Every Christmas we eat pierogi. When I was a child we ate pierogi throughout the year. My favorites were ruskie pierogi made with potatoes, cheese and onions and dessert pierogi filled with plums. Pierogi are part of vigilia the traditional Polish Christmas Eve festivities and when I lived in Chicago, with it's many Polish neighborhoods it was so easy to buy them that I never took the time to learn how to make them. Last year we spent Christmas in San Diego and finding pierogi involved a long trip through unfamiliar territory. Determined to avoid a repetition, I pulled out an old recipe of my mother's and decided to make my own.

They can be made several weeks early and frozen. I decided to make some with a mushroom filling and some with a combination of mushrooms and sauerkraut since these are traditionally part of the Christmas Eve dinner. My mother made a simple dough without eggs or sour cream and the trick was to roll it out so it was paper thin.

Mushroom Pierogi

Ingredients
For the dough

3 1/2 cups unbleached flour
Pinch of salt
1/8 cup oil (I used walnut oil)
1 1/4 cups lukewarm water

For the filling

1 cup boiling water
1 oz dried mushrooms (I used shitake)
1 onion
2 garlic cloves
About 15 assorted mushrooms
1 1/2 tablespoons walnut oil
1 tablespoon finely chopped parsley

Stir together flour and salt in a bowl. Mix together oil and water. Make a well in the flour and add oil and water, then stir together with a fork or spoon. Continue stirring, gradually incorporating flour until the dough holds together. Transfer dough to a lightly floured work surface and knead, adding only as much additional flour as needed to keep dough from sticking, until smooth and elastic, about 5 minutes. Place in bowl and cover with plastic wrap and let rest for an hour.

In the meantime make the filling. Soak dried mushrooms in boiling water for 20 minute or until softened. Chop onions and garlic and slice mushrooms. Chop the softened dried mushrooms into small pieces reserving the soaking liquid. Heat oil in a saute pan over mediium heat. Add onions, garlic and mushrooms, raise the heat to high and saute for 10 - 12 minutes adding soaking liquid as needed. Season with parsley, salt and pepper. I like some bigger chunks of mushroom and onion in my filling so I process 3/4 of the mix in a food processor and the rest I chop by hand. Cool completely.


Divide the dough in half and put one half back in the plastic wrap. Roll out the other half on a lightly floured surface until it is paper thin. Cut into 3" round circles using a floured cutter. Place approximately 1 heaping teaspoon of filling in the centre of each circle. You can, of course, use a smaller or large cutter and adjust the amount of filling. Working with one circle at a time, fold in half and pinch the edges to seal. If necessary moisten the edges with water in order to get a tight seal. Transfer finished pierogies to a flour dusted cookie sheet and keep them covered with plastic wrap. They dry out quickly. Then make more pierogies with the rest of the dough.

Cook pierogies in a pot of boiling salted water. When you put them in the pot they will sink to the bottom. After about two minutes they will rise to the top and you can take them out with a slotted spoon and serve with chopped grilled onions and Tofutti sour cream