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Resting up for the Bears game and celebrating a Cubs division title by sitting back and drinking some good brew watching college football and waiting for October, Im not getting wasted in Wrigley, I knew we had this in early July (world series title or bust this year) so I wanted to post this in the tailgating forum b/c it is great for a winter tailgate and im making them tmw tailgating but couldn't resist eating some tonight, so I made up a batch.

However I want everyone to try these one day, I think they are genius and my buddy Paul deserves to be on top chef just off this creation. Paul if out there somewhere, contact me man.

I have mentions on this board and in the Madison thread about an old dumpling shack located on State St. in Madison. Its a shame because my buddy who owned half was forced out and they were bought out and switched to pre-made dumplings and eventually form what I hear it is now closed due to its fall in quality. Here is what I said about one of my all time faves "Pel Meni- This State St. shack was actually started by a freind of mine who spent time in Alaska and while there started making pel meni (Russian dumplings). This is a small storefront and they offer pel meni in 2 ways, meat and potato, done 2 ways, traditional (lots of butter and sour cream) and their version which is vinegar, curry powder, hot sauce and cilantro. I always ordered a large($7) half and half done their way. This place is excellent for lunch."

Well its pretty often that I have fiendesh cravings for Pel-Meni's original Pel-Meni and when I get around to finding frozen beef pel-meni, Ill usually buy some, but I rarely see it outside Skokie. I recently found some at the T.I in Lincoln Park. It was a familiar brand called "Smilgas" European dumpling's. So I picked up a package of the beef and got to work on this oh so easy exotic tasting creation.

Paul from Madison via Anchorage's Russian Dumpling's
(serve's 2)

1 package of frozen beef filled Russian Dumplings (you could also use potato, great for Vegans or or a combo)
1-2 TBLS of Vinegar
Hot sauce such as Smokin' Joe's or any Louisiana brand (add as much as you want)
1-3 TSP of curry powder
Chunk of cilantro chopped down finely
big scoop of sour cream and some butter

Note: the spice/cilantro and vinegar is the amount for each bowl. A 16 0z single package will serve two, so add the amount above to each individual serving in the bowl when making them.

The only thing I do different than Pel Meni did was I fry them in butter after boiling them. Take a non stick pan and melt some butter on low heat when dumplings are almost done boiling.

Just follow the packages cooking instructions and when they are cooked thru take them out with a pasta strainer and throw a slice of butter on them. Throw the dumplings in the frying pan and cook until blistered, making sure they dont stick by moving them around often. Note: I like to boil them even a little longer than they suggest so they are really hot when they come out of the water and go into the pan.


take out after about 20 minutes when they have risen to the top


getting crispy in the butter

When done place them in a bowl and pour the vinegar over them and toss it so they get coated. Sprinkle the top with the curry powder then pour hot sauce all over the top and side and sprinkle with cilantro. Use sour cream to dip them in. One of my favorite recipes, when you want these you just have to have them. If you've been to Pel Meni in Madison, tell me these aren't as good or better (they are fried in butter) Thanks Paul.

I think that the Alaskan location is still open in Alaska. No website but I was told "The Juneau Pelmeni shop is the original. They have two others, one in Madison, WI and one in Bellingham, WA. So there you go." Madison location I heard is closed. But now you can have then everywhere.


Indulge

http://smilgadumplings.com/

those look delish. I will have to try it out.

Any idea where to find those dumplings?

Preferably in the western burbs.

Thanks

I'd picked up a brand of lamb pelmeni from Garden Fresh Market at Rand and Central in Mt Prospect, intrigued by this post (and with Bear and Tiger Cub's glee at being served them in the film "Night Watch").

I decided not to overpower them with curry and hot sauce on a first tasting, so merely boiled them (the 20 minute they listed is, frankly, much too long) -- they were relatively sodden, and stuck to the pan when suteed in some butter. Served with some sour cream and chives... they were bland, bland bland, with no discernable lambiness at all.

I may try them again with a spiffed up sauce a la the original poster, or a different brand, or I may just go back to ravioli and tortellini, or making Turkish manti. (The recipe here is more complex than the one in Routhier's "Cooking Under Wraps" and using wonton skins to make the pyramidal dumplings works exceedingly well for party preparations).

