It kind of sounds like bloody Sunday but it was more or less flour and potato Sunday in the MadZak kitchen. Judy and I decided it’s been way to long for us to go without eating some yummy pierogi and we managed to fulfill that craving. These were delicious and exactly how my great aunt’s used to make.

We ended up running out of potato mixture for this event but we had a nice can of sauerkraut standing by waiting to be stuffed into the little pockets to finish it off. We used small red potatoes so that might be why we were off but trial and error is what it takes to properly nail down a recipe. Oh and this recipe makes about 102 and maybe more if you are quick and not tired like we were!

Ingredients:

• 4 1/1 cups of white whole wheat flour
• 2 teaspoons salt
• 2 tablespoons melted butter
• 2 cups sour cream
• 3 eggs (1 yolk only)
• 2 tablespoons vegetable oil
• 8 peeled and cubed baking potatoes
• 1 cup shredded cheddar cheese (go ahead an add some more you know you want to)
• salt and paper to taste

Method:

1. In a large bowl mix the flour and salt.
2. In a separate bowl whisk up the butter, sour cream, eggs, and oil.
3. stir the wet into the dry until it’s well blended. Cover with a towel and let stand for 20 minutes
4. Put the cubed potatoes into a pot and fill with enough water to cover.
5. Bring the pot to boil and cook for about 15 minutes or until the potatoes are soft for a fork to go right through
6. Drain the water and then mash em. Add the cheese and mix it to blend evenly. throw in some salt and pepper for good measure
7. Take the dough and use your method of choice to make the sheets for the pierogi. I have kitchen-aid attachments which make life hella easy. You can also use a hand crank pasta machine OR a rolling pin. Regardless get the dough to a thin state that’s not going to tear like paper, you kinda want card stock weight.
8. With the sheets using a mold or a circle cookie cutter to make your individual pockets.
9. Place a good amount of filling in the center but not to much to tear open the dough when you attempt to fold. Fold it over, crimp the edges and place on a sheet pan
10. Once a sheet pan is full, throw it in the freezer while you fill up the next one. You don’t want any touching while we “flash freeze” them. This will allow you to bag without getting a lump of potatoey dough later when you try to cook em.

How I Cook:

You can pre-boil these prior to freezing or just boil them prior to pan frying. You need to pan fry these babies in some butter and onions. If you do this you will be a happy little polish boy/girl and will thank me by sending me over a few of those hundred pierogi you just cranked out!

Woo buddy… I’ve been busy here at the MadZak kitchen lately with some exploration into the wonderful world of Waffles! I got a nice mini waffle maker for Christmas (great gift mom & dad!) so i figured i had to put it to use. I started with peanut butter waffles. MadZak doesn’t waste time with standards, he goes right for the jugular and breaks boundaries.

The peanut butter waffles were delicious but were a bit dense. The next weekend i explored what is known as… Cornbread Waffles. I AM A CORNBREAD FIEND! love it so much and these turned out amazing. fluffy and yet grainy like a good cornbread should be. The next weekend I broke out of the vegan recipes (yeah those previous ones were all vegan!) and tried some fancy pumpkin at request from Judy.

They were tasty but nothing spectacular then the final week is what you all get to see in action. Vegan Pumpkin Waffles! These completely blew the egg/butter ones out of the park. The batter was much creamier which made for a light and fluffy taste. Hands down these guys win for me based on flavor and simplicity, and now for you!

Ingredients:

• 3/4 cup puree pumpkin (natural kind no pie filling)
• 3 tablespoons pure maple syrup
• 3 tablespoons canola oil
• 2 cups soy milk
• 1 tablespoon cornstarch
• 1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract
• 2 1/4 cups white whole wheat flour (what i usually bake with)
• 1 tablespoon baking powder
• 3/4 teaspoon salt
• 1/4 teaspoon ground nutmeg

Method:

1. Turn on that waffle maker and get it all heated up.
2. In a large mixing bowl, combine the pumpkin, maple syrup, and canola oil.
3. in another not so large bowl or measuring cup, mix together the milk and cornstarch then add to the pumpkin mixture. Add the vanilla at this point as well
4. Add the flour, baking powder, salt, and nutmeg into the wet goodness and mix until the batter is looking smooth like.
5. Spray the waffle iron with some cooking spray and use the proper amount of waffle mix right in the center (about 1/2 cup for my mini machine per waffle section)
6. Don’t spread the mixture, let the iron do the work. Lower the lid of the iron and let it cook for the machines desired time.
7. Once it’s completely pop the lid, use something like a chopstick to remove the waffle from the iron to the plate and then top with your favorite toppings. Enjoy!

