Czechoslovakia: Anne

Pierogies + Machanka
[skip to the recipe]

I hadn’t expected to encounter a story so special that it would intimidate me. Anne is a strong woman. I’ve known her my whole life. She is my neighbor-turned-sister, Jamie’s grandmother. She helped raise Jamie and her three younger brothers - just a fraction of her grandchildren. Living next door and being around the same age as Jamie, I grew up with Anne as an integral part of my life.

I walk up a flight of stairs to a small kitchen in Yonkers. I’m greeted by Jamie, her brother Joshua, their Aunt Regina, and of course, Anne. The room feels packed with people already, but I know this is nothing compared to what’s to come. “She has a camera! She has a camera!” I can hear Regina yell in the background. We laugh and I promise all the family secrets are safe with me. 

The wallpaper is reminiscent of a different era, and I'm transported back in time almost immediately. I’m here to observe a sacred pierogi tradition, one that has grown immensely over the years. Anne’s first memories of it dating back to her childhood with her mother, Anastasia, who was lovingly known as “Baba”.

In the corner of the room I can see three large vats of what I assume is pierogi filling: a brown, caramel colored container of onions and two large stainless steel cooking pots. Joshua shows me recipes they began keeping record of in 2009, though tradition itself started almost one hundred years ago with his great-grandmother. 

I sit at the kitchen table with Jamie’s Aunt Regina, who tells me she married into the family 49 years ago. During my time in this kitchen, Regina is the storyteller. In many ways, she’s carried the work of this tradition on her back long before there were so many children and hands to help. 

Anne joins us at the table. We start at the beginning: She was 3-years-old when she came here with her mother, Anastasia, and two siblings. “I was a naughty girl,” she tells me. “My mother said I cried all the way here on the boat. We came through Ellis Island.” She smiles, “I’m up on the wall!”

In 1929, Anastasia, with three kids in tow, made her way to Yonkers where her husband had settled a few years prior. He was running a grocery store on Walnut Street. Regina tells me there were many Eastern Europeans who settled in Yonkers. Every nationality of people with their own little section, the Eastern European neighborhood being known as The Hollows.

No one can really remember when the pierogi tradition began. It was likely just something they ate during that time of year, or maybe even as a weekly dinner. Overtime, their lineage grew farther away from Czechoslovakia, and Anastasia grew into Baba — grandmother of fifteen and great-grandmother of nineteen. Thus, the tradition was born: an homage to their roots. 

Anne tells me how she finally got Baba’s recipes. “You know how we used to do it?” Baba did everything from memory, using her hands as measuring cups. “I would sit with my mother, and my mother would take flour and put it in a pot. So I’d go to the pot with the measuring spoon and I’d measure.” She pauses, “so I could remember.” 

I ask if growing up her first language was English. “Czechoslovakian, we spoke Czechoslovakian. My mom spoke Czechoslovakian.” Though she can’t speak or read and write Czechoslovakian anymore, her younger sister, Honey, can still read the prayers. 

“Let me tell you, I could though!” Anne recalls her school-aged years. “Everyday, I went to grammar school, and after school I’d go around the corner to the church and Russian school.” My assumption is that there was a variety of Eastern European cultures living in one neighborhood, and thus Russian became the uniting language.

The kitchen is quiet for a moment, the TV buzzes in the background. I reflect on what I’ve just learned about Anne, a woman I grew up knowing but not really knowing. The more I learn about her mother, Baba, the more I understand. Her strength and resilience was passed to her and her siblings from the woman who raised her. 

Baba sat at the table we’re sitting at until the year she died. “I’ll never forget it,” Regina reminisces of days when Baba would be at the table with a store bought pie in the center and a rag in her hand. “She’d sing songs in Czechoslovakian as if no one else was in the room” Regina laughs, “and finally I said, ‘don’t you know any American songs?’ And she sang Jingle Bells! I was like what the hell is this!? I’d never heard her speak English.”

Anne tells me Baba got a job at the YWCA where she’d clean the rooms. “The women loved my mom, they’d go sit in the rooms with her while she worked. That’s how she learned English.” Anne is restless and gets up from the table. It’s early afternoon and Baba’s many great grandchildren will be here soon to join Anne, Regina, Jamie, and Joshua in the beginning of the pierogi process.

