Dinner and a Movie Night: Men In Black

It's an easy thing, once you have a child, to forget that once upon a time it was just you and your spouse. Husband and I have recently come to that discovery. Since our prime babysitter Kronk is in Florida until the snow has gone away and our other prime babysitters live in New Hampshire, we have taken it upon ourselves to create Dinner and a Movie Night.

The idea comes from the TBS show of the same name. If you've never seen it, it's part movie, part cooking show. The hosts choose to make a dish that is in some way reflected in the movie and then break into the movie at strategic points to show the next step in the dish that you're supposed to be making.

We have chosen Wednesday nights to be Dinner and a Movie night and we take turns picking out the movie and food. My choice last Wednesday was Men in Black with Tommy Lee Jones and Will Smith. I made potato, cheese and onion pirogi. It makes a brief appearance in the movie. Watch it and see.

Men in Black Ah! Pirogi!

The dough

• 2-1/2 cups flour (plus a little more for rolling)
• 1 tsp salt
• 1 egg
• 2 tbs sour cream
• 1/2c lukewarm water

The filling

• 3 medium potatoes, boiled & mashed
• 1/2 onion, diced and sauteed in butter or olive oil
  
• 1/4 c sharp cheddar, grated
• salt & pepper

Mix all the ingredients together until a kind of lumpy dough is formed. Kneed the dough a few times. It should be sticky. Wrap in plastic and refrigerate a couple of hours or, even better, overnight. Meanwhile, prepare filling by mixing together the ingredients listed. Flour a surface and roll the dough out to about 1/16 inch (very thin, like ravioli). Use a cookie cutter or a glass to cut rounds out of the dough. Place a teaspoon of the filling in the center of the dough, brush the edges with water and fold in half, pinching the edge to seal the filling inside.

Bring a pot of water to boil and drop in pirogi 5 or 6 at a time. Let them boil until they float. You can serve them like this but I like to saute them in some butter. I serve them with sauted onions and muhrooms and sour cream. Yum.