Bierocks - the food of my people!

In Kansas, everyone eats bierocks. Bierocks are a bread pocket filled with meat & cabbage. Yes, I said cabbage! They are a delicious Volga-German food (most people in Kansas are part of this ethnic group somewhere along the line) and so far as I'm aware, they don't eat them anywhere else. Though they are clearly (to me at least) a cross between German and Russian food.

Everyone's grandma makes them better than anyone else's but few people under the age of 40 know how to make them, which is both sad and adds to their allure - if you only eat them a few times a year they taste darn good!  Most people make a whole bunch in one day and put them in the freezer, this can be a whole day project and aside from making the house smell vaguely of cabbage, a fun way to spend a long afternoon.

Shortly before Christmas, I went out to my Grandma's house for a visit, dinner and board games (I lost sequence a lot and won rummikub a lot). What was for dinner? Bierocks. I was in heaven. The problem with living so far away from everyone who knows how to make bierocks, is I never get to eat them.

So I needed to learn to make them. I had a consultation with Mom, with Grandma and I dove in. Now, keep in mind this is not a recipe but more like "orally communicated guidelines." Mom and Grandma (paternal) don't make them exactly the same way, so I pieced it together from what they said to figure out what would work for me.

Bierock guidelines

Ingredients

bread dough
ground beef
green cabbage, shredded
salt
pepper
garlic, onion are optional 
butter

-Make a non-sweet bread dough (Mom recommended using Pillsbury hot roll mix, Grandma uses some frozen dough for making dinner rolls, or you can go make some dough from scratch. I used the roll mix.)

-While your dough rises, brown ground beef in a large pan with  shredded cabbage, seasoning as desired. Allow meat mixture to cool somewhat.

- When dough is almost ready, grease a larger cookie sheet and preheat oven to 370.

- After dough has risen, take a small ball (bit smaller than a tennis ball) and roll the dough out into a circle. Place about 1/2 cup of meat mixture in the center and pull the corners of the dough up and join them together in the center. Pull the new corners up and join them together, until the dough is sealed and circular (so much as you can, it takes practice to get them a nice shape).

- Flip prepared bierock over onto a greased cookie sheet. Repeat until cookie sheet is full and bake for 20 minutes at 370 or until nicely brown.

- After removing from the oven, baste tops lightly with butter. Repeat until ingredients are depleted.

- Allow to cool and enjoy!

Notes:
- If you use 1 box of Pillsbury hot roll mix, 1 lb of ground beef and 2-3 cups of cabbage you will get about 7 bierocks.
- Mom shreds the cabbage in a food processor to make it smaller, very few people make their bierocks this way but Mom always receives accolades for "less cabbagey" nature of hers and this is the secret.
- I said the directions to roll the bierocks out, my mom makes them in her hand, but how she does it is completely beyond me, feel free to try that if you're an over achiever!
- Most people like these with ketchup (including me) and some also with mustard, though this isn't strictly speaking traditional. 
- They also freeze very well but I don't think they are as good after being in the freezer.

Does anyone else's family eat these? If so, I want to know about it!

Date & walnut "icebox cookies"

My aunt made the best cookies when I was home for Christmas! Well, truthfully, she made lots that were so-so and one kind that was fantastic! It came from a Taste of Home cookbook/pamphlet that looked like it was circa late 80s.

1 cup butter/margarine/shortening

3/4 cup brown sugar

3/4 cup sugar

2 eggs

1 tsp vanilla

2 1/4 3 cups flour

1 tsp salt

1 tsp baking soda

3/4 cup chopped dates*

3/4 cup chopped walnuts*

 Mix ingredients thoroughly and then shape dough into a log (or two),wrap in plastic. Chill logs for 2hrs or up to 1 week, unwrap and cut into 1/2in slices. Place on  un-greased baking sheets and bake 350 for 10 minutes. Yield 2 1/2 dozen.

*The original recipe says 1 1/2 cups of "extras" and suggests different types of raisins, chips, nuts or various other things. The dates & walnuts are what my aunt used and what made this yummy.

I changed the recipe to call for more flour because I don't know what happened but this was the stickiest cookie dough I have ever encountered. It stuck to me, the mixer, the spatula - everything. I added almost a whole cup of additional flour. It might be because I did not have enough stick butter and used some spreadable margarine to get up to the needed 1 cup, but I would plan on having some extra around if I were you. I could not fathom how I was to form this sticky, gooey dough into a log, so I added flour until it was workable and used more to coat my hands when I made the logs.

Broccoli & sausage stuffed shells

Sometimes, I don't want to make lasagna because I don't feel like eating lasagna for, you know 9 meals. While it does freeze very well for a quick, take-to-work lunch option, I'm just not feeling like eating it so often! Or I make lasagna and have just a little bit of ricotta left over. What does one do with just a little bit of ricotta? (I recently tried a ricotta pasta sauce that was a icky, so not that...)

Enter suggestion from my friend Kim: stuffed shells. Alright, so this isn't so different from lasagna but it does scale a little better and it's at least arranged a little differently! I made a tad much this first time so I've scaled it down for you below.

