English Popovers

Yorkshire Pudding

As Josephine Morris, from York, England, taught Lindsay Sterling in New Gloucester, ME.

Note: Josephine served these as part of her Sunday dinner, with roast beef, leeks in cheddar sauce, potatoes and gravy. They're also great by themselves for breakfast or brunch with jam and butter. In the U.S., these are called "popovers" because they puff up and pop over the edge of the container when they're cooking.
Makes: 24
Cooking time:  45 min

Ingredients

• 1/3 cup vegetable oil
• 2 cups milk
• 5 small eggs (or 4 large)
• 1 1/2 cup flour
• 1/2 tsp salt

Equipment

• blender
• muffin pan(s) for 24 muffins
• hot pads
• teaspoon

Instructions

1. Take milk and eggs out of the fridge so they become room temperature.

2. Turn the oven temp up to 425 degrees F.

3. Pour a teaspoon of oil in each hole of the muffin pan and stick the muffin pan in the oven to preheat.

4. In a blender, combine 5 eggs, 1 1/2 cups flour, 1/2 tsp salt and 2 cups milk. Blend until smooth. When blender is stopped, look to see if there are air bubbles showing on the top of the batter. If not, blend a bit more.

5. Remove the hot muffin tin from the oven and pour batter to fill 1/3 of each mold. Put in over.

6. After fifteen minutes and give the pan a turn for even cooking. After five minutes (or when popovers are puffed up and a little golden, turn off oven and open oven door to let popovers cool down gradually (this helps them keep their shape).

Polish Sweet Cheese Dumplings

Pierogi

As mother and daughter, Jadwiga and Izabela Lutostanska, from Szczecin, Poland, taught Lindsay Sterling in Brunswick, Maine.

Notes: If you will be making your own Polish farmer's cheese (it's easy) for the filling, you'll need to start the process the night before. You can find Polish farmer's cheese already made in a Polish market. 

Pierogis freeze really well. It's great to make these in advance so all you have to do on the day you want them is make the topping and boil them.  

Makes: about 70 dumplings, enough to serve for 6 for dinner or more as an appetizer or snack.
Cooking Time: 3-4 hours

Ingredients

For the filling:

• 3 cups Polish farmer's cheese (twarog), store bought or homemade
• 2 egg yolks
• 3 Tbsp powdered sugar
• 1 package vanilla sugar (subst. 1/2 tsp vanilla)
• (possibly 1-3 Tbsp milk)

For the dough:

• 1 1/3 cup milk
• 1 egg, whipped
• 3 1/2 cups flour + 2-4 Tbsp for dusting
• 1/2 tsp salt

For the toppings:

• 1 cup breadcrumbs
• 8 Tbsp butter
• 1 cup plain yogurt
• 4 Tbsp honey
• juice of 1/2 lemon

Instructions

Make the dough. Warm the milk. In a large mixing bowl, mix the milk and whipped egg into the flour and salt with your hands until you have a mass of globby, rough, sticky dough that sort of sags when you hold it up as opposed to stays in its shape. It's a wet dough. Spread flour across your cutting board or counter and put the blob of dough on it. Knead the dough for 15 minutes. Use a knife or pastry cutter to scrape any dough that sticks to the counter. You may dust some more flour to help contain the stickiness but keep in mind that you want the dough to end up tacky so that it will stick to itself when you are making the pierogis. Stop kneading when the dough is smooth, stretchy, and slightly tacky. It feels like a baby's bottom when it's done. Form the dough into a ball and cover it with a towel so that the dough doesn't dry out while you make the filling.

Make the filling. Mix the filling ingredients together: Polish farmer's cheese, egg yolk, powdered sugar, and vanilla sugar or vanilla. You want it to be creamy and uniform rather than crumbly. Depending on how dry your cheese is, you may need to mix in small amounts of milk until your filling comes together in a creamy uniform mass.

Form the pierogis. See this video on how to form the pierogis. Put a 1-2 Tbsp of flour off to the side of your workspace on the counter. Break off a piece of dough about the size of a small apple, or about a quarter of all the dough. Roll the piece into a snake shape about as thick as a nickel. Cut across the roll, making 3/4"-thick pieces of dough. Dip the fingers of one hand in the flour and use them to turn each segment on its side and pat down on top of it once with two fingers to begin to flatten the piece into disc.

Use a rolling pin to roll out each piece into your dumpling wrapper. What you want is a thin disk about 2 inches in diameter and about 1/8th inch thick. Put the disk in one hand, and add a tsp of filling to the middle of the disk. Fold both halves of the dough over the filling, match the edges on top of one another, and press them together, sealing the filling inside. If the filling gets on the edge of the dough where you are trying to seal it together, then the seal won't work. If you need to push the filling back from the edges, it's helpful to dip your finger in a little pile of flour before using them to nudge the filling out of the way because then the filling doesn't stick to your fingers. Then press the dumpling wrapper closed.  Once the seal is secure, then pinch the dough six or seven times along the edge to make a pretty decoration.

If you are serving these another day, freeze pierogis in a single layer on a flour-dusted sheet pan. Once frozen, transfer into a Ziplock. Cook within 3 months.

On the day you want to eat them, prepare the toppings. Saute breadcrumbs in butter slowly on medium-low heat until breadcrumbs are golden. Remove from heat. Mix yogurt, honey, and lemon together in a bowl. If you're using Greek yogurt, whisk in a little water to loosen it into a sauce.

