recent adventures with cabbage

Sadly, my New Year's resolution to blog more often hasn't been great, but I have been cooking a lot (having a dining companion helps), although sometimes we have to go into the city to run errands and we end up having some kind of bland (but kinda cool in a retro way) diner food.
I have a bit of backlog now, and one of the more interesting "meals" we ate last week was my attempt to make pirogies/piroshkies after reading this NYTimes article about Veselka in the East Village. Blokey and I stumbled upon it once after "going out" in the Lower East Side last summer, and as a 24 hour place, it's a favorite for us after seeing a late movie at Film Forum or the IFC Center (both of which he likes less than BAM).
Anyway, it was cold that night, and I wanted pirogies or something else Eastern European and potatoey. I dragged myself to the late night grocery store and picked up cabbage, and from there, appropriated this baked pirogy dish, which ended up seeming like Jamaican patty or broadly pan-Latin empanada. Delicious nontheless.

Multi-Kulti hand pie
Potato filling:
2-3 potatoes, peeled, cut up and boiled
1/2 cheese
1/2 onion, diced
2 Tbs butter
1/4 buttermilk or regular milk
salt and pepper to taste
chopped (or dried) parsley
Directions: Sautee the onions in a bit of oil until soft. Add the potatoes and mash with a fork or a potato masher thing. Add cheese, milk, and butter, and stir until well blended. Season to taste.

Dan Quayle's favorite

Cabbage and Chickpea filling
2 c of cooked (well done) chickpeas
1/2 head of cabbage, cored and sliced
salt
pepper
olive oil
Hungarian paprika (or regular)
buttermilk or tomato paste
the other half the onion, diced
Saute the onion in the olive oil until soft. Add the cabbage and stir fry until it gets kinda golden around the edges. Add the chickpeas and sort of mash them down as you cook with a wooden spoon (it won't get as smooth as the potatoes). Add paste/milk (I did not, so it was too dry, so don't make my mistake), salt, pepper, and paprika to taste.

Cruciferous goodness

Outside dough
1 c. whole wheat flour
1 c. all purpose flour
3/4 teas salt
1/3 c. of olive oil
1/2- 1 c of buttermilk or milk
Add the first 4 ingredients together roughly until the form coarse crumbs. Add the milk about 1/4 cup at a time until a dough with pie crust consistency forms (you may end up not using the whole cup of milk). Save some flour for rolling out the dough.

Roll out balls of the dough (I made about 4 balls) quite thin, like a pie crust. Be sure to flour your surface and the pin.

The next part is kind of tricky. I placed generous spoonfuls (like 2-3 tablespoons) of filling in the dough, and then I just cut it in half diagonally and pinched the seams. See? It was very empanada-esque.


Preheat the oven to about 400 degrees
I baked these little fellas for about 15 minutes, until golden brown. Some of them split open.
Serve with your favorite bright red horseradish-beet condiment, and yogurt or sour cream with dill and a bit of salt. I had loads of that cabbage mess leftover, so I served it as a messy side salad.

Not quite Veselka, but decent faux Eastern European food for Bed-Stuy