Masterchef.pl

Under Sarah's guidance I am rapidly excelling at my goal of becoming a world class chef while in Poland.  I hardly cooked at home, but now I am away it's become one of my favourite things to do.  Having a tiny freezer and an oven that chooses its own temperature helps as I really can't just throw in some frozen fish fingers or something, so instead I cook.  I'm now happy enough with my soups and the various other things I make on a regular basis, but I'd stayed well away from tackling traditional Polish dishes... until now!

Last week me and Sarah decided we would have a go at making golabki, meat and rice wrapped in cabbage leaves.  It sounds simple enough, and I guess it was, you first need to boil the cabbage and strip away the leaves one by one.  Then mix raw meat with cooked rice and add some grated dried mushrooms and wrap it all up in the leaves, making little parcels.  It was quite time consuming but it was fun and we made loads, kept 3 of us eating for days after.  100% success rate thus far; 1 out of 1!

We knew attempting pierogi would be a greater challenge but we thought we'd give it a try.  It was a bit fussy, very time consuming but it was really good fun and turned out to be very yummy.  Now I consider myself to be quite the expert, here's how it's done.... :-)

First you make the dough...

...roll it out (very thinly)...

...cut out the dough and add filling :)...

...seal them (well)....

...until you have like so.

We were already very proud of ourselves at this point, they look like real pierogi!  To be honest we may have been slightly over excited.  But anyway!...

They need boiling for 10-12 minutes

until hurray!

Unfortunately, if you don't seal them properly, this happens....

that hurts :-(

On our first attempt we only managed to save 9 out of 16 pierogi, but second time round they all survived!  And I may be biased but I have to say they were some of the best pierogi I've had, go team!

So, what to cook next?