Bread 2.0 you ask? Yup I’ve revised my old bread recipe after some good research from my favorite books and a little trial and error. There are a few secrets I found out from all that research and those are included below. You can use any type of flour you want, I just usually have white/wheat on hand so that’s the winner over here.

Two new things in this guy. The first is I moved to weighing out everything as it was so much easier and less messy than measuring it all. I hate dishes and this didn’t help that hatred until i change it. Now I only use 2 bowls, a mixing attachment and a bread pan BAM! Finally the super secret to good bread flavor comes from a slow rise. This is why the instructions say throw it in the fridge for 24 hours. Trust me you want to do this and it helps split up the 3 hours of bread making.

Ingredients:

• 511g white whole wheat flour
• 56g – vital wheat gluten
• 8g salt
• 4g – yeast
• 48g – honey
• 340g – water

Method:

1. Take your mixing bowl and set it on a kitchen scale. Zero out the scale and then add the ingredients in no specific order. Just remember to zero out the scale as you move from ingredient to ingredient.
2. Once you have a nice big pile of stuff, begin the mixing and kneading. I use my nice kitchen aid to do the work by slapping the dough hook on and letting it sit on speed 2 for 1 minute or until it’s a nice ball then moving it up to 4 for 10 minutes.
3. After 10 minutes, take a little piece of your dough and stretch it up to a light, it should stretch without breaking and become translucent. If it doesn’t, kneed it some more until that occurs.
4. Take the bowl with the dough and set it aside with a towel on top for 1 hour.
5. After 1 hour, check the dough to see if it has doubled in size. The proper way is to poke your finger in the center and watch how the dough reacts. If it springs right back up, let it rest more. If it stays nice and sunk in and looks like a finger hole, you are in business.
6. Take the dough and throw it in another container with a lid or a zip-lock bag (save the bag and buy some large containers). Let the dough sit for 24 hours in the fridge. You can skip this part but you are missing some good flavors…
7. Remove the dough after 24 hours or sooner. Let it sit 1 1/2 hours until about room temperature. if you didn’t wait for the flavor then ignore the last direction
8. Pound down the dough to release the gases and kneed back into a nice loaf shape
9. Using some oil, grease up a bread pan then put the pretty dough into it. Cover with a towel and set aside for another hour.
10. Preheat the oven to 350 about 15 minutes before the hour is up.
11. After that hour, make a score mark (use a nice sharp knife carefully cutting only the top part of the dough and not too deep) down the center. Spray/brush more oil on top of the dough.
12. Place in the oven and cook for 30 minutes, walking away without the oven light on. Don’t open the door and don’t turn the light on until it’s been 30 minutes. Bread is very shy and likes to do it’s thing in private.
13. Remove and let fully cool before cutting. Yes it’s hard, I know and i can speak from first hand experience that it’s a bad idea to cut it too soon!

When I was in Taiwan I had a very delicious beef noodle soup and have been longing for a soup to that caliber. Luckily January is when I started to perfect my vegetable stock and figured I’d give it a shot with some vegetable noodle soup.

The broth is what really seals this dish as the ingredients do nothing but soak up the flavor. If you can make the broth yourself, you are better off as store bought just won’t cut it!

