December 22, 2005

Pirogi / Pedaheh

Even though the little forms we used did the edge crimping for us, I still liked to pinch a bit more just to be sure the pirog was completely closed up. Otherwise we'd lose most of the filling during the boiling later.

My dad's family is Ukrainian (his grandparents came over in the early 1900's). One Ukrainian (Byzantine Catholic) tradition that we try to keep when eating with my grandmother is to avoid meat on Christmas Eve. So for this Christmas Eve we are going to have homemade pirogi (I use this name for them because more people seem to be familiar with it, but I believe that is the Polish term. My great aunt has fits every time I say pirogi. It should be pedaheh.) and hopefully a Salmon Wrapped in Pastry dish that my dad used to make. (But he can't really help us with it any more. So it might all depend on whether we can find his old recipe.)

Though my great granny (the one off the boat) used to make pedaheh for us, my grandmother (the next generation down) never made it. And my mom is (mostly) Irish, so she sure couldn't teach me. Therefore, though I'm using someone else's recipe (I can't even remember whose at this point.) the whole procedure that I go through is pretty much my own. I'm sure it's pretty similar to what other pedaheh makers go through. But then again, what do I know? I've never made pedaheh before with anyone else that knew what they were doing.

So without further ado - Pirogi making by Meg and company, recipe included.

The recipe has been lost in the transition as Picasa doesn't have the means of posting a lot of text along with each separate photo. But you can still get the main idea here. I'll try to add ingredients at some point.