Stuffed Cabbage

(Holupki)
In the 1890s, large groups of Eastern European immigrants came to the Pittsburgh area to work in the city's mills. The cool thing about Pittsburgh is that each ethnic group kept it's history and traditions alive. It's something that makes me very proud to say I am from the 'Burgh! These little stuffed cabbages are made in more of a Slovak style, but many groups can claim them as their own. From Turkey's Sarma to Golubtsy in Russia, every country in between has a version of their own. We call 'em "Pigs in a Blanket." It's great food for a cold day.

Stuffed Cabbage
1 large head of cabbage
1/2 pound lean ground beef
1/2 pound lean ground pork
1 28-ounce can crushed tomatoes
1 8-ounce can tomato sauce
1 16-ounce can sauerkraut
1 1/2 cups cooked long grain brown rice
1 medium onion, chopped
4 cloves garlic, minced
1 large egg or egg substitute
2 tablespoons white vinegar
1 tablespoon sugar (or Agave Nectar)
1 tablespoon parsley
1 teaspoon salt (divided)
1/4 teaspoon fresh ground black pepper
1 tablespoon Canola oil

Preheat oven to 350 degrees F. Remove core from cabbage and set into a large pot of boiling water. Gradually as the leaves become soft, remove from head of cabbage and put on a towel line baking sheet to cool. Continue to remove leaves making sure to not overcook until all of the large leaves are soft. The inner leaves can be set aside to use in other dishes.

Sauce: In a saucepan, saute garlic in oil until barely golden. Combine crushed tomatoes, tomato sauce, two cloves of the minced garlic, vinegar, sugar and one half teaspoon of salt and slowly simmer while the rest of the dish is prepared.

Filling: In a large bowl, combine remaining salt, ground meat, rice, remaining garlic, parsley, onion, egg and pepper and mix well. Set aside. You can switch out the pork for a full pound of beef, or even use lamb if you wish.

Assembly: Drain and squeeze sauerkraut and line the bottom of a large baking dish (16x10), spooning a couple of ladles of the simmering sauce and mixing it into the kraut. Smooth to make a nice bed for the cabbage rolls. When leaves are cool, trim the large back spine of the leaf so that it is the same thickness as the rest of the leaf. Place about 1/4 cup of filling into the leaf and roll, placing the rolled cabbages over the top of the sauerkraut/sauce mixture. Pour over remaining sauce and cover dish with aluminum foil. Cook for 1 1/2-2 hours.

City Chicken

This Pittsburgh favorite is a meal-time-machine back into the 1930s. Imagine yourself feasting with the family at the table set with Fiesta - kind of like Ralphie in A Christmas Story. On the place is budget-friendly home cooked food like mashed potatoes, canned peas and chicken with gravy. Wait, chicken is too expensive. Make that city chicken, chunks of pork or veal arranged on a stick to resemble that expensive chicken leg.

It's hard to believe that at one time, chicken was more costly than veal or pork and was saved for that special Sunday night dinner. City chicken is best known in the big cities of Cleveland and Cincinnati, Ohio and Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania during the Depression. You can still find packages of pork and veal with sticks sold as "city chicken" at the butcher shop. It is delicious, and even tastes a bit like chicken. But then, that's what everyone says about all unusual food, right?

City Chicken
2 pounds veal or pork (or both) cut into two inch chunks
3/4 cup whole wheat breadcrumbs
3/4 cup stone ground whole wheat flour
2 eggs
1/4 cup milk
1 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon pepper
1 teaspoon sweet paprika
2 cups low sodium chicken broth
1/4 cups canola oil
2 tablespoons arrowroot (or cornstarch)

Beat eggs and milk and place in a small tray or bowl. Combine flour, bread crumbs, salt, pepper, paprika and set aside in another small tray or bowl. Place four or five chunks of pork or veal, or alternating chunks of both on a stick. Dip stick into egg mixture, then roll in breadcrumbs until well coated. When all sticks are coated with breadcrumbs,  place on a dish and cover with foil and set in the refrigerator for at least one hour to allow the breading to set. Preheat oven to 350F. Add canola oil to a hot skillet and brown the sticks on all sides. When brown, place sticks on a 9x12 baking dish. Pour chicken broth over top and cook in oven for 1 to 1 1/2 hours until tender. When done, remove sticks to a dish and cover with foil. Take pan dripping and pour into a sauce pan and heat to boiling. Add arrowroot mixed with a bit of water and thicken into a gravy. Serve sticks with gravy.

Swiss Steak

My mom had a nice little collection of favorite recipes that she would cook. Unfortunately, most of them were found in cookbooks and never written down on cards or saved. She would only refer back to the cookbook that the recipe was in. Now that she is gone, it has been difficult to find the favorites I grew up with. Swiss steak is one of those recipes. I have no idea where she got her recipe, and it is not written down. So this leaves me to try to find a way of making it myself. Maybe one day I will replicate what she made - tender steaks with a tomato gravy. But until then, this recipe is easy and delicious. Maybe someday I will perfect the gravy!

