Following A Recipe (sorta): Taylor's Piroshki Recipe by TAYLORSMOMMY

My ex-husband LOVES pirogi. (I believe that is the proper way to spell the plural of pirozhki or "piroshki", but I may be wrong. I'm not up on my Russian and am falling back on the wikipedia article on this topic.)

At any rate, he loves those things and buys them at the fair every year. I like thinking about things that I can do for him, and so it dawned on me that although I've never heard of anyone I know cooking these things...Russians probably made them before fairs. haha

So, with amazingly little work I tracked down a recipe (and then tweaked it a bit). The original involves frying, while my recipe involves baking. I realized I could do that from reading all of the comments on the recipe, so I can't take any credit for it. I added garlic and sharp cheese.

This is the first time that I've made a bread with yeast by hand. I think it worked out great!

I ran out of eggs while making this recipe, so I'm reminding myself right now to check the amount of eggs I have before trying this again.

Ingredients

• 1 1/2 pounds ground beef
• 1 red onion, chopped up fairly fine
• 1 teaspoon salt
• a few shakes ground black pepper (to taste)
• 1 1/2 teaspoons dried dill weed (alter to preference)
• 1 clove garlic, chopped
• 1 (.25 ounce) package active dry yeast
• 1/4 cup warm water
• 1 cup milk
• 3 eggs
• 1/2 cup vegetable oil (I used canola, and that was fine.)
• 2 tablespoons granulated sugar
• 1 teaspoon salt
• 4 cups all-purpose flour to start (You will add lots more.)
• Around 11 small (1-2cm cubes) sharp cheese
  
  

  Meat section:
  

  1. Brown meat in a skillet, on medium heat. I used the 3 or 4 setting on my stove.  Once the meat looks evenly brown, try to drain off the fat as much as you can. I'm sure that there are great ways to do this, but I sort of tip the pan while guarding the meat with a spatula and draining fat into a container (for later clean up).
  2. Stir in chopped red onion, salt, pepper, dill weed, and garlic. Cook until the onions seem pretty translucent.
  3. Pour meat mixture into a bowl to cool. Refrigerate.

  Bread Section

  1. Pour packet of yeast into 1/4 cup of warm (but not super hot) water. Put it in sort of a warm location, if available. Wait about 15 minutes, until the yeast becomes frothy.
  2. Heat milk in a pan over low heat. I set my burners on 1 or 2.
  3. Combine eggs, oil, sugar, and salt in a small bowl. Put two cups of flour in a different and larger bowl.
  4. When the milk gets warm, add the contents of the small bowl (eggs and such) to the milk. Use a whisk to sort of agitate the stuff gently. As soon as it looks warmed up and well mixed, remove from the burner.
  5. Slowly pour milk mixture into the flour bowl while stirring. 
  6. Add half of yeast solution to the flour bowl. Stir it.
  7. Add a cup of flour to the flour bowl. Stir it.
  8. Add last of yeast solution to the flour bowl. Stir it.
  9. Add another cup of flour to the flour bowl. Stir it.
  10. Assess the texture of the mixture, and add flour until the bread seems to be a dough that forms into a ball and isn't sticking to the bowl. (This took quite a bit of flour when I did it. I probably put another two cups or so into it.)
  11. Knead it to make sure it is evenly mixed, but don't mix it a bunch after it seems pretty even.
  12. Cover the bowl with a clean cloth and set in a warm location. Give it at least 30 minutes. (I didn't notice the dough really rising, but I got tired of waiting after 30 minutes and just did my thing.)

  Putting It Together

  1. Preheat oven to 400 degrees.
  2. Get out two cookie sheets, and cover in parchment paper.
  3. Uncover bread dough bowl, and retrieve meat bowl.
  4. Pinch off a handful of dough and roll into a small pizza like disk about 4-5 inches in diameter.
  5. Put at least two heaping tablespoons of meat mixture in the middle. 
  6. Put a cheese cube in the center of the meat mixture.
  7. Close the dough over the meat, and pinch closed.
  8. Roll them slightly in your hands, smoothing any rough bits out. 
  9. Place completed meat/dough sphere on parchment paper covered cookie sheets.
  10. Do steps 4-9 approximately 11 times. In other words, make balls of meat until you run out of stuff.
  11. Let them all sit for about 10 minutes before cooking.
  12. Place in the oven and bake for 18 minutes.

