Polish Cooking: Uszka - pasta for Barszcz

Описание: You've always wanted to prepare Borscht, haven't you? Now is your chance! Just grab a couple of ingredients and prepare a pasta for it! When your uszka are prepared, there is nothing stopping you from doing borscht. Don't want to make borscht today? Store them in freezer! But listen to the "how" in the video.


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For ~2.5kg of product (for single 2 man meal you need around 500g)
FILLING
1kg sauerkraut
40g dried mushrooms
2 onions
salt, pepper

DOUGH
0.8kg flour
0.5kg water
salt

It's a budget version proportions. If you want, you can use 200g dried mushrooms for the same amount of sauerkraut. If you want hardcore version, replace sauerkraut with mushrooms entirely.

PREPARATION: FILLING
1) Crush the mushrooms into smaller pieces into a bowl. It makes the soaking less time-consuming task
2) Boil some hot water and spill it all over the mushrooms. Add a teaspoon of salt.
3) Cut the sauerkraut into smaller pieces.
4) Rinse the sauerkraut with boiling water to remove some acidic/sour taste. You can repeat the process to further remove the taste.
5) Boil the sauerkraut in little amount of water.
6) Once your mushrooms are done soaking* (~30 minutes), add the mushroom water to the pot with sauerkraut.
7) Chop the mushrooms into smaller pieces, around 1/4 inch (0.5cm) long and add them to sauerkraut.
8) Chop the onions, fry them (preferably on butter) and add them to sauerkraut.
9) Add salt, pepper and whatever spices you want. But avoid saturating it with hot spices cause it will spoil the borscht.
10) Mix on a low heat until sauerkraut softens. Replace water that evaporates. Once sauerkraut is soft, allow the water to evaporate.

PREPARATION: DOUGH
1) Mix flour, water and a little bit of salt until it's solid and non-sticky.
2) Flatten the dough with a rolling pin.
3) Option A: cut the dough into circles with a glass (for bigger ones) or a shot-glass (for smaller ones)
Option B: cut the dough into squares with a knife, the squares have to be around 1.5 inch (4cm) on sides.

PREPARATION: USZKA
1) Grab the dough and put the filling in the middle.
2) Grab the opposite corner/edge and pull together and stick together the edges enclosing the filling.
3) You will end up with a (triangular) pieróg. Now grab the dough on the bottom corners, pull them together and stick them. Don't close the dough this time. Repeat until you run out of dough or filling.
4) Cook them in salted water until they emerge out of the water.

Serve with borscht or on their own. Store in freezer in bags, coat in oil before freezing.

Happy cooking!

- some people say, that mushrooms need to soak over night. I have no idea whose mushrooms, because mine were ready after 30 minutes.

LINK TO ANCIENT RECIPE (in Polish): http://polona.pl/item/3553187/47/