Simply enjoy food

Peh - Roh - Heh (The "R" in "Roh" is hard - like a "D"). That's how you pronounce Pyrohy. At least, that's how I was brought up.

My mom makes the best pyrohy. While there are many things you can stuff them with such as cottage cheese, cabbage and onion and even squash, the only ones we ever made were with potato. This seems to have been so with most of the Montreal Ukrainians that I know. Must be a Montreal thing.

I tried the cottage cheese ones once when I was a child. I can see why we never made them. Not at all the same. Funny texture. The plain ones (potato) are so smooth and creamy. They just go down your esophagus as though they are riding on a buttery magic carpet.

They are actually coated in salty butter. Mmmmm.

Anyway, here's how they are made.

Boil five medium-to-large potatoes. Once they are soft, drain the water and add about 1/4 cup of butter, a teaspoon of salt and about 150 grams (one cup) of shredded cheddar cheese. Mash.

Set aside to cool. This is important because trying to stuff the pyrohy with hot mashed potato is very difficult. As the mashed potatoes cool, they will harden a bit and be more easy to handle.

Prepare the dough.

Ingredients:

one egg
2 cups all-purpose (five roses) flour
1 teaspoon salt
1/2 cup water (maybe a little more)
1 teaspoon salad oil

Mix all the ingredients together and knead for a moment until everything comes together.

Cut off one third of the dough and set it on a floured surface. Using a rolling pin, roll it out very thin. About the thickness of a quarter is great.

Dip the rim of a drinking glass in a little flour and use it to cut out circular pieces of the dough. Put the leftover bits of dough together and roll them out at the end.

Place a ball of the cooled potato on the counter and stretch the dough in your hands. Drape the ball of potato with the dough and flip it around. This picture is just for getting the idea of how much potato you need for each piece of dough - it's pretty hard to get the job done like the picture shows...

Pinch together the edges of the dough. Make sure that each side of the dough comes into direct contact with the other side without any potato getting in the way.

Pinch both side together to form a complete seal.

Now that you are done, repeat about 50 more times. Place the uncooked pyrohy on a floured towel so that they don't stick to each other or anything else.

When you are just about to go insane because of how much work this is, start a pot of salted water to boil. Once it has reached a rolling boil, drop in about ten pyhohy at a time.

They don't need a long time to cook. Maybe two minutes? Overcooking will lead to them falling apart. As soon as they start to float around, gather them with a slotted spoon and put them into a dish with a generous amount of butter.

With each batch you add to the dish, slosh them around so that they get coated with butter. They won't stick that way. Of course there are other ways to prevent things from sticking, but just use a truckload of butter. My Dad would use two containers and transfer them back and forth between the two to get the pyrohy all coated with butter.

Don't forget to salt them, too. Don't feel bad about being generous with salt. Really. You won't eat this every day. Serve with sour cream.

I figure they are about 50 calories each, including all the butter.