Students learn to make perogies

From left: Avrielle Huot, instructor Marie Hurtubise, Gail Coulombe, Bernadette Gartner, and Brenda Leonard.

By Lucie Roy

Morinville – With rolling pins at the ready the mission was to learn to make cheese and potato perogies. Taste of the Ukraine was alive and well at the Ray McDonald Sports Centre Nov.5 as instructor Marie Hurtubise got the one-day registrants together to learn how to make perogies. The class is back by popular demand. Last year she had 22 people in the class.

“They learn how to make this Ukrainian favourite using simple techniques and affordable ingredients,” Hurtubise said. The students bring a cookie sheet to the class and bring it back home with a batch of their own tasty creations. The perogies are handmade using real ingredients under the watchful eye of Hurtubise. She purchases the groceries, organizes the class, they make the dough and she oversees the production. After the three-hour class, the students were proud of the quality perogies they produced at the end of the time period.

Even though you can purchase them in the freezer section of the grocery store, the students learned making your own perogies is definitely worthwhile. The ability to tweak the filling to suit your own tastes is one of the benefits of making your own. For holidays and special events you can create some unique shapes, snowmen for a winter holiday party for example.

The perogy (perogi, perogies, pirohy, pirogy..) is Polish for “filled dumplings.” They are small, half-moon shaped dumplings with different fillings. The dough can be as simple as a flour-egg-water-salt combination or made with sour cream, cream cheese, potatoes or it can be dairy free. The fillings range from vegetables, to meat, fish, fruit, and sweet to savoury cheese. There are no right or wrong fillings. These little dumplings can be stuffed with virtually anything. The dough is just a container for whatever filling you want- just avoid anything that’s too wet. There are even dessert varieties filled with fruit.

Hurtubise said she is considering a class on making cabbage rolls.

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