The pix looked so appealing that I headed right out for some dumplings. Went to Brookhaven Market at 73rd and Cass in Westmont, which has a terriffic selection of international foods in all departments - but no Russian dumplings. I settled for "Alexandra's Uszka Home Style Beef and Pork Dumplings."

It's made in USA, but maybe "Uszka" makes it Russian or some kind of Central European style. Dunno.

We'll try it tomorrow and let you know how it turns out.

Hi,

Every once in a great while, I will make pelmeni. I have the forms to make dumplings similar to those pictured above. I have come to like more those I form by hand. Borrowing an idea from a Chinese bakery, I use a tortilla press to form my dough circle. Other times I use a small rolling pin to roll out each round. I fill each dough circle with a mixture of pork, onions, some garlic and seasonings. I will watch a movie that once finished I have maybe 200 or more pelmeni freezing.

We once were friends with a representative of the Ukrainian consulate in Chicago. This couple would visit for dinner largely because the husband knew I would make pelmeni. My making them by hand was something he would tweak his wife about, because she was now using wonton wrappers instead of making fresh dough. While I, or at least my pelmeni, was popular with the husband. I think the wife wasn't too thrilled by these visits because these pelmeni just seemed to be a bone of contention between them.

In my other life, I would occasionally have pelmeni parties. There were two preferred methods of dressing them: sour cream and butter or vinegar and butter. I never saw them fried, they were always boiled and served with or without the cooking liquid. Years later, the Ukranian consulate people's preference was to eat their pelmeni with freshly chopped tomatoes with onions sort of resembling fresh salsa. When I commented this was a new variant, he offered an interesting explanation: Ukraine as a bread basket always had fresh vegetables to explain the tomato salsa he liked on his pelmeni. Moscow as a capital city would always have sour cream and butter available. Those who preferred vinegar and butter were from poorer regions of the country. When I commented the most vocal person I knew who loved vinegar and butter was from Gorky, the Ukrainian's eyes lit up and said this confirmed what he said. My personal preference is sour cream and butter for my pelmeni.

I was in Madison, WI last weekend. I thought about Pel Meni, but time was tight plus I remember you saying earlier they had stopped making Pel Meni by hand. Is this still true? I seem to recall they were now using mass produced pelmeni. BTW - I would occasionally buy the industrial pelmeni in Moscow. I had one friend who would complain deeply in my choices and suggesting there was recycled motor oil in them. While they were not anywhere near as good as homemade, sometimes it just scratched an itch. Very rarely did I visit the pelmeni restaurants, they seemed to just reheat the industrial made. However the blini shops I thought were worthy of my time.

Regards,

The Deli next to Grand Dukes Lithuanian Restaurant, on Harlem in Summit, IL sells frozen pelmeni. I have had the beef filling and they are pretty tasty.
LO

"Uszka" means "little ears" in Polish. Traditionally, we eat them in barszczt (borscht, although the Polish style is usually a clear, red broth rather than the chunkier Ukranian or Russian concoctions). They are essentially the same thing as Russian pelmeni, the only real difference I note is how they are usually served.

Anyhow, Bobak's also sells a product labeled specifically as "pelmeni" for those interested.

My mother's family is from Eastern Russia, so I have been eating these dumplings all my life. I have only ever had them boiled in broth. I have never seen them fried in butter or steamed. Pel Meini is a winter food. In Siberia, they are made around the first frost, then kept outside in a box where they stay frozen all winter, waiting to be dropped into a pot of hot broth for a quick meal.

Eurostyle in Skokie makes and sells their own brand of frozen pel meini with a variety of fillings. They are smaller in size than what my mother makes, but look similar. They are simply a circle of dough rolled out, filled with ball of meat, then folded in half and pinched around the edges.

Eurostyle Sausage Company
4861 Oakton St
Skokie, IL 60077
(847) 329-1430

d4v3,

You spell pelmeni as pel meni, is this how you have seen it? My first and only exposure to that spelling is from the Madison, WI restaurant. Otherwise it is always been pelmeni in English and Russian.

