Pelmeni

The vintage apron that I bought for $3.00 (!!) from an antiques store in town inspired me to get into the kitchen and cook. On the menu? Pelmeni!

According to the cookbook that I used for the recipe, pelmeni are “meat-filled Siberian dumplings.” The author notes,

Perhaps pelmeni was the original frozen dinner. Siberian housewives have always kept sacks of frozen pelmeni in the snow surrounding their homes. Pelmeni are boiled in water and served on their own with a variety of sauces, or boiled in beef broth and served in the soup garnished with lots of dill. Make them ahead and store in the freezer. When you are ready to have some, simply drop frozen pelmeni into boiling, salted water. (88, The Dumpling Cookbook, Maria Polushkin)

This isn’t the first time I’ve heard of pelmeni. My sister, who hails from Belarus, talked about them (as she ate wontons from wonton soup. She claimed that the wontons reminded her of pelmeni). Next time I see her, I’ll have to surprise her with the genuine article!

The recipe is simple, but as with other filled dumplings, making them is time-consuming. Still, it was a good time. Partner kept me company and played DJ (it turns out that old-skool rap makes for good pelmeni-making music).

Pretty pelmeni all in a row

Cooked pelmeni bathed in butter. Yummy!

Dough

• 4 cups all-purpose flour, plus additional flour for shaping pelmeni
• 3 eggs, lightly beaten
• 1 cup warm water
• 1.5 tsp salt

Filling

• 3/4 lb ground beef
• 1/4 lb ground pork
• 1 medium onion, very finely chopped or grated
• 1 garlic clove, put through a garlic press
• 2 tablespoons finely chopped fresh dill (if not available, leave out)
• 1 tsp salt
• several grindings black pepper
• 2 TBS water

To Serve (Accompany pelmeni with any of the following)

• 1/2 stick melted butter
• Lemon wedges
• Sour cream

1. In a bowl, mix together flour, eggs, water, and salt to make a firm dough. Remove to a well-floured board and knead until the dough feels smooth and satiny, about 10 minutes. Form the dough into a ball. Cover and let rest for 1/2 hour.

2. Meanwhile, mix together the beef, pork, onion, garlic, salt, pepper, water, and fresh dill. Refrigerate until ready to use.

3. Divide the dough in half. Cover one half and roll out the other until it is 1/8 inch thick. Use a 2.5 or 3 inch cookie cutter to cut out rounds.

4. Place about 1 tsp of filling on each round. Bring 2 edges together to seal in the filling. Then pinch the two corners together. Dip your fingers in a small bowl of water while you are doing this so that the edges are well sealed. The pelmeni can be frozen at this point for future use.*

5. Bring the salted water (about 7-8 quarts) to a boil and drop in about 10-12 pelmeni at a time. Cook for 8 minutes or until the pelmeni float. Repeat until all are done.

6. Remove with a slotted spoon to a well-buttered baking dish. Pour a little melted butter over them and keep warm in a slow oven (250F) until all are done.

Yield: About 70-80 pelmeni

We boiled them and served them with melted butter. They were very tasty; I’ll definitely be making them again. There were plenty to go around — we froze half the batch.

This isn’t the only recipe I’ve made from The Dumpling Cookbook. All the recipes that I’ve tried have been very good. If you love dumplings, I highly recommend the book. It can be picked up for a song from Amazon.com. I happened across my copy at a local bookstore that sells used books.

*Re: freezing the pelmeni: Take a piece of advice from me. Freeze them on cooling racks in a single layer. If you try to freeze these or other dumplings in the cookbook on a plate, they’ll get stuck to the plate and won’t come off unless they’re thawed!

Via Lifehacker and Mark Bittman (New York Times blog), I discovered a website/e-book series called Cook for Good by Linda Watson. At its most basic, Cook for Good offers a method for purchasing and preparing food at home for less money than other similar plans (for example, the USDA’s thrifty food guide).

She describes the purpose of Cook for Good as follows:

Cook for Good is here to help you plan, cook, and eat delicious food for very little money and without too much effort.

It’s also here to demonstrate that doing this is possible with the right information, food, and tools and urge the government and other organizations to help provide the means for good cooking for those who can’t get them on their own. This excellent investment would show results right away and pay for itself within a few months. . . .

For what motivated Watson to undertake this project, read this.

I spent a few days clicking around Watson’s website before I broke down and purchased the two e-books currently available: Cook for Good Basics and Cook for Good Spring. CFG Basics offers just that: the nuts-and-bolts of Watson’s approach. The book contains an overview of how to manage all of the cooking, two grocery lists (one regular, one “green”) and many recipes. CFG Spring offers nearly the same overview information plus information on freezing food (why, how, etc.) and recipes that feature springtime produce and ingredients.

