Beet Pierogies and Sweet Potato Pierogies...and where I went wrong

Well, the true history of the pierogi is unclear - according to sources, no one knows where it truly originated. It is clear that is came from Eastern Europe...and it is typically associated with Poland. Well, then, it is a good thing I am not Polish or I would have brought my ancestors to shame with the mess I made in my house the other day trying to make pierogies. The pierogi does have roots in Russia and Romania though, which is the majority of my ancestry. Sigh.

Anyway, so my adventure started with beets. My husband and I have been trying new foods from the farmer's markets one by one. We see all these things on Food Network pop up all the time, so we finally got curious. The Swiss chard didn't do it for me, but I loved the jicama. So last week I put a post on my personal facebook page asking if anyone out there liked beets, and the overwhelming answer was YES! In all the responses, I only had one "no," so I figured I would give it a shot and promptly looked up several beet recipes.

My husband and I settled on this recipe for beet pierogies. It seemed easy enough, and I like pierogies a lot, so I figured it would be a good way to try out this new vegetable.

So...I spent my Monday morning working on this project. OH...MY...GOD. I am NEVER making my own pierogie dough again. That was the hardest part!! The dough was so sticky and hard to work with, and as a result, when I boiled my pierogies, half the filling fell out of some of them and I had to chuck them. SO FRUSTRATING. Seriously. I spent like, 2 hours making these (well, part of that was making sweet potato pierogies too, but still), it was a horrible, horrible mess.

Next time I attempt pierogies (if I do) I am just buying ready made dough and saving myself the hassle.

Cutting and peeling the beets wasn't so bad. I managed to keep my all white kitchen, well, white. My hands turned pink though! And I may have ruined a relatively newer kitchen towel that we were given for my bridal shower, but maybe those stains will come out! The filling was also really easy to make. It was just that damn dough.

My sweet potato piergoies were also an easy filling to make. So all in all, I managed to get 11 piergoies out of both the beets and sweet potato batch. That was enough for a dinner for my husband and I with a side. So at least that worked out.

My husband liked the sweet potato ones more, and so did I. We're not quite sure of the beet taste yet...it wasn't gross, but we felt it was missing something. Maybe we needed to sweeten it up a little more, or it needed some kind of spice. It just seemed bland (though eating it with sour cream helped immensely!) If we can't find a way to jazz up beets, well, that one resounding NO on my facebook post will win because beets won't be able to find a place in my house. (So, my dear Chicago friend, I guess the Arabian Onyx's must stick together if I try it again and don't really like it!)

So here are the recipes used in my 2 hour (messy) adventure this past Monday.

Beet Pierogies (from a recipe on AllRecipes.com)
**Also included the dough recipe I used

Ingredients:

1 1/2 cups peeled, chopped beets
1/4 cup finely chopped red onion
2 teaspoons margarine

1 egg
1/2 cup water
2 cups all-purpose flour

Directions:

Place the beets and onion into a saucepan over medium heat; add about 1/2 cup of water, bring to a boil, and reduce heat to low.

Simmer until the beets are tender, about 15 minutes. Drain the water from the vegetables, and place into the work bowl of a food processor.

Add the margarine, start the machine, and pulse several times to finely chop the beets.

Whisk together the egg and water until thoroughly mixed, then mix in the flour. Turn the dough out onto a floured surface, and knead until smooth and elastic, 5 to 8 minutes.

Divide the dough in half, and form each half into a ball. Roll out a ball until it's 1/8 inch thick or less. Using a cup or cookie cutter, cut out dough circles. Repeat with remaining dough. (I actually then put the balls of dough int he fridge to try and get them to be easier to work with. Yeah, didn't work.)

To fill, place a dough circle into the palm of your hand, and stretch the dough out slightly. Place about 1 tablespoon of the beet filling in the center of the dough, and fold the dough over the filling.

Pinch the edges of the dough together to seal completely, and use your index finger to make small crimped indentations all round the sealed edges. Dust the completed pierogi with flour.