INGREDIENTS:

• 2 cups vegetable broth
• 2 cups water
• 2 tablespoons rice vinegar
• 2 tablespoons soy sauce
• 1 teaspoon sesame oil
• 1 teaspoon salt
• 1 teaspoon pepper
• 1 carrot (peeled)
• 1 onion
• 4 cloves garlic
• 4 wood-ear (any fungus like mushrooms)
• 1 tomato
• 1 tablespoon basil
• 1 tablespoon thyme

METHOD:
Combine vegetable broth and water in a pot and bring to boil. Add frozen udon noodles, carrots, onions, wood-ear or mushrooms, tomatoes, garlic, basil, and thyme. Once frozen udon noodles start to break apart, go ahead and add the sesame oil, rice vinegar, and soy sauce.

Once vegetables and noodles are soft, remove from heat, add salt and pepper, and serve.

Green curry and rice is a personal favorite dish of mine and I’ve seen it served as soup or as a thick sauce on the rice. It is super great to warm you up during the winter and no one should be afraid of curry as it’s easily adjustable. The flavor from the green curry is what makes this dish, combined with coconut milk and you get a nice sweet heat. Not only will all the ingredients soak up the flavor but the rice will absorb whatever is left leaving you with a dish to remember. You can adjust the green curry paste based on your heat tolerance. I’ve found that 4 seems to work good for Judy who doesn’t like heat at all and is still a bit hot for my medium tastes. Play with the ingredients, most everything will work fine!

INGREDIENTS:

• 1 1/2 cups coconut milk (1 can)
• 4 tablespoons green curry paste
• 1 cup water
• 1 cup broccoli
• 1 cup cauliflower
• 1 teaspoon salt
• 1 teaspoon pepper
• 4 cups rice

METHOD:
In a skillet, bring 1 cup of coconut milk to boil with green curry paste. Reduce to medium and add everything but the chicken into the milk/curry mixture. Cook the chicken separately and add into the soup mixture once done. Cook for 15 minutes or until vegetables are soft and serve on rice.

Having a bunch of turkey left overs from Thanksgiving, I’ve spent most of the week working on utilizing it as much as I can. Last Night, I made a nice turkey fried rice for my wife and as always it was super simple and super tasty.

As with many of my recipes, it is a bit of a blank canvas and you can use any type of meat you’d like. Enjoy the great mix of carrots, green peppers, turkey, and egg as it melts in your mouth and warms you up. This is what fried rice should be, notice the lack of that weird yellow color? I still haven’t figured out why that’s added to the take outs! Make a big batch as you can warm this up for quick dinners or lunches as well.

INGREDIENTS:

• 1 1/2 cups turkey (pulled/shredded)
• 1 carrot (vertical sliced)
• 1/2 green pepper (horizontal sliced)
• 4 cloves garlic (diced)
• 1 egg
• 2 cups rice (cooked)
• 1 tablespoon soy sauce
• 1 tablespoon rice wine
• 1 tablespoon garlic (diced)
• 1/4 cup green onion (sliced)

METHOD:
Warm a skillet on medium-high heat. Once warmed, add oil and garlic then sauté for 30 seconds or so. Add carrots, green peppers, pepper, and turkey. Turn heat up to high and fry for 5 minutes stirring to make sure things don’t stick to the pan.

Add rice, rice wine, and soy sauce and mix well. Make a small hole in the center of the skillet and crack the egg in the middle. Mix the egg until it is cooked, add green onions and then mix the whole skillet up, remove from heat and serve.

I first had this dish at Siam Cafe in the “chinatown” of Cleveland, Ohio and I immediately fell in love! The noticeable difference between an american and chinese eggplant is a sweeter flavor and this dish helps show that along with a great characteristic of a sponge. The eggplant soaks up the blend of sauces, soy/vinegar/wine, and provides a consistent flavor on each bite.

For about 20 minutes of cooking time, you will get 4 servings, a great smelling house, and a delightful dinner with plenty of lunch time leftovers. You can also add some hot sauce if you want to kick up the spice.



