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