PITTSBURGH (AP) - Author and photographer Casey Barber doesn’t have any Eastern European heritage in her genes, but with her Pittsburgh-bred, pierogie-centered eating habits, she may as well be an honorary Pole.
Barber, who was born in Johnstown and grew up in Greensburg, recalls eating pierogies, haluski and other Eastern European-flavored food all the time, including at church potlucks and community picnics. She took the basic recipes for pierogie dough and expanded it to create more than 60 recipes for fillings and coatings in her new book “Pierogi Love: New Takes on an Old-World Comfort Food” (Gibbs Smith; $19.99).
While the first, and maybe only, pierogie that comes to mind for many people is the standard dough pocket stuffed with mashed potatoes and cheese, the versatile possibilities with the little dough pockets seem limitless, Barber says.
“That’s exactly how I wanted to present the book - that is, a pierogie could be anything in the world,” says Barber, who now lives in Clifton, N.J.
You can stuff the dough circles with the usual potatoes and cheddar cheese, pinch them shut, and boil them. Or, you can get more exotic and stuff the pockets with ingredients like sauerkraut, pepperoni, beef, pork, crab, spinach, goat cheese or sweet potatoes. And that is just for the meal-like pierogies. A whole new opportunity comes with sweet pierogies, which are stuffed with things like cherries, apricots, peanut butter and chocolate, or lemon curd. These are sometimes deep-fried and dusted with confectioners’ sugar.
“The world of pierogies is so much vaster than the potato,” Barber says. “Already, there are traditions where they are stretching it a little further than your knee-jerk idea of the pierogie.”
Although there are no known official statistics, many pierogie fans like Barber call Pittsburgh America’s Pierogie Capital. Evidence of this will be visible at the third annual Pittsburgh Pierogi Fest on Sept. 19 at Stage AE on the North Shore. The event includes more than 30 pierogie vendors, live music from several acts, pierogie-painting, and a Pop-Up Pierogie Marketplace with pierogie-inspired wares.
The festival last year drew more than 5,000 hungry visitors, some of whom waited in line for as long as two to three hours for the doughy creations of vendors like Etna-based Cop Out Pierogies. The weather was rainy, cold and windy last year, but the crowds still came because of their love for pierogies, says Carl Funtal, the owner who calls himself the CPO (chief pierogie officer). His pierogies won the first year, in 2013.
“I love the environment out there. We have a blast,” says Funtal, a retired Shaler police sergeant. He started the company three years ago, and its motto is, “It’s not a party till the cops show up.”
“I don’t know that you can go to an event where you see so many happy people,” Funtal says. His eatery offers a long list of pierogie fillings and will do any flavor filling the customer wants. Cop Out also makes sweet “pie-rogies.”
What is it about the doughy pierogies that makes them so irresistible and insanely popular in some areas?
“It’s a comfort food for those that know pierogies and have eaten pierogies,” Funtal says. “I’ve eaten them my whole life.”
He has many customers who come in to get Cop Out’s pierogies when they are visiting the area from Chicago, where the people say there aren’t enough steady places to get the goodies.
While pierogies have an especially strong fan base in Pittsburgh, many other places are catching on, including Wisconsin and Nebraska. Both restaurants and food trucks make and serve them.
“I feel like pierogies are on the cusp of being the next big trend, and I’m so glad people are embracing it,” Barber says.
She says it is the comfort-food factor that people love.
“Potatoes and cheese and dough are three of the most comforting things in any culture, I’m sure,” she says. Pierogies are “bite-sized, really fun finger food - things that you can pop in your mouth.”
If you have frozen, pre-made pierogies, they also are quick to prepare - maybe 10 minutes, which is much quicker than waiting on mom’s pot roast, Barber says.
“I would love to see more people getting out there and making pierogies,” she says.
Pierogies are popular at churches, where many groups of people cook and sell them. At St. George’s Ukrainian Catholic Church in the North Side, a core group of 25 to 30 people meets most weeks to cook pierogies, and they easily sell 100 dozen of them at a time for $7 a dozen, says the Rev. Ihor Hohosha, the pastor. The pierogies - available in potato, sauerkraut and a mix - provide good financial support to the church and give people a social activity and tasty food, he says.
Customers “say that taste and that flavor is unbeatable,” Hohosha says.
With so many Ukrainian immigrants in Pittsburgh, including Hohosha, pierogies are a favorite dish with many memories attached, including Christmas Eve dinner for many people.
“You ask any Pittsburgher, ’Do you now about pierogies?’ they say, ’Sure.’ “
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Information from: Pittsburgh Tribune-Review, https://pghtrib.com
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