Regards,

To tell you the truth, I didn't think about it when I wrote it. I had never actually seen it written in English until recently (maybe on this forum). Since then, I have seen it romanized both ways, as one word or two. In Russian it is one word, although it is a compound word. I spelled the second part "meini" subconciously from the romanized spelling of the chinese word for noodle, which I always assumed was the origin of the name. Eurostyle labels them "Pelmeny". Of course, one of them would be a pelmen.

Out of curiousity, how do pelmeni (or pel meni) differ from pierogies?

Pelmeni is the name of this dumpling in eastern Russia (not to say that the term hasn't been spread widely now), where it is supposed to be shaped like an ear. The folk etymology in Buryatia (definitely some Eastern influences there) where I did some ethnomusicology work (www.golosa.org) is pel = ear, man = bread. In this case, man is more related to the familiar Indic "nan" (bread) than with Chinese mein (noodle, from Southern China, but could very well have an Indic origin). In the Transbaikal, these ear-shaped dumplings are boiled rather than fried and contain as much chunky root vegetables as they do meat.

Pierogi is the name of all sorts of dumplings in western Russia and Eastern Europe. "Pir" is a pan-Slavic word for "festival," so they're basically items that can be made in bulk for festival days, kind of like tamales, which are really a group-feeding holiday food. It would be hard to generalize a rule for Chicagoland, but in places I've been that call dumplings "pierogi," they're often pan fried, and skew towards potato, cheese, or fruit fillings.

In Pitarbarg and Moscow, the boiled pelmeni-style dumplings (meat and chunky instead of mashed root vegetables) are more usually called vareneki. This root will be more familiar because of the word "samovar" (samo=self, var = boil, from varit', to boil, hence a self-boiler). This is to say, they are "little boiled things."

Yes, I know.

Apart from being ear-shaped, would you notice a difference between pelmeni and pierogi? For what it's worth, I don't think the distinction is boiled v. fried: I've come across plenty of boiled-only pierogies. There are also meat-filled pierogies, although I've only come across pork.

Just wondering.

I think that depends on where you were standing*. Chicago is one place that has (or calls) both, but I'm not sure there is actually a fixed distinction here between communities. Has anyone run across a restaurant that has both on the menu? That would be one answer.

In Irkutsk, they call the pelmeni that the "peasants" we stayed with eat, "piroshki." In Southern Poland, the original origin of the Old Believers we were recording, they call the dumplings "pierogi," and never "pelmeni." I think they're all mostly blanket terms, except for vareniki, which I think are boiled by definition.

My point about having pierogi in a place they were called pierogi by my hosts (Southern Poland, Ukraine, northern Czech R.) is that they were mostly served to me fried. In Eastern Russia, boiled. Same dumplings, really. Hard to extrapolate among immigrant communities (and "Mrs. T's" frozen) here in Chicago.

*brilliant line from The Birdcage:

[Nathan Lane, disguising the real last name "Goldman"]: Oh yes...Coldeman. The "d" is silent in America. It's Cole D'Isle au Man, or Cole of the Isle of Man, in France, where Armand's chateau is, Cold-e-man in Greece where Armand's work is, and finally the vulgar Coleman in Florida where Armand's home is, so actually, we don't know where we are until we hear our last name pronounced!

Based on my experience in Moscow and growing up in a Polish family, the main difference is size and shape. Pelmeni are about the size of tortellini, and quite often folded into a similar shape:

http://www.joachim-gross.de/img/pelmeni.jpg

Polish pierogi are bigger and usually folded into half-moons:

http://pub.gas-pol.pl/img/pierogi/pierogi.jpg

The Polish analogue of pelmini are, as I noted upthread, uszka. They are all, however, similar dishes. Although I personally have never seen a pelmen the same shape and size as a Polish pierog, it wouldn't surprise me if some people make them that way.

Binko-

Not only was your post educational, but those photographs are fantastic!

In what I've seen in groceries, pelmeni are usually cut on all sides, like a small ravioli, whereas pierogi are folded like a pot sticker.

On the etymology side, I've noticed a lot of dumplings in the eastern parts of Eurasia have man/men in them including:

• Manti - Turkish
• Mando - Korean

I'd guess that the Chinese "mein", Korean "myun" and Japanese "men" -- all noodle words -- probably are not cognates, given that the Korean word for dumpling is quite different from that for noodle.

