Recipe: Thai Pelmeni

By Jacy Wojcik in Food on Jun 5, 2009 5:40PM

If you have been lucky enough to order this take on traditional Russian pelmeni from the small, divey, now-closed establishment, cleverly named "Pelmeni", in Madison, WI, you know how good this is. In fact, you've probably stood in a long line at midnight waiting, deciding if you should get meat or potato dumplings and if you want it traditional or spicy, jealous of the patrons already eating. If not, you can now make it at home after a short trip to your nearest Eastern European grocery store. We went to Renee Gourmet in the Ukranian Village and highly recommend it. (Although the man working looked at us like we were insane when we explained how we were going to prepare it.)

Ingredients

1 cup of frozen pelmeni (meat or potato)
1 tbs butter
2 tbs vinegar
1 tsp curry powder
1 tbs Sriracha chili sauce
1 tbs of chopped cilantro
sour cream optional but delicious

Boil pelmeni for six minutes- be careful to not over cook as they get very soft and break apart. Drain water and toss dumplings with butter. Add vinegar, top with curry powder, sriracha sauce, cilantro. Dip in sour cream.

(Note: in the above picture, we mistakenly used flat leaf parsley because we were in a careless, Supermarket Sweep-like hurry when purchasing. It was just ok. Use cilantro. For real.)