Fill a large pot with water, and bring to a boil. Drop the pierogies into the water, 1 or 2 at a time, and stir to prevent them from sticking. Reduce heat to a gentle boil, and cook until the pierogies float to the top, about 5 to 8 minutes. Drain and serve.


Sweet Potato Piergoies (This is my own recipe!!)

Ingredients:

1 medium sweet potato
paprika
onion powder
brown sugar
1 TBS margarine
cinnamon

(sorry, no exact measurements, I made it up!)

Directions:

Bake sweet potato in oven for 45 minutes or until tender, at 400 degrees F. Make sure to poke some holes or make slits in the skin.

Once tender, take it out of the oven and let cool for a few minutes, then peel the skin off and mash the potato in a bowl. Add in the margarine and let it melt into the sweet potato. Season with paprika, brown sugar and a dash of cinnamon to taste. if you want a more bold taste, throw some black pepper in there!

Mix completely into the sweet potato mash and then follow the directions for stuffing and boiling the piergoies from the beet recipe.


All I can say is make sure the pierogies are sealed and not thin enough to break as you are boiling them! Geez, what a mess.

And, if you want to see how many dishes I used, well, this is a small representation of what I had to wash from my sink. YIKES.


Try this at your own risk, or give me advice on how to do it better. Though, next time, I am probably just buying dough!

Easy One Dish Beef Stroganoff

I had bought a container of plain yogurt a few weeks back when I thought I needed it for a recipe. It turned out I didn't need it IN the recipe - it was for an optional dip that went along with the recipe. Oops - I didn't read that closely enough.

Since my husband and I are trying not to buy food we won't eat (we've had a problem with food wasting in the past), I knew I had to find a recipe to use the yogurt in before the expiration date.

Sure, there were tons of dip recipes available, but I wanted to use it in a main dish, and I came across this recipe right here. It fit the bill and all we needed was some steak because I actually had everything else in the house.

The only modification I made was using a beef bouillon cube instead of a can of beef broth since we didn't have that in the house and I didn't need it since I had the cubes. I also used sirloin steak instead of the beef top round steaks. (We honestly just bought whatever was on sale!)

This was a very, very easy recipe to prepare and I honestly think it took me about a half hour start to finish, so it is possible to make this after a day at work.

It turned out really well and both my husband and I enjoyed it immensely. We recommend it!

Ingredients:

3/4 pound boneless sirloin steak, 3/4 inches thick
1 (10.75 ounce) can Campbell's® Healthy Request® Condensed Cream of Mushroom Soup
1 (14 ounce) can Swanson® Beef Broth (or 2 beef bouillon cubes)
1/2 cup water
1 medium onion, sliced
3 cups uncooked medium egg noodles
1/2 cup plain yogurt
Chopped fresh parsley (or dried parsley)

Directions:

Slice beef into very thin strips.

Cook beef in nonstick skillet until browned, stirring often. Remove beef.

Add soup, broth, water and onion. Heat to a boil.

Stir in noodles. Cook over low heat 10 minutes or until noodles are done, stirring often.

Stir in yogurt. Return beef to skillet and heat through. Garnish with parsley.

So easy - and with one dish too! Enjoy!

Experimenting with Jicama (Hic-a-ma) 2 Ways!

So...what IS jicama (hic-a-ma)? I had never even heard of it until maybe last year while watching Chopped on the Food Network. Since I first heard of it, I see it everywhere - on menu's, on the Food Network, in a few specialty grocery stores...so finally curiosity got the better of me and we bought one to try at a farmer's market. So...what IS it?