Broccoli & Sausage stuffed shells
1/2 head broccoli, (or about 1 cup chopped)
1 Italian sweet or spicy sausage, cooked (I used turkey sausage and boiled it in advance while I was making breakfast one Sunday)
1 cup of ricotta
15-20 Jumbo pasta shells (or you could use manicotti)
1 small jar of marinara sauce (or half a large jar that might be left over)
1/4 tb of pepper
1/2 tb of garlic salt
1/4 cup mozzarella cheese

cooking equipment: small food processor (you might be able to get away with using a blender)

Broccoli, sausage and ricotta mixture

Cook pasta shells according to package directions, rinse and allow to cool slightly. Preheat oven to 350 degrees (I used my new toaster oven!). Grease 11 x 7 in baking pan and spoon small amount of marinara sauce in the bottom, just enough to coat the entire bottom. Place broccoli and sausage in food processor and chop until almost a paste (you can also do them individually). Mix broccoli and sausage with ricotta and using a spatuala or spoon fill each shell and place in pan. Filled shells can touch each other but should not be layered on top of each other. Cover with remaining marinara sauce and bake for 20 minutes. After removing from the oven, top with cheese and serve.
2-3 servings

Note: if you double the recipe you can use a 9 1/2 x 13 in pan

Before going in the oven, you might want to put on a little more sauce than this.

These were pretty good. As I said, my friend Kim makes this with broccoli, I added the sausage (Kim doesn't eat much meat).

Butternut squash soup - perfect winter dinner

Butternut squash soup might be the easiest soup to make in the world. Alright, it does make a few more dishes than I'm normally on board with but it might just be worth it. This soup has some wonderful fall flavors with apple, nutmeg and cinnamon.

I had a stray squash in the fridge, which I really needed to use and I was getting ready to head out of town but what to make? I was just getting over a cold, so it was feeling like a soup kind of day. Soup seems to be the standard thing to make with butternut squash, so since I'd never done it, the time seemed ripe! Pun totally intended.

I started browsing some recipes and they all seemed pretty similar, differing a little in their spice pallet but the gist was - cut up squash and boil in chicken broth before pureeing with whatever else you decide to put in there with it. This is what I came up with:

1 medium butternut squash
1 apple (I used 1.5 small gala apples)
2 cubes of chicken bullion
3 oz cream cheese
dash of nutmeg
dash of cinnamon
dash of salt

Equipment: food processor or blender

Cube the squash (tip) and core and dice the apples. Place squash and apples in large sauce pan with bullion and just enough water to cover the contents. Boil for 20 minutes or until squash is tender. Spoon cooked squash mixture into food processor with a sloted spoon, add cream cheese, cinnamon, nutmeg and salt and  blend until smooth. If you would like a thinner soup, add cooking liquid and blend until soup reaches desired consistency.  Makes 3 large bowls.

Be careful not to be too heavy handed with the spices, I put a dash because I think even a 1/2 tsp will be too much.

I will definitely be making this again and again all winter long, this soup was tasty. It does make some dishes, mostly because of the food processor but it's worth it. How else can you make a delicious soup in under 30 minutes? Also, it's ridiculously healthy and low in calories.

Peanut Butter & Nutella cookies

My contribution to the office holiday party this year was none other than peanut butter and nutella cookies. If you don't know what nutella is, you should. Just go buy some, you'll love it, I promise.

This all started when I saw a recipe somewhere for peanut butter and nutella cookies but they were no-bake and frankly, did not look too tasty. This got the idea in my head. What could possibly go better? So I got to thinking, nutella is not so different from peanut butter, why couldn't I just make peanut butter cookies and sub-out some peanut butter for nutella? No reason I could think of, so that is exactly what I did.

You can probably do this with any peanut butter cookie recipe but this one from Simply Recipes makes a fairly small batch - a plus for us single ladies.

1/2 cup sugar *and additional to roll dough balls
1/2 cup packed brown sugar
1/2 cup butter, room temperature
1/4 cup peanut butter
1/4 cup nutella
1 egg
1 1/4 cup flour
3/4 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon baking powder
1/4 teaspoon salt

Mix ingredients together to form dough. Roll dough into small balls, roll in  additional white sugar and place on greased cookie sheet. Using a fork, press into each ball twice, making a cross-hatch design. Bake at 375 for 10 minutes.

They will look a little darker than typical peanut butter cookies, so watch that they don't burn.

While these were tasty, I feel like the peanut butter and nutella flavors competed a little bit with each other. In the next round, I might make all nutella cookies and see how that turns out.

Late photo - Thanksgiving feast

I have been a supreme slacker on blogging. To be honest, I haven't been cooking very much either! However, my friend Kim (who just moved to DC!) and I did prepare a feast on Thanksgiving! See below two (very tardy) photos.

The ham was made by slicing a smoked ham partially apart and putting brown sugar in each slot. The toothpicks are holding small bits of apple and pineapple each. My grandma advised that using apple and pineapple adds a slightly different flavor. It was a tasty ham (made in the crock pot) but I'm not sure it's the best it could be. If anyone makes this for Christmas, be sure to let me know how you like the addition of apple!

The other photos shows part of the feast - green beans with blanched almonds, mashed potatoes, gravy (instant, sadly) and stuffing. We also had apple and pumpkin pie (both made from scratch by Kim!), turkey breast (small group), garlic biscuits, cheeses and any number of other yummy things.

Ham in the crock pot!

Just some of the Thanksgiving feast!

Repeat offender: pumpkin cheesecake

This was so good the first time, I made it again. This time with a little cinnamon in my homemade graham cracker crust - I did not cheat so much! Follow your normal graham crust and add just a 1/2 tb of cinnamon (or this recipe).