Anne holds up a hand mixer that must be from 1950. We’re going to use it to make the Machanka. Jamie says Baba would be disappointed because she was adamant about using the same spoon, and rotating in the same direction the entire time. Machanka, a sour mushroom soup, is polarizing in this family. Some make a face, others say it’s delicious and eat it with a spoon. Everyone agrees though: rye bread is key. 

The pierogi production line is set-up: Joshua is ready to mix the dough in one corner, a few will roll out and cut the dough at a table set up in the middle of the room, and another group will get the squares of dough at the kitchen table with bowls of filling to crimp the pierogies together. 

“Just up until a few years ago we used to do everything by hand,” Regina says. She wouldn’t leave until 4am. The mixer has changed everything, but Anne has a hard time letting the recipes be made in big batches. They joke throughout the day that she’d only cook one pierogi at a time if she could. The dough needs to be just right, too. Sometimes it turns out to be too wet or too dry. “It’s weird!” Regina laughs, “when Baba was alive every batch was the same.” 

“Magic hands,” I say. Regina looks at me, “it’s true!” 

Joshua starts making the dough. He adds one cup of flour to the bowl, cracks in an egg, turns on the mixer, and gently pours in about half a cup of warm water. The mixer is loud over the clamour of voices. The dough mixes on medium speed for approximately five minutes until becoming smooth. The best guess for the variable in the dough is the size of the egg and the temperature of the water.

While the dough is mixing, I ask Joshua about the fillings. Last night, he prepped and cooked 50 pounds of onions, a mountain of potatoes, and six heads of cabbage. All of the fillings are made by a low and slow cooking process coupled with a hefty amount of butter.

“See that electric pan?” Joshua points to a pan that looks like it’s been around for at least a few Little Christmases. “That is the best way to do things. I’ve tried on the stove in a big pot, but it isn’t the same. So I start in a big pot, cook them down, and then brown them in the electric pan. You just can’t do it the same way without that pan.”

I smile. If you have a family tradition like this, chances are you have a pan like that. Not an electric pan, but the [insert kitchen vessel of choice]. The one that just gives the food the right flavor, the right crispiness or caramelization, and cooks it to perfection. I’m instantly reminded of my family’s pilaf pot, passed down from my grandmother. 

The dough is ready and Joshua takes it out and starts kneading it on the middle table. He rolls it out and cuts it into squares that get passed over to the crimping table. 

“There’s always room at the table,” Regina says, but that doesn’t mean you get to crimp the pierogies. It’s difficult to get inaugurated into crimping — you have to pass inspection. If you don’t stuff the pierogies correctly, they’ll break as they cook so you have to do it in just the right way. “There’s only one rule to follow. There can’t be a seam!” Regina exclaims. 

The key to sealing a pierogi is not to get the edges wet. No water to seal them, just your fingers and the dough. The lekvar, a prune preserve, is the hardest because the filling is gooey and spreads easily.

Everyone has their own crimping design. The filling determines the shape of the pierogi: potato is square, cabbage is triangle, and lekvar is a smaller half circle. The caramelized onions Joshua told me about will go on top of each layer with extra butter to make sure they don’t stick.

The production line of pierogies runs all night, with family members popping in and out of stations as the hours pass. There isn’t a target number for tonight, but there are four tables with tablecloths waiting to be filled before the night is through.

We’re ready to make the Machanka. We’re making two large pots, though Anne would prefer we only make one pot at a time. She’s been overruled by her grandchildren. The pots are set up to double boil, one large pot inside of another. “It’s going to get very thick,” Jamie tells me. 

The recipe starts with sauerkraut juice and water. We’ll heat the liquid until just warm, avoiding a simmer. While we wait, we measure flour for thickening out into a bowl. 

The soup is hot enough and Jamie starts to sprinkle the flour in while Anne uses the hand mixer to fully incorporate it. It seems to take forever, but overall probably only takes us about 20 minutes. 

The rule is, “you have to mix it in the same direction, really slow, until it gets thick like pudding,” Jamie instructs her younger cousin, Nicole. The flour begins to darken as it heats up, Anne points out. “You’re touching the bottom right?” she asks. It’s important to touch the bottom of the pot to make sure the flour doesn’t burn. 