Jicama is, and I quote this directly from wisegeek.com, "a crispy, sweet, edible root that resembles a turnip in physical appearance, although the plants are not related. Jicama has been cultivated in South America for centuries, and the vegetable is quite popular in Mexican cuisine. Jicama has a unique flavor that lends itself well to salads, salsas, and vegetable platters. The roots can sometimes grow to be quite large, although when they exceed the size of two fists, they begin to convert the sugars that give jicama its sweet flavor into starches, making the root somewhat woody to the taste. Jicama is actually a legume, and it grows on vines that may reach 20 feet (six meters) in length. Jicama will keep under refrigeration for up to two weeks. Jicama is excellent raw and is sometimes eaten plain. It can also be used as a substitute for water chestnut in Chinese dishes, in which case it should be thrown in right before serving. Jicama also appears in stews, juiced drinks, stuffings, and a variety of other recipes. In addition to having a unique flavor and texture, jicama takes flavor well, making it well suited to culinary experimentation. Jicama is a great source of vitamin c and is fat free—making it a superb on-the-go snack."

Whew! While I was preparing it two different ways, I took a bite. It actually is pretty good raw - it is sweet and tastes kind of like a starchy apple crossed with a raw sugar snap pea. The one thing I had a LOT of trouble with was peeling it. My little peeler didn't cut it...I had to cut it in half and peel it in sections. It took a LOT of work. Since we first saw this on Chopped, and chefs only have 20-30 minutes to prepare their entire dish, I have no idea how they do the jicama so fast. If anyone has an easy way to get this peeled, please, LET ME KNOW!! :-)

So the first recipe I tried, I found on Allrecipes.com. At first I didn't realize this wasn't a cooked recipe, I just wanted to find a recipe using a leftover lime I had in the house and the fact that this also used jicama worked. So when I started to prepare these jicama sticks, I decided to half the recipe for starters, and use the other half of the jicama in a puree. I then took half of the jicama sticks and left them raw, as indicated in the recipe, and baked the other half, to see what "jicama fries" would be like.

The second recipe I tried, a puree recipe, I found and it was for a jicama and horseradish puree. Since we don't own horseradish, nor do I like it, I made some quick substitutions and honestly, I think my puree turned out pretty darn good.

So, here is what I did with my jicama (which is the size of like, a swollen softball).

"Mexican Jicama Snack" from caztoindy on AllRecipes.com


Ingredients:

1 large jicama
2 lime, juiced
1 tablespoon cayenne pepper (or paprika)Directions:

Peel jicama and cut into French fry-sized sticks.


Combine with lime juice and cayenne pepper in a medium bowl and toss to coat.

Serve as finger food.

** Here is where I also took half my batch and baked it.


"Jicama, Onion, Blue Cheese & Ranch Puree" - by ME! Inspired by this recipe here.


Ingredients:

1/2 of a jicama, (about 2-3 cups) peeled and diced
2 ounces of margarine
1/2 tsp blue cheese dressing
1 and 1/2 TBS ranch dressing
1 tsp salt
1 and 1/2 tsp black pepper
1 and 1/2 tsp paprika
1/4 large onion, diced


Directions:

Peel and dice jicama.


Melt margarine in a pan - add the jicama and cook for 5 minutes. Add onions and cook for 2 more minutes.

Add blue cheese and ranch dressings, paprika, salt and black pepper. Cook for a few minutes until aromas become strong and jicama is slightly tender.

Using a food processor, puree jicama mixture. Reheat in pan and serve hot.


The results!

So both recipes were SUPER easy, and once the jicama was peeled, set up time was very quick.

The sticks - I liked the baked version better than the fresh version. Biting into the fresh version left a bold taste in my mouth and I am not huge on fresh lime. Baking the sticks subdued the taste a little, which I preferred, but the jicama retained its juicy crunch, which was nice.

The puree was by far my preferred dish with the jicama. It didn't end up tasting overly blue cheesy or ranchy, it has an unusual taste, but it is delicious. I think it has more of an "onion and potato taste," almost like I am eating an onion and potato perogie. You can honestly use any creamy base that you want - since the original recipe called for horseradish cream, and I didn't have any, I just used a bold tasting cream we had in the house. As the description of the jicama said - it lends itself nicely to many flavors which makes it good for experimenting.

So, we have a success with a new food. After the Swiss chard, I was hesitant, but this turned out well, and I have a feeling this will become a new staple here in this household.

