Pierogi leniwe

Pierogi leniwe – means lazy pierogi or  lazy dumplings.

I wrote about kopytka – Polish potato dumplings a good while back and these have the same shape.

Traditional recipes use twaróg – Polish curd cheese – I use my own yoghurt cheese.  I have found that you can use crumbly, white, mild, English cheeses such as: Cheshire, Lancashire or Wensleydale.

They can be served savoury or sweet – with melted butter, à la Polonaise (buttered breadcrumbs) or skwarki (crisp, fried, small squares of bacon) or sweet with a cinnamon sugar mixture.

Ingredients

• 400g of twaróg (curd cheese), yoghurt cheese or  a white, crumbly cheese.
• 3 egg yolks
• 160 – 200g of plain flour
• ½ teaspoon of salt

Method

• Mix the yolks with the cheese.
• Add the salt
• Weigh out the flour to give an idea of how much is needed – this will depend on the cheese and the size of the eggs.
• Add the flour and mix first with a wooden spoon and then by hand, you might not need all the flour or you may need more.
• Mix until you have a soft dough.
• Divide the dough into quarters and using a floured board shape the dough and roll it with you hands until you have a long sausage about 3cm in diameter.  If the dough sticks to the board then you need to add more flour.
• Use a sharp knife to cut the dough into pieces, make the first cut at a diagonal and make the thickness about 1 to 1.5cm. You will get a sort of oval shape.

• Repeat this with the rest of the dough.
• Fill a large pan with water, add some salt and bring this to the boil.
• When the water is boiling, add the dumplings one by one, do not over fill the pan or they will stick together. I tend to do around 8 at a time.
• As they cook they will float to the surface, give them about another minute and then remove them with a slotted  or a perforated spoon and put them in a colander.
• I have a colander sitting in an empty pan by the side of the large pan in which I am boiling the dumplings.

 

 

 

 

• I find that the maximum from putting  them into the water to taking them out will be 3 minutes, if you cook these too long they will start to fall apart.

Here served as suggested above with  melted butter and with skwarki (crisp, fried, small squares of bacon).

Served on –

• J & G Meakin – Topic – around 1967
• Wedgwood – Chelsea garden – early 21st century.

Here served  à la Polonaise (buttered breadcrumbs)  in a handled dish by

Rörstrand Sweden Granada Ovenware  from the 1960s

 

 

They can be also be served  sweet with a cinnamon sugar mixture.