Pierogies, Pierogies! A Review of Fire & Earth Kitchen

Guess what I spent the afternoon making yesterday? Okay, so it’s not hard to guess. Pierogies!

Pierogies are eastern European potato dumplings, and can come with a range of fillings and toppings. When I was a kid, my mom used to buy pierogies from these Polish church ladies who would periodically make them, pack them up by the dozen in Chinese food takeout containers, and sell them to the community. They came with a little container of caramelized onions swimming in butter. We would fry them up in the butter and onions and eat them all immediately. Man oh man, were those pierogies good. You can imagine my delight, then, when Renee Press from Fire & Earth Kitchen contacted me and invited me to attend one of her cooking classes. When I saw there was one called “Pierogies, Pierogies!” I was in! Eric and I went together to the class which was held in the home Renee shares with her partner, Nick.

Fire & Earth Kitchen offers cooking classes, food coaching, and chef services. All of the food is vegan and gluten-free and Renee is very sensitive to the needs of people with those and other food preferences and allergies. The menu for the evening included: potato and onion pierogies, a beet tart with sunflower ‘goat cheese’, stuffed cabbage rolls, and chocolate cinnamon rugelach (cookies). The class lasted 2 1/2 hours and I was completely impressed by how Renee managed to fit four fairly labor-intensive dishes into that amount of time. We watched her demonstrate how to make the dishes and then got to taste each one as it was ready. The class was held in Renee and Nick’s living room with a countertop and stovetop set up as a work station. We all sat in the living room and watched the cooking and Renee invited us up to get a closer look at anything and try certain techniques if we wanted to, in order to ensure that we understood how to make them.  

Renee is a wealth of information and talked while she cooked, explaining what she was doing, as well as some general information about ingredients, cooking methods, etc. I learned that most of the nutritional value in an onion is in that layer just under the papery skin and that it’s worth it to take the extra time to peel the papery layer off, leaving the one just underneath. Renee share with us that cooking in a cast iron pan is a great way to get some added iron in your diet and that acidic foods, like tomatoes, are particularly effective at drawing out the iron from the pan. After you chop garlic, you should let it sit for 5-10 minutes before cooking it because the exposure to the air helps it release its immune system-boosting properties. Renee shared tons of little insights like these while she cooked.

I was amazed by the way Renee and Nick worked together as a team. They are both warm and friendly, professional, extremely organized, and their communication working together is great. Nick scurried around making sure Renee had all the utensils, pots, pans, dishes and ingredients she needed, he tended the fire that crackled cheerfully in the fireplace, and he jumped in to help with the food prep as was needed.

All the dishes were beautiful and I came away with some great inspiration to make these and variations on them. One of the things I appreciated most about the class was getting to see Renee work with gluten free dough in various dishes (the pierogies, rugelach and tart). She explained that gluten free dough will crack apart (a problem I have frequently!) if you don’t have enough water. Rather than pouring a little extra water into the dough, she suggested wetting your hands with a little water and kneading it in. She said that was almost always the right amount of water and wouldn’t make a sticky, over-watered mess. My favorite dish of the night was the rugelach, a chocolate cinnamon cookie that you couldn’t even tell was gluten free at all. It was so good.

I loved the whole class and can’t wait to sign up for another one. If you’re in the Puget Sound area, there are still some spots available for the January 5 ‘Pierogies, Pierogies!’ class. There’s also still room for the ‘Dreamy Desserts’ class on December 1. 

I hadn’t attending a cooking class since I worked for a cooking school/catering company when I was a teenager and it was so fun to learn new dishes and cooking skills in the warm, cozy environment of Fire & Earth Kitchen. Have any of you ever taken a cooking class?

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