INGREDIENTS:

• 4 japanese eggplant
• 1/4 cup garlic (diced)
• 1/2 green pepper
• 4 green onion stalks
• 2 tablespoon cornstarch (mixed with 1 tablespoon water)
• 2 tablespoon soy sauce
• 2 teaspoon black vinegar
• 2 tablespoon rice wine (cooking wine will do)
• 4 tablespoons olive oil
• 4 cups rice

METHOD:
Wash outside of eggplants and cut off vine end. Cut eggplant in half at the middle, then slice each half lengthwise. Cut each eggplant piece using an angle, you want the eggplant to be chunky but not too big. Turn the skillet to medium-high heat and when heated, add half of the oil, the garlic, and the eggplant chunks. Cook for 5 minutes.

Slice the green pepper and add to the skillet along with the remaining oil. Cook for 5 minutes. In a bowl combine the cornstarch and water and set aside. Add to the skillet the soy sauce, black vinegar, and rice wine. Bring the added sauce to boil, then add cornstarch. Once the sauce is boiling again, remove skillet from heat and continue to stir until sauce thickens and coats all the eggplant.

Place 1 cup of rice in a bowl, pour 1/4th of the eggplant over the top and sprinkle with 1/4th of the green onion. Repeat for the the remaining 3 bowls and serve.

As many of you may noticed, there is always a bunch of turkey left over from the holidays. Being from the bird family, you can easily dress up turkey to appear to be chicken and save that tasty meat from going to waste!

This dish does just that, with the combination of spices the signature turkey taste is covered up and even in pictures appears to look like chicken! A simple combination of spiced turkey, cheese, tomato, and green onion presents itself beautifully in this quesadilla with a rich taste that’s sure to entice you to make it up again or even ask for more left overs.



INGREDIENTS:

• 1 cup turkey (diced)
• 1 cup cheese (colby jack)
• 1/2 cup green onions (about 2 stalks)
• 1 tomato (diced)
• 1 dash pepper
• 1 dash cayenne pepper
• 1 teaspoon cilantro
• 4 10″ tortilla

METHOD:
Preheat oven to 350. In a mixing bowl, combine tomato, turkey, green onion, cheese, pepper, cayenne pepper, and cilantro. Mix until all ingredients are mixed well.

Lay 1 tortilla on a baking sheet, pour half of the mixture on the tortilla, top with another tortilla. Place in oven on top rack for about 8 minutes. Watch for the tortilla to get brown on top. Remove and Serve with sour creme or guacamole.

So you got an urge for some mexican food but realized that you are out of packets! Don’t worry, we’ve all been in this same position and here is an easy solution for you. Most of the ingredients are pretty standard in your spice collection, if not just pick them up next time when you hit up the store.

I’ve tried this on everything from chicken to tofu and it’s amazing how much more flavor you get out of this compared to the packets! Just mix this up and add it right when you start cooking and the outcome will be delicious, i promise!

INGREDIENTS:

• 1 teaspoon salt
• 1 teaspoon chili powder
• 1/2 teaspoon cornstarch
• 1/2 teaspoon crushed red pepper flakes ( or cayenne pepper)
• 1/2 teaspoon garlic powder
• 1/2 teaspoon oregano
• 1/2 teaspoon ground cumin

METHOD:

Combine seasoning ingredients into a small bowl or container.

Such a simple yet delicious dish which can be served at all hours of the day. This tasty yellow bread is sure to make your mouth, stomach, and head happy as can be with it’s fluffy texture and sweet taste.

It took a few tries, but those tries just made this better and better. It’s a good moist and a bit flaky. This one was made with egg and milk replacer so that’s why there’s little black specks in it. Be sure to enjoy it warmed up with some butter drizzled on top.

INGREDIENTS:

• 1 1/4 cups all purpose white flour
• 3/4 cup yellow cornmeal
• 2 teaspoons baking powder
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 1/4 cup sugar
• 1/4 cup vegetable oil
• 1 cup milk
• 1 egg, beaten

METHOD:
Preheat oven to 400 degrees.

Combine the cornmeal, flour, salt, sugar, and baking powder. Mix until blended then pour in the vegetable oil, milk, and beaten egg. Mix until a thick batter is formed.

Grease a 8″ or 9″ baking dish with vegetable oil, pour batter into pan, and bake for 25 minutes. Remove from oven, Let cool for 30 minutes, and Serve.

SERVINGS: 8