I’ve been working my way through CFG Basics, and I am enjoying it. Watson’s recipes produce dishes that satisfy my craving for simple, nourishing food. So far, I’ve made the following recipes:

• Good Whisk Bread
• Hummus or Chickpea Spread Recipe (I made two kinds, one as written in Watson’s recipe, and one roasted red pepper batch since I had a leftover pepper in the fridge).
• Chocolate pudding (and a variation of that recipe, lemon pudding)
• Strawberry Shortcake
• Cuban Black Beans
• Potato-Peanut Curry
• Yogurt
• Spicy Yogurt Sauce
• Tomato Sauce with Green Peppers

All of the recipes have worked. I only wish that Watson offered a “one loaf” bread recipe for folks like me who are really pushed to get through two loaves before the dough goes bad (and who don’t have a lot of freezer space to store extra dough).

One of the big “causes” of the program is to encourage people to eat more beans.  As Watson notes, dried beans are an inexpensive source of protein and easy on the environment (no water to ship, no can to produce) (CFG Basics 27). If you’ve never prepared dried beans, don’t worry. Watson walks the reader through it. I (being a fan of such cookbooks as Bean Banquets from Boston to Bombay) don’t really need much encouragement, but it has been nice to test out her procedure(s) for prepping dried beans. You don’t even need to purchase the e-books to get started. She offers basic bean directions on her website. Once you master the basic bean procedure, you’ll want to check out some of the recipes (such as her recipe for Cuban Black Beans — so good so many ways!).

The recipes offered are simple and frugal, but they are not mean or boring. They run the gamut from standard U.S. fare (glazed carrots) to more exotic dishes (Potato-Peanut Curry; Asparagus Custard). All of her recipes are vegetarian, but meat eaters can easily add in their favorite animal flesh. Watson’s books also cover procedures for yogurt-making and bread-making. In fact, each CFG book offers several bread recipes. You can test out one of the everyday bread recipes, Good Whisk Bread, from the recipe on the website. I have rather bad luck with bread making, but my first loaf was a success even though I abbreviated my procedure (I didn’t fiddle with the ice cubes; I just baked it as I normally would).

But it’s really the “inessential” recipes that make the CFG series fabulous. Take, for example, Watson’s recipe for chocolate pudding. This recipe, which uses only a handful of ingredients and cornstarch for the thickener, is wonderfully nostalgic. Most importantly, it tastes absolutely fabulous — chocolatey and creamy, good warm or cold.  Strawberry Shortcake (CFG Spring), a family recipe of Watson’s, is simply lovely. The shortcake is made from a “hot milk cake” recipe and, as promised, tastes wonderful with berries or without.

Cook for Good has garnered good press based on the economic angle (i.e., reduce grocery bills), but the value of this project is much greater. In many ways, Watson’s project reminds me of other politically-minded cooking projects, such as Doris Janzen Longacre’s edited collection, the More-with-Less Cookbook. Such projects often have at their core an ethics that centers on pleasing the palate and respecting the earth and its inhabitants. Watson writes,

So why do I care if you Cook for Good? I hope you’ll try at least part of the Cook for Good plan to benefit all of us. You’ll save money and feel better. You’ll also increase your self-sufficiency, reduce suffering, and help slow global warming. That’s good for everybody. And it’s good for you when others do the same.

As noted above, the books that Watson offers are e-books. They are very reasonably priced. Since they’re electronic, I usually station my laptop somewhere in the vicinity of the kitchen and dash back and forth to check on the steps for the recipe(s) I am working with. I don’t find this to be a burden, but others might choose to print out favorite recipes. I only have one real complaint: my copy of CFG Spring doesn’t navigate properly in my pdf viewer. After page 15, the navigation pane and the main text are at least one page off. This is a small matter, however, and doesn’t really detract from the overall value of the text.

This recipe was inspired by Linda Watson’s Cook for Good Chocolate pudding recipe (the chocolate pudding recipe is available in Watson’s ebook, Cook for Good Basics). As with Watson’s recipe, this one uses cornstarch as a thickener.

I like this recipe because it’s got a tart lemon flavor without the hassle of dealing with lemon zest. It tastes like the filling in lemon meringue pie.

