Step 1: Pick up your friends. Then go out and gather your ingredients.
This includes making a quick stop for beef/pork at a little red shop covered in sausage advertisements and popping into the neighborhood grocery store for extra flour.
Step 2: Gather the men in the kitchen. (This includes that particular man who's been telling you for days that making pelmeni is women's work and that you're going to be slaving in the kitchen for hours while he drinks beer with the other guys.) Ensure the men have access to liquor.
Step 3: Leave the men to their tasks.
Step 4: Go for a walk with the other women. Watch a rainstorm in the distance, swat mosquitoes, wander into giant cylinders, and come back as dusk falls.
Step 5: Return to find the men still drinking...
... and showing off trays and trays of perfect looking pelmeni!
Step 6: Enjoy a glass of wine while the men oversee the final stages of preparation, aka adding the perfect hexagons to a pot of boiling water and then bringing them to the dinner table.
Voilà!
I totally was not expecting the "pelmeni lesson" to go like this. It almost felt like March 8th (International Women's Day) to get the night off from cooking. Maybe D was pulling my leg the whole time or maybe he was just as surprised as I was to find himself in the kitchen for 3 hours! Hopefully the labor wasn't too backbreaking for them, as they did have a dough machine, a meat grinder, and a special honeycomb-shaped pelmeni maker at their disposal. And that pelmeni- WOW. The best ever!!
One other cool part of the evening was the huge field we walked through. "I've got the biggest backyard in all of Kharkiv!" our host proudly exclaimed when we first arrived.
It was indeed gigantic. I guess that's how Sasha grew to such enormous proportions. Or, of course, maybe he got his hooves on the leftover pelmeni and that's what did it ; )
Have you tried pelmeni? Homemade or store-bought?
If you haven't had the chance yet, would you like to try it someday?
Step 2: Gather the men in the kitchen. (This includes that particular man who's been telling you for days that making pelmeni is women's work and that you're going to be slaving in the kitchen for hours while he drinks beer with the other guys.) Ensure the men have access to liquor.
Step 3: Leave the men to their tasks.
Step 4: Go for a walk with the other women. Watch a rainstorm in the distance, swat mosquitoes, wander into giant cylinders, and come back as dusk falls.
Step 5: Return to find the men still drinking...
Step 6: Enjoy a glass of wine while the men oversee the final stages of preparation, aka adding the perfect hexagons to a pot of boiling water and then bringing them to the dinner table.
Voilà!
I totally was not expecting the "pelmeni lesson" to go like this. It almost felt like March 8th (International Women's Day) to get the night off from cooking. Maybe D was pulling my leg the whole time or maybe he was just as surprised as I was to find himself in the kitchen for 3 hours! Hopefully the labor wasn't too backbreaking for them, as they did have a dough machine, a meat grinder, and a special honeycomb-shaped pelmeni maker at their disposal. And that pelmeni- WOW. The best ever!!
One other cool part of the evening was the huge field we walked through. "I've got the biggest backyard in all of Kharkiv!" our host proudly exclaimed when we first arrived.
Have you tried pelmeni? Homemade or store-bought?
If you haven't had the chance yet, would you like to try it someday?
Looks awesome! I love thd directions!
ReplyDeleteHaha, thanks Joyce!
DeletePerhaps the favorite pelmeni recipe I've ever seen.
ReplyDeleteI think you can duplicate the process pretty easily with the Russki's help : ) What does he think about that?
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