Edward Schneider My wife, Jackie, recently spent a week visiting a friend in Warsaw, which included an edifying lesson in how to make pierogi leniwe, or so-called lazy pierogi. The idea is that they are dough and (cheese) filling in one mass, not the usual two: a wrapper and a stuffing, one of which has to be painstakingly folded and sealed around the other. In fact, they are cheese dumplings or gnocchi, but it’s a nice conceit of nomenclature that you can get the pierogi experience in streamlined form.
I’d heard of these, but had never eaten them, so Jackie made them for me the day after we got back to New York. I’ll tell you how she did it before describing how good — and in some ways surprising — they are.
Put a pot of salted water on to boil.
To serve three as a main dish: In a big bowl or on a board or countertop, mash two 7.5-ounce packages of farmer cheese (salted — or if you use unsalted adjust the seasoning later). This is almost identical to the small-curd fresh cheese Jackie’s friend Jola used in Warsaw, known generically as twaróg. This will yield a fairly dry crumble of cheese, which you then combine with a generous 1 1/3 cups flour and perhaps some salt — taste the mixture: it should not be excessively salty, so the salt in the cheese might do the trick.
Separate three large eggs. Preferably using your hands, mix the yolks into the cheese-flour mixture (if the mixture seems very damp, add a tablespoon or two of flour), then whip the whites until they form firm but not dry peaks and fold them into the dough. This is not semi-liquid like a cake or soufflé batter, so the whites will pretty well collapse, but they still lighten the end product.
Divide the dough into three parts and, on a floured surface, form ropes of dough about an inch in diameter. This will be only slightly sticky — much easier to work with than perilously soft gnocchi dough — and you won’t need all that much bench flour. Using a scraper or knife, cut the dough on the bias into half-inch pieces, flipping them away onto the floured surface as you cut.
Boil them, gently, for five or six minutes. Meanwhile, lightly season two handfuls of fresh breadcrumbs with salt and brown them in plenty of butter. When the dumplings are done (taste one after five minutes), drain them well and dress them with the buttered crumbs.
These are full of surprises. One: they are so easy to work with and to cook (they don’t fall apart or stick at any stage, though they could if you manhandled them). Two: you can really taste the fresh sourness of the cheese. Three: they have an amazing consistency that is simultaneously chewy and light.
Once you taste these, you may get ideas about other ways to dress them. Try to suppress such ideas: for a savory dish, the breadcrumb route is the path to happiness, though you can certainly eat them instead with sugar and butter (as Jola’s son prefers to do).