PIEROGI WITH PRUNES

PIEROGI WITH PRUNES

Pierogi is a traditional polish dish. Especially, serve for Christmas, but they can be made for any special event. There’s some work involved, but the taste is rewarding!

Pierogi are made of a thinly rolled dough with various fillings. Originally, in Poland the most popular filling are: meat, sauerkraut and mushrooms. A vegetarian variant of pierogi made from mushrooms and a cabbage is dished up during the Christmas Eve dinner, because the day is meatless.

For me, the most delicious pierogi are made with sweet filing. The true is that you can put whatever you want inside. You can use any seasonal fruits and use them as a filling, for instance blueberries – that’s my grandma’s number one, or strawberries – my mom made those for me when I was a child.  There is also popular white cottage cheese as a one of the filings.

Nowadays, people make a lot of experiments with different type of flours and filling, the creativity is endless.

I also like to do some experiments in the kitchen. Especially, like to make food healthy. The fact about regular pierogi is that they have many calories and are difficult for your digestion. This is because of the flour or heavy ingredients with a lot of fat and sugar. Not everyone can eat them in this version. That is why I made mine out of a whole grain flour and coffee! This makes them healthier since they have less calories.

I put dry prunes with cinnamon inside as a filling. They taste amazing! Believe me you have never eaten better Pierogi than those.

Ingredients:

15 dry prunes

2 cups of whole grain flour

½ cup of all purpose flour

1 teaspoon of coffee instant

1 cup of water

Directions:

  1. First, to make the filling: soak prunes in the hot water for 15 minutes. Next cut them into small pieces. Add some cinnamon and mix it. This will be the filling.
  2. Brew some coffee.
  3. Mix 2 kinds of flour with coffee and warm water.
  4. Make the dough. Knead until smooth. Using half of the dough at a time, roll out the dough on pastry board till you reach the thickness of about 2 -3 cm. Before rolling out some flour on the board because the dough can stick to the board.
  5. Next cut circles out of the pierogi dough by using a cup.
  6. Place the filling in the middle of every circle and fold it to form pierogi.
  7. Bring a large pot of lightly salted water to boil. Place pierogi and cook them around 3-5 minutes until they float to the top.
  8. Remove with a slotted spoon.