Exceptions would be the Samosa or samsa -- the Himalayas were probably a barrier for language spread.

Good call, and you can add Mantoo / Mantu, which is Afghan, and maybe even the Northern Chinese for steamed bun (I don't buy the barbarian's head etymology when we have all of these other words), mantou:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mantou

This makes a reasonable path to Korea.

If you follow the nan -> man relation hypothesis, this term did make it over the mountains. I can't cite a specific article, but I remember samosa/sambusa coming from the name of a root vegetable (which shows up in Portuguese as well), and that simpler Indian soup dumplings are often just called by a variation on "bread," samosas being thought of as something different.

Still not sure about mein.

JoelF,

The pelmeni you saw were made in metal forms or by machine. You roll out a round of dough to size and place on the form. Each circle is filled with a meat mixture and topped with a 2nd round of dough. To cut them out, you roll over the form with a rolling pin. From a home cook point of view, the form works fine except you have to have sometimes do quality control to make sure they are sealed.

What I don't like about the form is inability to tell if the pelmeni is made on the premises or bought from a distributor. Especially vexing in a restaurant, where you may pay $7 for ten pieces when you can buy maybe 50 pieces retail for less than $5.

There is tremendous pride in traditional Siberian pelmeni, which is often how they are referred. I once stopped conversation in a room by reporting these dumplings are a remnant of the Mongol invasions. This was in the era where you were careful what you said and sometimes saying nothing was best. While D4V3 said pelmeni were stored in boxes in Siberia, I always heard they were stored in large sacks and left on their balconies. You could melt snow in a pot, then drop in your pelmeni for a very quick meal if you were hunting.

In the era I was in Moscow, USSR, many old Russian cookbooks were regarded like storybooks, because it was so remote from their lives. One cookbook described Pelmeni restaurants when the Czar still reigned, they served pelmeni filled with various meats and mushrooms. People would compete to see who could eat the most, which really sounded quite enchanting.

I love Siberian pelmeni, probably because of all the bittersweet memories related to them.

Regards,

While I am a photographer, those are not my photos. That type of hotlinking is allowed here, right? If not, I'll remove them or replace them with regular links.

Or in one of these:



Where I was (in rural Tarbagatay, Ulan-Ude, and Boloshoe Kunile), there would be a pelmeni-making festival after the first freeze, and then they'd put the dumplings out in these little raised storage huts (higher than this one, to flummox bears). Some in sacks, and some literally just pressed right into snow. Party-time? Go out and chip out a block, melt in pot with ice for water over a fire.

Again, the people in Irkutsk viewed this as wildly pagan, backwards, and barbarous. They then served us pelmeni from their stocks in 1950s lead-lined freezers, with sour butter that had never seen the inside of a fridge. I have to say, just about all of it tasted good, though.

A mod might answer officially, but my guess the photos could be linked with credit to the source.

Direct us to a link, otherwise it is bandwidth stealing as well as using someones image without permisson.

Regards,

Done.

By boxes, I meant wooden boxes with hinged lids, sort of primitive refrigerators. At least that is where my mother's family kept them (I am pretty sure they didn't have a balcony). At any rate, they were kept outside in the cold.

I read the theory that the men in pelmen derives from a word for bread, but I am not sure I buy it. I still think it is more likely derived from the chinese word myen for noodle.

Since pelmeni is very likely Mongolian-Chinese in origin, then your sense of the word's root seems to be a reasonable theory.

Balcony refrigerator/freezers were related to apartment dwellers, which most Soviets were.

Regards,

The secret of State St. pel-meni is one of the most useful posts I have ever come across on lthforum and I realized I never posted a thank-you. I mess with these all the time

I haven't had them this way, but the pierogies from Delicious Pastries are very good - def. pierogies. The varieties I have had are meat, mushroom, potato (I think the mushroom are mushroom and saurkraut).

What I do is heat a pot to boiling, turn it off, put the pierogies in. While they are warming up, sautee some onion in oil and butter (you could toss in some bacon, too, if you wanted). Put the pierogies in the pan with the onions and cook on each side. Serve with sour cream (I use Trader Joe's fat free European Style yogurt).