Ingredients:

• 2/3 cup sugar
• 3 TBS corn starch
• 1/4 tsp salt

• 2 cups 2% milk
• 2 TBS butter

• scant 1/2 cup lemon juice
• 1/2 tsp vanilla (optional)

1. Put sugar, cornstarch, and salt into a medium saucepan and whisk to remove the lumps. Add part of the milk (about half) and whisk again. Once that’s well mixed, add the rest of the milk and whisk it all together.*

2. Heat the mixture over medium heat, whisking occasionally at first and then more frequently as the mixture heats. When the mixture comes to a boil, add the BUTTER, and whisk constantly for one minute.

3. Remove from heat and stir in lemon juice and vanilla.

4. Let cool for 10 minutes and enjoy the pudding warm, or refrigerate and eat it cold.

* I usually do all of the (cold)  initial whisking in a big Pyrex measuring cup. I only have a non-stick saucepan, so I don’t want to risk scratching it by whisking abrasive dry ingredients in it.

Problem: I had a cast-off bed sheet that needed a new identity.

Solution: Turn it into an apron.

Me in my new apron. Kinda plain, but that suits me fine.

This is the other half of the bed sheet that I used to make my p.j. pants at sewing bootcamp (Sew Crafty Houston). Since my sewing Sensei, Sarah, empowered me with so much sewing mojo, I created this plain but functional apron without a pattern. (Well, sort of. I used one of my mom’s aprons as my guide. But still – this is only my 4th project ever!)

My favorite feature of the apron (aside from the fact that the material was free) is the pocket-within-a-pocket feature that I made. You can kind of see it in the photo below. This way, I can stick a spoon or a thermometer any small item in the little pocket and it won’t get lost in the big pocket. BUT, I only had to cut one piece of material to make both. Nifty, huh?

Apron folded in half. The mini-pocket is in the upper left-hand corner of the big pocket.

Pardner and I went out scouting for apartments today and decided to take a wee drive off the beaten path. We ended up on Beeftrail road.

Aside from being an exciting drive (it’s always a toss-up whether or not our vehicle will actually make it up some of these hills), we saw some furry friends. We spotted these two about 1/2 mile apart. Apologies for the poor photos — I didn’t zoom in enough.

A bold-as-brass deer staring at me from a pasture.

A sizable fox walking down the road. S/he stopped and sat down when I took the photo.

Smiling in the cool mountain air. Behind me is the east ridge.

If you have any spare time, please check out this website: Cook for Good. It’s an independent website that shares tips, monthly menus, and recipes for eating well at an average cost of $1.16 per meal (or $1.67 per meal using organic/sustainable ingredients). I’ve been reading it for cooking inspiration. I’m tempted to try the “Good Whisk Bread” recipe even though I’ve never had much success with bread making.

The website is well organized and well written, and I appreciate the fact that the author discusses the political aspects of food preparation and consumption. Plus, the menus offered are cheaper than the USDA’s — by quite a bit, in fact. Take that, government bureaucrats!

I passed!

Dissertation DEFENSE day, that is!

Mark your calendars: May 22, 2009 @12:30.

Gee Mat Wot Mein (Breakfast Noodles)

The Thrifty Grocery Challenge is humming along nicely, with only an odd hiccup here and there (mainly in the form of pizza delivery).

We’ve been taking advantage of the vast Asian markets populating the Bellaire section of town, one of the few perks of living here. Making Chinese food at home is so much cheaper than ordering it. The trick is in finding reliable recipes.

This is one of my standbys. It’s quick, filling, and is wonderful when accompanied by some Kim Chee or sauteed spinach. The recipe is from Daughter of Heaven: A Memoir with Earthly Recipes by Leslie Li, but I found it in Saveur, no. 85.

As Saveur notes, “Author Li’s grandmother Nai-nai would prepare this dish in the morning.”  I, however, eat it for dinner.

Serves 1

• 1/4 lb. wonton skins (20-24 skins – available in the produce section most grocery stores)
• 1 1/2 tsp. oyster sauce
• 1 1/2 tsp. light soy sauce
• 1/4-1/2 tsp. Guilan la-jiao (Guilan hot chilie sauce — Lee Kum Kee makes a version of this, and their products are pretty widely available. Your grocery probably carries some of their products already, so if they don’t carry the chilie paste, you could ask the grocer to order it)
• 1 tsp. toasted sesame seeds (you can buy these pretoasted in the Asian section of the grocery store).

1. Cut wonton skins into 1/2″-wide strips. (Make sure your hands, cutting surface, and cutting implements are dry. Otherwise, the skins will stick together in a giant clump).
2. Bring medium pot of water to boil. Drop wonton skins into water (be sure to separate them as they go onto the water to prevent clumping. They like to stick together). Boil 1 minute. Rinse quickly with hot water. Drain.
3. Transfer to bowl and add all other ingredients. Mix well and enjoy!