 Verdict: These are awesome! Everyone in the house ate them up, and wanted a whole lot more. My only regret was that I thought that they could have had more meat to the amount of bread. I really liked these, although the prep time on this is sort of outrageous (at least for me). If you don't mind a project, they are well worth the time.

Right out of the oven

Action shot of it being delivered to the ex-husband.

Natural light. The bread really did turn out nice!

YUM!

Cutting Up A Whole Chicken, and Oven Fried Chicken

I'll tell you a secret...

I'm afraid of cooking meat.

I think that I'll do something wrong and kill everyone with food poisoning, and I'm particularly phobic about chicken.

Therefore, it took some courage to decide to look at a whole chicken and decide to cook it in any way. (I've cooked chicken maybe two or three other times, but always in a crockpot. I have produced bland and sad meat that made the baby Jesus cry.)

The first real hurdle was cleaning and cutting up the chicken.

I carefully washed the bird off in the kitchen sink, with just plain water. It was a good idea to get a buddy to turn the water on/off, and make the garbage can available without needing to use my hands. It was also good to have a bowl right next to me to put the bird in, so it didn't drip on the floor on the way to the cutting board.

The CSA that I signed up for plucked and gutted the bird, and I decided to turn to Youtube for the answers to cutting it into pieces.

 

                              How to Cut Up a Whole Chicken - Gourmet Magazine 

This video was super helpful, but cutting up a chicken didn't go exactly like this at all. I had a very crummy dull knife. It is extremely helpful to have a good one, I'd imagine. 

Popping the bones out wasn't exactly effortless either, and I really had to work on some of them. I guess that I have to start working out with weights again. Ha!

 I watched the video once, and forgot some of the steps too...so...I didn't have quite as many pieces. 

The coolest thing about this video is that it gave me an idea of what to do, and it also mentioned kitchen scissors. I finally know what those are really great for doing! 

I managed to do the breastbone part completely wrong, and it was nowhere near as easy as he showed. I'll have to try to improve on that part next time.

I was pretty happy with the end results. I got most of the meat off of the bird, and in a fairly orderly manner. 

I found a recipe that I could use as a jumping off point, Oven Fried Chicken III Recipe by Elizabeth Hinlely.

I changed quite a few things about it. The very first thing was the oven temp. I put it to 375 degrees.

Ingredients 

• 1 whole chicken, cut up into pieces
• 1 cup dried bread crumbs (I used IGA brand breadcrumbs.)
• 1 teaspoon garlic powder
• 1 teaspoon Old Bay Seasoning
• 1 teaspoon ground black pepper
• 1/2 teaspoon dried thyme
• 1/2 teaspoon paprika
• 1/8 teaspoon Curry Powder
• 1/8 teaspoon Mustard Powder
• 1 cup mayonnaise

1. Preheat the oven to 375 degrees.
2. Mix all of the dry ingredients in a bowl.
3. Mix dry ingredients with mayonnaise.
4. Rub chicken pieces with mixture. It will be sort of gloppy, and won't stick on the chicken very well. 
5. Put the chicken pieces in a glass baking dish, and then put all remaining glop on the chicken pieces.
6. Bake for 45 minutes. Check internal temperature of chicken with a meat thermometer. It needs to be 160 degrees. If it isn't, put it back in for 5-15 more minutes. 

Verdict: 

 This recipe turned out uber yummy. I left the skin on the bird, because I like it. My partner wasn't fond of the skin, but he removed it easily and enjoyed it anyway.

I'm pretty sure that I'll be doing this recipe again, and I think that next time I want to try using my own (homemade) breadcrumbs and cornmeal. I don't know how to do that yet, but it sounds fun and I think it would taste good. I'm also curious about taking off the skin, dipping these in egg, and then rolling them in the breadcrumb mixture (without the mayo).

~ Patty