Fun with Turkey Sliders

For Father's Day (which we hosted Saturday), my husband whipped up a batch of ground turkey sliders to serve with his famous (so far secret until we enter it into a contest) topping. Everyone enjoyed the topping so much, they ate it alone without the turkey sliders!! So we ended up with a bunch of turkey sliders leftover, and we got creative last night in how we ate them.

We also had a batch of my Asian Grilled Eggplant on hand, so I cut up a slice of that and laid it in between two turkey sliders. I then topped off my burger with a balsamic vinegar and honey reduction sauce. MMM! The combination of flavors was very, very tasty!



My husband was a little more creative than I was with his turkey slider. He bought himself a poblano pepper at the farmers market yesterday morning and sauteed it with some onion.

Along with some taco-seasoned shredded cheddar cheese, my husband also used Trader Joe's Spicy Black Bean dip as a garnishment. He really enjoyed his southwest spicy turkey burger!




So we had fun with our Sunday night dinner.

Here is our basic ground turkey burger recipe:

Ingredients

Ground turkey
Italian bread crumbs
salt & pepper
oregano
garlic powder
crushed red pepper flakes

Directions

Mix all ingredients in a bowl and form into patties. Grill, broil or bake until done - no longer pink inside.

Enjoy!

Another Self-Serve Yogurt Place?

It seems like as soon as one new concept comes to your area, within a year, there are at least 6 more. Take for example, cupcakes. As soon as someone opened a store completely devoted to cupcakes, they were then everywhere. Not that I am complaining, I love me some cupcakes!

But the newest trend is now self-serve yogurt places. I wrote about one last year called Moo La La (which is my husbands favorite place). We now have a few more in the area, all which opened within days of each other.

One is called The Yogurt Place, and it definitely didn't have the greatest opening day - it was so bad, in fact, that we might consider giving it one more shot before calling it quits on them.


Another one, though, is now my husband's second favorite and it is called Swirls and Twirls.

So back to the Yogurt Place. There was a corner store that received a banner over the winter that a yogurt place was coming called "Shake Cups," but that mysteriously disappeared a few weeks after it went up. Then a small sign called "Yogurt Place" took its place. In April, a local pennysaver had an ad for a buy one, get one free yogurt from there, expiring May 14. Well, May 14 came and went, and the Yogurt Place never opened. Finally, on June 3, I was driving past the strip mall on my way home from work and saw that people were going in and getting yogurt. We decided to go after dinner.

Honestly, I don't think they were ready to open. The floor was almost just like a cement floor, and out of about 12 flavors, only half were available. I also checked out there facebook page and they closed for a few days this past week, saying this: "Due to plan change midway through construction, the store does not match the original plans submitted. Therefore we are temporarily closed. Sorry for the inconvenience. We will be opening ASAP!!"

Hmm - they probably should have waited to open. The staff was all high school kids and they were borderline rude... the guy manning the yogurt machines very timidly said we could ask for samples and then laughed. At that point, my husband had already picked flavors because for 5 minutes he couldn't find anyone to give samples. He said the yogurt was just okay, he didn't love it.

The only thing making me consider going back right now is the fact that they had snickerdoodle yogurt a week ago and I really love snickerdoodle cookies, and no other yogurt place in the area has had that yet.

On to Swirls and Twirls. This place was definitely more together for opening - the inside was finished completely, and everything was shiny, pretty and the staff was well-prepared (except for one poor kid who told me they will never change flavors. When I commented on their Facebook page how we like the other chains because they change flavors, the owner was QUICK to tell me they will be changing and she will make sure her staff knows their info!)

Compared to our number 1 place (Moo La La), I thought their Dulce De Leche was better, but their Red Velvet Cake wasn't. They had pretty much the standard toppings with a few things mixed in we haven't seen yet in other stores like mini marshmallows, caramel turtles and some others.



