Cheese and Potato Pyrohy

As the world becomes more commercial and less and less focus on the "baggage of religion" as a Globe and Mail journalist writer commented in a recent article, I still find comfort and connection to Christmases past, with thoughts of my Mom and Grandmother and the true meaning of Christmas.   The Magic of Christmas along with the traditions seem even more important to me these days.

The preparation for this year's Christmas Eve Meal has started using this pyrohy recipe, one I find most manageable with the result of 8 dozen dumplings. 

Check out 12 dishes of Ukrainian dishes  for the Christmas Eve meal as part of the traditional meal that have been passed down to me. 

The filling for this recipe is potato, ricotta cheese and cottage cheese.  I use a small container of cottage cheese and ricotta cheese and had cooked 2 medium sized potatoes.  I find that the ricotta cheese adds great flavor and is the closes in taste to homemade cottage cheese. I use the regular cottage cheese and just drain the liquid in it first.

My son has wanted me to show to my granddaughters how to make the dumplings, so I had saved some dough and filling for them to use. 

The girls loved making the dumplings, as I busied myself taking movie and pictures of them! 

Since some of the filling was popping out in some of the dumplings, if not all of them, frying the dumplings in Olive oil was a good solution.

The girls quickly devoured their master pieces with sour cream!!