Swiss Steak
1 1/2 pounds beef cubed steak
1 14.5 ounce can diced tomatoes
1 large onion, diced
2 stalks celery, chopped fine
2 carrots, shredded
2 cloves garlic, minced
1/4 cup flour
1 tablespoon Worcestershire sauce
1 teaspoon smoked paprika
1/2 teaspoon salt
fresh ground black pepper
canola oil

Dredge steaks in flour and brown on both sides in a skillet with about two tablespoons of canola oil. Set steaks aside. Saute onions, celery and carrot until softened, and when done, add garlic. Combine vegetables with can of tomatoes and paprika, salt, pepper, Worcestershire sauce and allow to cook for a few minutes. Toss everything into a crock pot and cook 8 hours until steaks are fork tender. Serve with pasta or mashed potatoes. You can also make this on the stove top in a dutch oven instead of a slow cooker. Just add about a cup of water or broth and simmer everything low and slow for about two hours.

Fried Cornmeal Mush

I have a really good memory. At least that is what family tells me. I can remember the tiniest detail of people and travels from years past. I get these sudden images that flash in my mind. Among them are memories of my grandmother. She made me this dish once - at her cabin in the Laurel Mountains. My mom also made it for me, along with that mysterious food "scrapple", reputedly containing all parts of the pig - even the squeal. I would eat it all for breakfast, but mush was my favorite. Delicately crispy on the outside, creamy warm on the inside and dripping with real maple syrup.

Mush used to come in these little tubs in the refrigerated section of the grocery. But why anyone would bother buying the pre-made stuff when it's so easy and cheap to do it yourself is beyond me. I was thinking of adding fresh corn to it also. You might call this stuff polenta. I call it delicious.

Fried Cornmeal Mush
4 cups water (set 1 cup aside)
1 cup yellow cornmeal
1/2 teaspoon salt
vegetable oil for frying
flour

Combine cornmeal, salt and one cup of cold water in a bowl and combine well. Bring remaining three cups of water to a boil. While boiling, pour cold cornmeal and water into the boiling water and whisk to smooth any lumps. Cook on medium low to low heat for 20 minutes or until cornmeal becomes a thick smooth paste. Be careful with the heat as it cooks and stir constantly, because it can bubble like hot lava as it thickens.

Pour hot cornmeal into a Pyrex loaf pan and refrigerate overnight. When ready to cook the next morning, invert pan onto a dish or cutting board and cut 1/4 inch slices. Dredge in flour and fry in skillet with hot vegetable oil until golden brown on both sides.

Serve with butter or with your favorite syrup.

Pickled Purple Eggs

To the uninitiated, they look like alien spores out of a cult 70s sci-fi film. Touch them and a creature conjured from the imagination of H.R. Giger will burst forth and implant in your viscera. Run! No, wait, they are only Pickled Purple Eggs! Harmless little eggs which are a fixture of Pennsylvania salad bars and farm markets, or anywhere there is a population of Amish or Mennonite cooks. Pickled eggs were first made as a way to preserve eggs using leftover pickle juices. The Pennsylvania Dutch brought this technique, and it continues today with the area's Amish, who still live as their ancestors did without electricity.  This recipe is in homage to my own Pennsylvania Dutch ancestor - Elizabeth Barth who was born in May, 1770 and lived in Lancaster PA.

Pickled Purple Eggs
1 dozen eggs
1 14.5-ounce can of sliced or small beets
1 cup cider vinegar
1 cup water
1/3 cup brown sugar
1 stick cinnamon
4 whole cloves
4 whole allspice berries

Hard boil eggs and cool immediately in ice water.  Using eggs which are a few weeks old makes them easier to peel. Set aside and allow to cool.

Combine beets, vinegar, water, sugar and spices and simmer for 10 minutes. Cool.  Peel eggs and add to cooled liquid. You can keep the beets with the eggs to pickle, or use separately. Refrigerate for two days to a week before eating. The eggs can keep in the refrigerator for up to two months.

Pineapple Kielbasa

This recipe comes from my sister Kathy, who made it once for a dinner party. It is a great addition to any gathering from holiday feast to tailgate party. I like to take it in to work on snack days because it is easy and delicious. It is a celebration of Pittsburgh flavors.

The pineapple juice acts as a tenderizer for the kielbasa, making it fork tender and sweet. Use as an entree or appetizer.

Pineapple Kielbasa
1 pound lowfat Polska kielbasa
1 bottle Heinz Chili Sauce
1 can crushed pineapple
1 cup brown sugar

Put chili sauce, pineapple (with juice), and brown sugar into a crock pot and mix well. Slice kielbasa into 1/2 inch pieces and add to crock pot. Cook on high for four hours, and turn to low to keep heated throughout the day.

