Making Pierogies at Krakow Deli Brings Back Childhood Memories

Making pierogi at Krakow Deli Bakery and Smokehouse.

One of my fondest memories as a teenager was walking into my friend’s childhood home in Massachusetts to the sight of her mother pinching pierogies with two hands, landline phone locked between her ear and shoulder, cord pulled tight as it could go from the wall to the counter. We’d limbo under the line while lingering in the kitchen of her Polish home. Her mother would work late into the night, forming and rolling the dough and stuffing and crimping dozens of pierogies closed, filled with whatever ingredients she had on hand, including mashed potatoes and cheese, cabbage and kielbasa and sometimes blueberries for dessert. I never thought to ask to learn how to do it as she was always gabbing for hours on the phone with friends in Polish and I was afraid to interrupt. But I watched.

Her mother also made the most amazing overstuffed golombki, which is meat and rice rolled in cabbage leaves and topped with tomato sauce. Whenever she would make them, she would always save one or two for me, maybe just to see the look of delight on my face and get the appreciation that maybe other family members took for granted after eating them so often for so many years. She didn’t speak much English, but a smile and gasp of joy said way more than words to her. The pierogies and golombki were special to me, because when I got to have them, it was a true treat.

“Dziękuję” (“thank you”), I would say, digging in.

I didn’t grow up with too many cultural staples in my own family. I come from an English and French Canadian background, but the recipes for my memere’s tourtiere meat pie were lost when she died, since they only existed in her head and no one could quite recreate a pie like her, even if you tried hard as you could to mimic it. We attempted.

My dad is a master cook borrowing from many cultures to make pounded-thin veal saltimbocca topped with crisp prosciutto or crab-stuffed filet of sole, while my mom was the Campbell’s soup queen, heiress of the casserole generation. Cream of mushroom canned soup went in everything from pasta dishes to broccoli topped with buttery toasted Ritz cracker crumbs. But I was still forced to eat day-old macaroni and cheese, which lead to two-day-old macaroni and cheese, leftovers that still make my stomach churn today. That might explain why my own two children have always hated macaroni and cheese.

What I loved most about her house was the sense of Polish culture I absorbed, from the polka music playing in the living room to the Milka chocolates imported from Poland. I used to say “Daj mi buzi” [“give me a kiss”] — the only real phrase I knew in Polish — to everyone in her family with a wink, and they would laugh and sometimes oblige with a kiss on each of my cheeks.

Unfortunately, this friendship fell apart later in life as some friendships do as we grow older and our lifestyles change, feelings get hurt, time is not enough and other friends come and go from our lives. I have memories of attending her wedding in Poland and eating pierogi in the early morning hours and dancing to polka music while shouts of “za zdrowie” (cheers) blurred in the background noise while we lost track of too many hoisted tiny glasses of vodka. I’m still holding onto all of the comforting memories regardless of how we grew apart.

So when I was invited to take a pierogi-making class at Woonsocket’s Krakow Deli Bakery and Smokehouse, I was ready to retrieve some of that childhood nostalgia from the back of my brain. I hadn’t tasted a good pierogi in years, and I was eager to learn how to recreate them myself.

Krakow Deli set up a family-style table inside the back corner of the storefront where twelve participants were greeted to mise en place settings outfitted with a wooden board, rolling pin, cheesecloth and pre-measured bowls of mashed potatoes, farmers cheese and flour. Then Krakow Deli owners Krystian Przybylko, and his sister, Marta Samek, circulated the room, adding vegetable oil and hot water to everyone’s dough mixture in our metal bowls until we created the perfect doughy consistency. We kneaded the mounds on the flour-dusted wooden boards until they were the ideal texture for rolling out into rounds. To do that, we each created a long log of dough, then cut the dough into twenty equal one-inch sections.

Watch a slide show of making pierogies:

Each section was then hand-rolled into a ball, and using the rolling pin, flattened into a circle that was large enough to leave enough space in the middle for the mashed potatoes and farmers cheese filling. But first, we needed to mix some caramelized onions and bacon into the filling. Once that was combined, we used an ice cream scooper to form rounds of filling that were then placed in the middle of each flattened dough disc. Krystian and Marta then taught us how to fold over and pinch the dough into half-moon shapes without leaving any gaps between the seams; crimp on one side, then turn it over and pinch along the edges one more time. Once our little dough purses were inspected and passed the gap test, we added them to boiling pots of water for about two minutes. We watched as our little dumplings bobbed and floated to the surface, which is how we knew they were ready. The final step was to top with them with more bacon and onions and eat. They tasted just like I remember at my childhood friend’s home.

The whole time while we worked, deli specialties rolled out of the Krakow kitchen for the whole class to taste. We feasted on white borscht soup stocked with kielbasa, red beet borscht served with savory meat-stuffed crepes, hunter’s stew and more during the lesson. We were also treated to a sit-down lunch of golombki, lazy pierogi, and potato-and-cheese and blueberry pierogies followed by jammy cookies for dessert. Stuffed to the brim with Polish food, I browsed the shop and found so many other things that brought back childhood memories, from the bars of Milka chocolate to the golombki in the deli case. I bought some apple strudel bread, golombki, cookies, kielbasa and more.

When I got home, I took a deep breath and texted a photo of my pierogi masterpieces to my old friend, hoping this might be the thing to finally bring us back together after all this time. I waited anxiously, but my phone never pinged a reply. I sighed, and dug into the pierogies with my own family, including my husband and two kids. Watching my six-year-old daughter devour them with a smile and gasp of joy, I vowed to teach her how to make them now that I have the recipe.

Dough for (24) Pierogi
9 ounces of King Arthur flour
1.5 ounces of oil
5 fluid ounces of hot water
1/2 teaspoon of salt<

Potatoes Cheese and Onion Filling
10  ounces of mashed potatoes
5 ounces of farmer cheese
1 sautéed onion
salt and pepper to taste

Lazy Pierogi – Leniwe Pierogi “Kopytka”
16 ounces of mashed potatoes
6 ounces of farmers cheese
3 eggs
1 cup of King Arthur flour
pinch of salt

Krakow Deli hosts periodic pierogi-making classes. They sell out fast, but stay tuned for announcements of new classes on their Facebook page. They are also holding an all-you-can-eat pierogi day on March 15 at 11 a.m. Find out more here. 855 Social St., Woonsocket, 401-765-4600, facebook.com/KrakowDeliBakerySmokehouse

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