Uszka (and barszczt)
On Christmas Eve, we eat Polish food: Barszczt, a beet soup (similar to borscht); uszka, little mushroom dumplings that go in the soup; and after that, a lot of fried flounder.
This year, my brother and I helped out, so we could learn how to make it.
This is the barszczt as it's cooking. The vegetables you see are onions, carrots, celery, and of course beets. You just cook all the vegetables in water for an hour or so, and then add the beets toward the end. (water from cooking the mushrooms goes in too). They all get strained out before the soup is served, so that what ends up in your bowl is a perfectly clear broth without vegetables.
The brown goop is made of fried onions and boiled porcini mushrooms. Most of the preparation before this point has to do with soaking and cleaning the mushrooms. The mushrooms have a lot of sand in them, which needs to be fastidiously removed.
The dough is a standard egg pasta dough (egg, flour, water) rolled out to be about 2 feet across. You line up tiny dollops of filling in a grid pattern, remembering that they will get a lot bigger as they cook.
Up to this point, you handle the dough with lots of flour so it doesn't stick to itself or to anything else. Now, you want to sprinkle water on it so it'll stick to itself and seal up the little pockets.
We only put filling on half of the dough, then fold the other half over. There can't be any air in the little pockets, or the uszka will explode as they're boiled.
The uszka are cut and crimped with a little wheely tool. The end!
Recommended order of operations: soak the mushrooms ahead of time. Start the soup, then make the filling. Make the pasta last. Put the uszka on a tray in the freezer for a few minutes before boiling them; they're easier to handle. You can store the barszczt and the unboiled uszka in the freezer indefinitely.
The hardest part is locating a good inexpensive source of dried porcini mushrooms. Expect to pay $5-$6 per ounce, unless you have a brother who works at a restaurant :)
Uszka Filling
Ingredients:
2 oz dried porcini mushrooms
1-2 medium onions, chopped
butter for frying
Rinse mushrooms in water to cover briefly, and drain. Soak in water for 2 hours. Then strain through paper towels, twice, and save the liquid.
Rinse the mushrooms separately to remove sand. Make sure to get all the sand out. You do NOT want a mouthful of sand in your Christmas dinner.
Put mushrooms back in the water and boil for 15 minutes (add some salt). In the meantime, fry the chopped onions in butter until they're soft and brown. Drain the mushrooms, saving the liquid for the soup.
Combine the mushrooms and onions in a food processor and grind them together. This is your uszka filling.
Barszczt
Ingredients:
2 carrots (chunked)
2 stalks celery (chunked)
2-3 onions (quartered)
2 cans of cooked beets
dash of salt
vinegar or lemon juice
Boil carrots, celery, and onion in a stockpot until tender, about an hour. Add salt.
Add the canned beets with their juice. Add the mushroom water from making the uszka.
Boil 15 minutes more. Strain out the vegetables. Adjust the acidity by adding vinegar (it should be just slightly sour).
Uszka Pasta
Ingredients:
1 cup flour
1 egg
water
(You may need to make two batches, depending on how much filling you ended up with)
Mix flour, egg, and enough water to make dough. (It should be stretchy and springy but not sticky and not too dry. If you need help with this part, consult an experienced pasta-maker. Or just fake it.)
Knead the dough, and let it sit for 10 minutes to relax.
Roll the dough out into 2 sheets, or into one big one that you can fold over. Lay out the filling, 1/2 tsp at a time on 2" centers.
Fold and seal the dough, and cut the uszka apart. Boil until tender.
