[Cz-L] from Powidl to Pirogen

All the talk of Powidl takes me back to other Cz delicacies of my childhood.  You all must have had and liked pirogy in one of its various spellings.  I have no idea where it originated; most probably in a Slavic culture – Poland, Ukraine, Czechoslovakia, etc.  In Canada it was unheard of until more recent times.
 
One day in the 1970s, my gut’s memory started screaming for some Pirogen.  I hadn’t had any since we left Cz in the spring of 1939. I recalled with emotion our Hungarian cook in Cz rolling out the dough and cutting out round pieces with a water glass, then dropping a dab of the mix (potato and cheese or some sort of ground up meat) and squeezing the ends together to form the piroge.  She would then gather up the leftover dough and knead it all over again to roll out a new spread, etc., etc.
 
I called my mother in Toronto to ask for a recipe and she said that I shouldn’t bother because it is too difficult to get the dough right.  Undaunted, I went to the library and found a recipe in a Polish cook book.  I took over the dining room using the dining table to work on and followed the recipe, getting flour dust all over the dining room AND living room.  I decided to make a big batch so as to freeze it and have it on hand for later on. 
 
 My younger son, then in his teens, had a friend over and I offered to let them taste it.  They were unenthusiastic but were willing to try one to be polite.  I served them with sour cream and fried bread crumbs and the boys wolfed up the whole batch.  I had nothing left over to freeze.
 
Today, of course, there are a number of frozen brands, even no-name knockoffs, and some of them are excellent.  But I’ll never forget my one-time effort to recreate Cz in Canada and what a success it was. 
 
I had a similar and much funnier experience while living in Los Angeles with an ambition to make a Pischinger Oblatten Torte.  But I’ll save this for another time.
 
Cheers,
Andy

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Received on 2012-08-23 14:40:02