Every Christmas Eve, my grandma would emerge from the kitchen carrying a metal pan piled high with pierogi. She'd set the pan down on the serving table, step away and my family would pounce on the doughy pouches filled with sauerkraut, potato and cheese.

Pierogi, at least in my family, are a staple of the Polish Christmas Eve dinner called Wigilia. This traditional meal includes no meat, because it originated as a fast in anticipation of Christmas Day. So we eat pierogi, mushroom soup, browned potatoes and fried fish. Even with this impressive spread, the pierogi are always the first to go.

Years ago, my grandma and her sisters made 1,200 pierogi for each Wigilia. They assembled each one ahead of time, dividing the types so that one sister prepared potato and another the cheese. On the morning of Christmas Eve, they'd bring the uncooked pierogi to the kitchen of the sister who was hosting the Wigilia dinner. Everyone brought a frying pan. The cooking took all day.

About five years ago, I asked my grandma if she would teach me to make pierogi. I went to her house and we spent the day making fillings and rolling out the dough. She showed me how to use her new "pierogi maker" — a molded device we bought her that cuts six pierogi shells from the dough at once. This is much easier than cutting them one at a time with a cup or tuna can.

So, yeah, pierogi are a big deal with us.

We go to the Pierogi Fest every summer in nearby Whiting, Ind., and we argue about how to pronounce the word, pee-roe-gee (easy way) or peer-oh-gee (right way) or pi-doggie (really wrong way). We love them all year long, but there's something special about a platter of them on December 24. It just doesn't seem like Christmas Eve without it.

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Grandma Antoinette Wawrzyniak's Cheese Pierogi

Makes: Five-dozen pierogi.

Ingredients:

Filling:

1 pound ricotta or baker's cottage cheese

4 ounces cream cheese

3 egg yolks

1 teaspoon salt

1 tablespoon sugar

1/2 cup or 1/4 pound melted butter

Dough:

3 1/2 cups flour

2 teaspoons salt

2 eggs

3/4 cup milk

2 or 3 tablespoons melted butter

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Preparing the filling:

1. In a bowl, mix cream cheese, ricotta cheese and egg yolks.

2. Add salt and sugar. Mix again.

3. Add melted butter. Whip mixture well. Set aside or put in refrigerator.

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Preparing the dough and assembling the Pierogi:

1. Put flour in a bowl, mix in salt.

2. Add eggs and milk. Mix with electric mixer or by hand until begins to become doughy or take shape.

3. Drizzle in melted butter. Mix one more time.

4. Refrigerate dough 1 to 2 hours. This will make it easier to work with.

5. Sprinkle flour on breadboard and rolling pin.

6. Thinly roll out pieces of dough about 1/8-inch thick.

7. If you don't have a pierogi maker, cut dough in rounds about the size of a tuna can. You can use a tuna can or a cup. Be sure to put flour on the rim or cup or can. This prevents the dough from sticking.

8. Put a tablespoon of filling in center of dough round, fold over, pinch closed. Placing a small amount of water around the edges of the round helps it stay closed. Seal edges with fork.

9. Bring large pot of water to a rolling boil. Put pierogi in the water with a slotted spoon. Boil them, a few at a time, until they come to the top.

10. Take pierogi out of the water with slotted spoon. Let pierogi drain.

11. Melt butter in a skillet and fry pierogi until lightly browned.

12. Eat pierogi. Lots of 'em.

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asap Midwest writer Caryn Rousseau's looking forward to the cheese and potato pierogi this year.

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