One thing my husband doesn't love with Swirls and Twirls is their rewards program - it is all done via text message. Moo La La gives you a punch card to earn points toward free yogurt and he likes the tangible object to look at. I can tell you I don't love it either - in fact, we didn't get points for our first purchase because when it asked the dollar amount on the receipt, I used a dollar sign to answer. Apparently, you can't do that - well, it should tell you to JUST put the amount in, no characters. Sigh.

Anyway, I'm curious to see how many of these stores will "make it" and how many will be a passing trend. Moo La La just celebrated its first year here on Long Island so they are doing quite well. Let's see if The Yogurt Place pulls itself together (and if we try it again!) and how Swirls and Twirls fares in this new competitive frozen yogurt market.

What are the current trends in your area?

Broiled Garlic Corn

So we had 1 ear of corn left in our freezer from last season, probably form one of the last shipments the grocery stores around us had in stores. It was time to eat it since there is new, fresh corn around!

I really didn't want to have to turn the grill on for one solitary ear of corn since we were eating my chicken taco meatloaf and sweet potato empanadas for dinner - neither of which required a grill.

So I googled broiled corn just to see if people do this and how they did it. I learned they did, so therefore, my corn was going to be broiled for the first time.

I lined a baking pan with tin foil, and sprayed the corn with olive oil spray. I sprinkled some sea salt and garlic powder on all sides of the corn and put it on the top shelf of the oven - set to broil.

Since I am famous of burning the heck out of food when trying to broil, I stood watch at the oven the entire time. It took about 6-8 minutes per side for the corn to get some nice brown marks like on a grill.

And it turned out well! It was juicy and delicious. So now if I can't grill the corn during the winter, or if it is absolutely pouring outside, I now have a new way to make corn. And the hint of garlic was a delicious compliment to what we were already eating for dinner. Yum!

How do you like to eat your corn?

Sweet Potato Empanadas!

I think I should start a feature called 101 ways to eat a sweet potato - I've been cooking with them so much lately. They are my new favorite food, which is funny since for 30 years I HATED them with a passion. Oh well - I've heard that your taste buds change every 7 years!!

So while trying to find something different to do again, I came across a recipe on FoodNetwork.com from Melissa d'Arabian for sweet potato empanadas. Hmm.... I like sweet potatoes, and I like empanadas, so why not try it out! The original recipe is here, I omitted the sweet part of it so I could eat them with dinner.

Her recipe is good (and INCREDIBLY easy), but I did not enjoy working with the crescent rolls because it made them too tiny with not enough filling. In fact, I have some filling leftover, so I need to decide what to do with it! I think when I make these again, I will find bigger shells so they will have more filling and be all the more tastier. Or else I won't cut the crescent rolls so small as suggested.

I also think I would add a pinch of paprika for a little something extra!

So without further delay - the recipe!

Ingredients:

1/2 cup sweet potatoes, mashed or pureed (1 small sized yam)
1/4 cup cream cheese, softened
1 tablespoon brown sugar
1 tablespoon fresh lemon juice
Kosher salt
1 tube refrigerated ready-made crescent rolls (uncooked dough)

Directions:

Heat oven to 450 degrees F and pierce your sweet potato with a fork. Place potato on rack in oven and let cook for 45 minutes to an hour to soften.

Once softened, let cool for 5-10 minutes, peel the skin off and mash the inside in a bowl.

Lower oven to 350 degrees F for later.

In a small bowl, mix the mashed sweet potatoes with the cream cheese, brown sugar, lemon juice and a pinch of salt until creamy.

Remove the dough from the tube and separate into 4 rectangles. Working with 1 rectangle at a time, roll over the perforated lines in the dough to seal together.

Cut the rectangle in half and then cut the halves into 2 triangles.

Place a heaping teaspoon of sweet potato filling in the center of each of 4 triangles.

Fold the dough over on each, as if you were making ravioli, and pinch the edges together. Note: Use a tiny bit of water if the dough is too dry to seal.

Continue making little triangle empanadas with the rest of the dough, 16 total. Place the triangles on a parchment-lined baking sheet and into the preheated oven.

Bake the empanadas until golden, about 10 to 12 minutes.

Enjoy!