Boil the pierogis. Bring a pot of salted water to a boil. One by one, add enough pierogis to make a single layer in the water. Once they float, they're done. Another Polish source says she puts a tablespoon of oil in the water and then the pierogis don't stick to each other if you want to try cooking more at once.

Remove cooked pierogis with a slotted spoon or spatula and serve on a platter. Top with small splatters of yogurt sauce and buttered breadcrumbs.
 

Polish Farmer's Cheese

Twarog

As Jadwiga Lutostanska, from Szczecin, Poland, taught Lindsay Sterling in Brunswick, Maine, November 2015.

Note: Twarog is a fresh, cultured cheese that is great for filling pierogis; eating on toast with jam; filling crepes; and eating on toast with tomatoes and herbs. This recipe makes enough for making the cheese-potato pierogi filling. You can quadruple the amounts here to make enough for my recipe for sweet cheese pierogis. If you do, you'll likely need an extra large pot, or you can split the large amount between two pots. 

Cooking time: 40 minutes (+ over night)
Makes: 3/4 cup

Ingredients

• 6 cups whole milk
• 6 Tbsp plain yogurt (I used Faye 2%)

Instructions

1. In the evening, heat milk in a large pot until just before boiling. Stir in yogurt. Turn off heat, cover, and let sit over night in a warm location between 70 and 80 degrees F. If it is winter and your house temperature drops below seventy, you can insulate the warm pot with a coat or blankets so that it stays warm for a long time.

2. In the morning, heat the yogurt/milk mixture again to just before boiling and keep it at that temp (without boiling) until the cheese curdles (separates into solids and liquid), about twenty minutes. 

3. Line a bowl with a large piece of cheese cloth (big enough to gather into a sac shape around the whey). Pour the curds and whey onto the cheese cloth. Gather the cloth into a sac around the curds and twist just above the curds so that the fabric tightens around the curds and squeezes all the moisture out of the cheese.

4. Jadwiga likes to run her cheese through a meat grinder to make the texture more uniform. I tend skip this step and love how the pierogis come out. 

Cape Verdean Cod Casserole

Bacalhau Com Natas

As Clarice Pinto and Lucy Pires from Santiago, Cape Verde, taught Lindsay Sterling in Brockton, Massachusetts.

Cooking Time: 1 hour + 24 hours soaking the salt cod
Servings: 10
Note: Recipe adapted slightly to avoid MSG, which was in a couple of pre-prepared spice mixtures they used.

Ingredients

• 1 1/2 lb. salt cod
• 2 1/2 lb potatoes
• 3 eggs
• 1/2 cup olive oil
• 1 onion sliced into 1/4"-thick rounds
• 1/4 tomato sliced into 1/4"-thick rounds
• 1 small bunch cilantro, rough chopped including stems and leaves
• 1/2 red pepper, diced
• 4 cloves garlic, chopped
• 1 tsp salt
• dash chili powder
• dash sweet paprika
• dash annatto or achiote powder (optional)
• 2 tsp white pepper
• 1/2 cup pitted green olives
• 2 Tbsp butter
• 2 cups milk
• 1/2 cup cream
• 1 Tbsp corn starch

Instructions

1. The night before cooking, soak the salt cod in water in the fridge over night.

2. At least an hour before you want to eat, peel the potatoes and cut into 1" chunks. Cover with water in a large pot. Put the eggs (shells on) in the water along with the potatoes. Bring to a boil and then simmer for 14 minutes or until the potatoes are soft. Take the eggs out and peel them. Strain the potatoes.

3. Preheat the oven to 350. Strain the salt cod.

4. In a large pot with 1/2 cup olive oil in it, saute the onions, tomato, cilantro, red pepper, yellow pepper, and garlic with all the spices (chili powder, paprika, annatto, and white pepper). When onions are soft, add the salt cod. Stir and cook until salt cod breaks down a little bit and turns kind of mushy. Then gently stir in the the potatoes.

5. In medium sauce pan, melt butter, whisk in corn starch, and then whisk in milk and cream. Heat on medium, stirring constantly, until the milk and cream thicken.

6. Spread the sauteed fish-potato mixture evenly in an oven-safe casserole dish. Slice the eggs into 1/4" rounds. Decorate the top of the cod and potato mixture with green olives and cross sections of egg.

7. Pour the thickened milk mixture over the whole thing. Bake for 40 minutes. Broil at the end so the top is slightly browned.

Congolese Mini Waffles

Gaufres

As Ariane Kambu Mbenza from Kinshasa, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, taught Lindsay Sterling in Yarmouth, ME, in May 2013.

Makes: 146 pieces, serving 10-35 people depending on appetite!

Ingredients

• 5 cups flour
• 2 sticks butter
• 1 cup sugar
• 3 eggs
• 2 cups milk
• spray butter (aka nonstick spray) or oil

Instructions

1. Put flour in bowl of a stand mixer. Cut 1/2 stick of butter into 1/4 inch cubes and melt the rest. Mix cold butter into flour, then mix in warm butter, sugar, and 3 eggs. Mix until incorporated.

2. Add enough milk so the consistency is thick but doesn't completely hold it's shape. Mix until smooth.

3. Heat up waffle iron. Spray the center of each quadrant with spray butter or oil so the waffle doesn't stick to the waffle iron. (You could also brush both sides of the waffle iron with oil).

4. Spoon 1 heaping teaspoon of batter into the center of each quadrant. Spray the top of each mound of batter with spray butter. Close the waffle iron.

5. When waffles are done, pluck them out of the press with a fork and put on a serving tray to cool. Serve straight up or with whipped cream, honey, ice cream, or peanut butter.