Amy and I met rather by chance; she sat next to me in Business Administration and we bonded over the weirdness of the class, religion, and food! So while we were “studying” for the exam, Amy (a double-Pole) taught me how to make pierogis. They’re delicious little dumplings filled with cheese or some kind of vegetable mixture – we did butternut squash and wild mushroom (porcini and cremini), but you can also do potato – then mixed with caramelized onions and topped with sour cream.

I used twice as much caramelized onion as the recipe calls for. The sour cream really makes the dish; don’t leave it out! Amy served this with a spicy Korean salad – even though it was such a mixture of ethnic foods, the smoothness and creaminess of the pierogies and sour cream went really well with the vinegary-spiciness of the Korean salad. I really recommend this pairing.

We used this recipe for the dough. We rolled it out onto the counter (with plenty of flour), and cut it out with a 3-inch round glass. This is the recipe for the Wild Mushroom filling.

Butternut Squash filling
3 cups butternut squash, diced
1 onion, diced
1 tomato, diced
Cumin, salt, pepper, to taste
Paprika or cayenne, to taste

Caramelize the onion, then add the tomato and squash. Flavor with cumin, salt, and peppers. Resist (or succumb to) the temptation to eat this with a spoon. Mash it up a little so most of the lumps are gone. Stuff inside the pierogies!

Enjoy the pictures! I’m experimenting with a Lightbox plugin. Click on the first picture (first on the left, of the dried porcini mushrooms), and then you should be able to click through the rest like a flowing gallery, complete with captions. As you can see, I had fun taking pictures while Amy was doing all the work. Let me know what you think!

Reposting with pictures! Sorry for the blurriness; I was trying a new setting on my camera which obviously did not work as well as I had hoped.

This is a traditional Syrian dish of zucchini hollowed out and stuffed with cooked ground beef, then baked with a tomato sauce. The filling I used here is the same thing I used for making kibbe, and it really turned out well.

Kousa Mahshi

1 to 1/2 lb ground beef (whatever one package is)
2 onion, diced
6 cloves garlic, diced or minced
1/4 or 1/2 tsp allspice
1/2 to 1 tsp cumin
Salt, pepper
Dry or fresh parsley
1/2 cup chopped walnuts, toasted
1 16 oz can tomato sauce
1 or 2 cups of broth (i don’t like to mix chicken broth with beef, so I used veggie broth)
7 green zucchini

1. Slice the zucchini lengthwise into two boats. Score the center and scoop out the flesh, leaving a rim around the edge. Try to get the ones with the bigger brown, round spot on the butt – these have more flesh, and you can use the zucchini you scoop out for other yummy things (or, you could make this feta stuffed zucchini by Veggie Venture)

2. Saute one onion and three cloves of garlic until soft. Add the ground beef and break it up so it cooks evenly. Add the walnuts, parsley, allspice, cumin, salt, and pepper. Mix in about 1/4 to 1/2 cup of the tomato sauce. (I also added a good chunk of garlic-herb butter I had in the freezer. Shh….don’t tell).

3. Remove all that from the pan. Sautee one sliced onion and three cloves of garlic and add the rest of the tomato sauce. Let it simmer to flavor. Add the broth so it’s more liquidy, enough to pour into the pan and kind of braise the zucchini.

4. In two large 13×9 pans, divide the tomato sauce evenly. Lay the zucchini boats in the pan (I cut them in half so it was four little half-boats per zucchini – easier to serve).

5. Put about 1 tablespoon of filling into each boat (each full boat). If there is extra ground beef, let it fall into the sauce.

6. Bake at 350 for 40 minutes or until zucchini is tender. To serve, put a few piece of stuffed zucchini into a plate and spoon the tomato sauce on top.

Thanksgiving Dumpling Soup

A slightly different way to get rid of Thanksgiving leftovers – This is just going to be an idea more than an exact a recipe. I can’t remember exactly what I used, but I remember the chipotle was a really great kick.

Stock made from turkey bones
Shredded turkey, whatever is left over
One butternut squash, diced (about 4 cups)
Two carrots, diced
8 oz cremini mushrooms, choppped
One can diced tomatoes with juice
Onion, Garlic
2 or 3 chipotle peppers, pureed or diced finely
1 or 2 tsp adobo (from the can of chipotle)
Cumin, salt, pepper

Caramelize the onion, add the garlic towards the end. Add the butternut squash and carrot, saute till almost soft. Do the same with the mushrooms a few minutes later. Add the shredded turkey and mix it around with the other flavorings. Add the cumin, salt, pepper, chipotles and adobo. Mix in the tomatoes and broth and let it simmer until the squash and carrots are soft.

Dumplings – these were a bit hard, so I’m open to suggestions for another method.

1 cup flour, 1 egg, dried herbs, salt, pepper

Mix the egg and flour and seasonings till it forms a sticky, eggy dough. Break of little rounds of it and drop it into boiling broth. They’ll float to the top when done.

I made these for a family dinner this weekend – we had Ameir’s mom and Ameir’s stepfather over for dinner (and Mom gave me this phenomenal floral blooming tea set that I can’t wait to try. And yes, there will be pictures). The whole dinner, attempting to be mostly low carb, was: this stuffed chicken – spaghetti squash with garlic cherry tomato sauce – grilled asparagus garnished with grilled lemon – grilled eggplant rolled with ricotta, carrots, and olive tamponade – couscous with corn (oop, not low carb) – potatoes (ouch, sorry) and bruschetta with garlic-sundried tomato-herb butter (ouch again). I said mostly low carb.

These were very tender and a fresh change from my usual, heavy, creamy mushroom stuffed chicken. I’m glad that the chicken was still super moist without having to stuff it with bread cubes.

Recipe here: (more…)

Another extraordinary part of the Sara-TQ Asian dinner extravaganza. The flavor in this meat was so incredible because of the soy sauce and red curry paste. I’ll let the pictures speak for themselves. Make sure you let your mouse scroll over the pictures for the caption!