My name is Tom Birchard, and I am the proud owner of Veselka restaurant on the corner
of 2nd Avenue and 9th Street.
A pierogi is an Eastern European dumpling made with a simple dough wrapper and a simple
filling.
It can be filled with potato, meat, cabbage, or cheese.
It's the Eastern European equivalent of a ravioli or a Chinese dumpling.
I think every culture has a form of dumpling that they're known for.
We're known or pierogis.
The pierogi recipe goes back to when I first came here in the ‘60s.
The process starts with making a large vat of dough, similar to pizza dough.
We run it through a machine called a sheeter that rolls it out into a fairly thin sheet.
We take that sheet, put it on a table, and then cut disks out of it.
We're left with a table full of these disks, and then we put the stuffing in.
Each one is lovingly crimped by hand.
That's where most of the labor comes in.
We make 2,000-3,000 a day, so it's a lot of hand work.
The pierogis have to be boiled to seal them, but they're not completely cooked.
They’re cooled, packed in containers, and held until they come upstairs for final preparation,
which involves another round of boiling or frying until they're tender.
Then they're served with sour cream and sautéed onions.
Some people like apple sauce.
That’s not traditional.
But sour cream and onions are required.
Pierogis are both Polish and Ukranian.
That part of Western Ukraine was governed by several different political groups.
What we call Ukranian food, other people would call Polish food, some people would call it
Jewish food.
Sometimes I describe it as peasant food.
All those things are true.
This is Eastern European home-cooking.
It’s really, really well known and loved in New York, and by some people around the
country.
Over the years I've been concerned that this cuisine would fall out of favor eventually,
but honestly the opposite has happened.
It seems to be getting more popular.
Non-Eastern European or non-Jewish people really feel an affinity for this food.
So that's really gratifying to me—to satisfy that yearning for grandma's cooking.