As with you, they’re few and far between these days; however, there’s a Greek Orthodox church not too far down the road, and when it has its festival, the food is also out of this world, although, of course, different in nature.
Mrs Tex is half Polish and makes a mean assortment of pierogi when motivated.
Where is this church? And when is this festival? We could make plans to be in town that weekend.
The church is in Canonsburg, PA (hometown of Perry Como, Bobby Vinton, and Marty Schottenheimer, who–unless I misspeak myself–coached the Kansas City Chiefs for several years). I’m not sure what the plan is for the festival this year, but they’re currently doing a nice line with online ordering on irregular Thursdays.
It’s a beautiful, and very active, church.
The feta fries look wonderful. They have something called Festival Cooking on their calendar at least one day every week from the beginning of March to the 3rd week in April. The bulletin says it’s grape leaves the morning of the 16th and 17th, but I’m not finding any other information.
I never had to cook any holiday food. When I had a family, I always brought green salad to holiday meals (I have been excommunicated from my very Leftist family). I do make a pretty good green salad, with spinach, butter lettuce, cucumber, green pepper, Roma tomato, carrots, green onions, and sometimes topped with walnuts. We have gotten hooked on Olive Garden salad dressing, which you can buy at Costco or your local grocery store now.
Paczki: plentiful Polish paschal pastry properly pronounced poonchkey. Please partake perambulating past perennials planted ‘pon Pulaski
Na Zdrowie!
Pierogies go with everything, right?!
They do!