Potato and Onion Pierogi

This recipe is dedicated to my cube mate Andrea (aka "The Grand Inquisitor"). She puts up with a great deal sitting next to me, and she always has a sense of humor, even when tired from a night caring for her little one. We were both thinking of Pierogies this week, and I decided to experiment a bit. This is the result of my day of experimentation. After several hours of multitasking, I emerged from the kitchen bedraggled and dusted with flour and armed with delicious pierogies toasted in butter.

I probably will be editing this recipe as I learn to equalize the proportion of filling needed to dough, so keep that in mind if you find things different around here. I found three websites that assisted me, and I used a combination of all three to create my own.


Pierogi Dough:
4 cups all-purpose flour
1 cup sour cream
2 teaspoons salt
2 large eggs

Combine ingredients and knead into a pliable dough, about 10 minutes or so. I threw all of my ingredients into my bread machine and let it do the work of kneading. A food processor can also be used. The dough should be smooth, pliable and not too sticky. Add flour as needed, cover and set aside. You can keep the dough in the refrigerator for a few days.

Pierogi Filling:
3 large potatoes, peeled
1 large sweet onion, finely minced
2 tablespoons butter
Salt and pepper to taste

Boil potatoes until a fork easily pierces the potatoes. Drain and mash or process through a potato ricer. Set potatoes aside to cool.  Saute onions in a skillet with butter until soft and translucent, not browned. Add to potatoes and mix well. Do not add any additional liquid. Season to taste with salt and pepper. Sample the potato filling until the seasoning is good, as too little seasoning could easily leave the dumplings bland.

Dusting with flour, roll dough to 1/8th inch thickness. I used my Atlas pasta machine, because I typically don't bake and can't even remember where my rolling pin is. I gradually rolled it to a thinness of setting "4", which is about 1/8th inch thick. Lay dough out on a dusted surface, and cut rounds of about 3 1/5 to 4 inches round. Fill in the center with potato filling - approximately one generous teaspoon, moisten one half of the edge around with water and seal firmly with a fork and your fingers. I used a dumpling press to do mine.  When the dough is used up, you can either cook the pierogies and serve them or freeze them for future use, laying them out on a tray until frozen, and then sealing them in a container or bag.

To serve, boil completed dumplings in water for about five minutes, until they float. Drain, and then place in a skillet heated with butter and onions. Saute until dumplings are golden and onions are browned. You can either serve them slathered with sour cream, or as I do with melted mozzarella cheese. Four of these dumplings is a filling serving. My batch of dough ran out at about 20 dumplings.

Websites used in the making of these yummy pierogies:
Helen Dyrkaz's Pierogi Recipe
Accidental Hedonist - Potato Onion Pierogi
Homemade Pittsburgh Pierogies with Sour Cream

Haluski

I grew up in Pittsburgh, a city that loves it's old ethnic neighborhoods. I am always thrilled at how proud this city is about the people that made it. When I was a kid, my mother would take me to the annual Pittsburgh Folk Festival where each country's booth was well represented with food, crafts and dance. I loved it, and now that I am in a less ethnic part of the state, I realize that I miss this unique aspect of my hometown the most. I have never felt like I belonged where I currently live, and maybe this is why my heart tugs back to the "burgh."

Haluski is sturdy frugal fare from Poland, and it's well known in western Pennsylvania where immigrants from Poland came to work for a better life in the steel mills and factories in the 1840s. This dish was perfect for very hard working people, but those of us who sit at a desk all day should enjoy this meal as a special treat. This recipe makes an overflowing five-quart pot for me, so it would be great to take to a gathering. It's not the prettiest of plates, but damn it's good!

Haluski
3 8-ounce bags of extra wide egg noodles
1 head green cabbage
1 large sweet onion, sliced thinly
1 12-ounce package of uncooked bacon, cut into small pieces
4 tablespoons butter
4 cloves fresh garlic, minced
1 teaspoon Kosher salt
white pepper to taste - about 1/2 teaspoon
Parmesan cheese, grated

Boil noodles until tender al dente and drain. Remove the core from the cabbage and cut into quarters. Boil cabbage in a pot of water for about 15 minutes, until the cabbage is tender. Drain and set aside to cool. Once cool, slice into thin shreds. Saute bacon pieces in a large pot until cooked - not crispy. Remove the bacon pieces so they don't overcook and leave the bacon grease in the pot. Saute the onion slices in the bacon grease until translucent. Melt the butter and add the garlic, sauteing for one minute. Toss the noodles, cabbage, bacon back into the pot and heat through. Season with salt and pepper. Serve with a generous tablespoon of Parmesan on top.