While they’re mixing, Joshua is pulled away and I get to participate in the dough making. While Jamie’s family are avid supporters of my cookie hobby, they’re slightly suspicious of my pierogi dough making ability! Some of my doughs come out great, others too dry or wet (to be fair, I was warned!).

Once the Machanka has thickened, Joshua rinses dried porcini mushrooms and adds them into each pot. They’re stirred into the now gravy-esque soup, and the burners are turned off. A mixture of garlic sauteed in butter is poured on top of each pot before they’re covered and put downstairs for the night.

I leave for the evening, quietly slipping away from the kitchen stuffed full of people quickly folding pierogies, talking and laughing.

When I arrive the next morning, the day of the Little Christmas feast, there is a stillness to the house. Warm light pours in over three tables of pierogies waiting to be cooked. I find Regina in the kitchen with Anne, heating up the caramelized onions in the electric pan with a huge pound of butter melting in the middle of it. On the back porch, Joshua already has a large pot of water boiling on his industrial burner. 

I ask what time they finally stopped folding pierogies. “Around 1 a.m. this year,” Regina tells me. She admits in previous years she’d fold pierogies until 4 a.m. and fall asleep on the couch. Their number this year was 665, which doesn’t come close to breaking any family records. 

There’s a big pot of boiling water on the stove, to supplement the pot outside. Once the pierogies boil, they get placed onto a table layered with bed sheets to dry until they finally make their way into aluminum half trays with a little bit of caramelized onions and butter waiting for them on the bottom. 

“It’s a different dynamic, you know?” Regina says about the evolution of the tradition. Though today’s version has more children, yesteryear’s had more adults. “We probably just made 250. The most!” 

“I remember in 2010 we made 350, and it had people going ‘wow! Holy crap!’ Then these bastards came along,” Regina teases the younger generation, “and they were like ‘let’s beat that one!’ and then we went to 550, and ‘let’s beat that one!’”

“And meanwhile, even if you take them home, even if there’s leftovers, somehow, some way, they don’t taste the same when you heat them up. They just don’t!” She admits it might just be a frame of mind, enjoying them while everyone is together on the day of.

I ask her what else joins the pierogies on the table. “Well, they put garlic with a bowl of honey. They dip the garlic clove in honey and eat that.” I hear Joshua mumble in the background, “yeah, the newer generation doesn’t do that.” I laugh.

“We dish out the Machanka,” Regina continues, “and someone gets initiated every year. A new girlfriend or boyfriend… or you!”

I love the ingredients of the meal. “It’s like, okay what do we have? What are we going to do with this sauerkraut juice?” I laugh. Joshua says exactly what I’m thinking, “Exactly. It’s peasant food.”

In the background of our conversation, as if on autopilot, Regina and Joshua are dropping pierogies into their respective pots of boiling water, keeping an eye on them for about 15 minutes until they float, scooping them out and drying them off. Rinse and repeat.

Anne is standing near the boiling pierogies. “I’m waiting,” she says slyly. “To break one! Sometimes they crack,” she smiles, “and I eat them.” The room erupts with laughter.

“Yes! She’s waiting for a broken one, make no mistake, she knows her game plan,” Regina jokes.

Finally, one breaks, and Anne sits down to take a bite of a pierogi the size of her hand. 

I taste test a few pierogies and get served a bowl of machanka as a few family members gather and wait for my reaction. I take a bite with a spoon but Cathi, Anne’s daughter and Jamie’s mother, immediately hands me over a slice of rye bread from Rockland bakery. “You have to eat it with the bread!” Anne’s sister, Honey, advises me.

“You have to like sauerkraut and you have to like mushrooms,” Cathi warns. The dried mushrooms soak up the flavor of the sauerkraut from the soup. Though calling it a soup is a bit misleading (as it moves more like pudding and looks more like gravy), overall, I like it. 

Although Baba isn’t here, every story I’m told throughout my two days with this family is a glimpse into who she was. “If you knew her, she was the sweetest and gentlest. I never heard her say a bad word to anyone in all her years. Every one of the kids was ‘sveedie,’” Regina reflects. 

“She held this holiday the most sacred to her. You’d always catch her watching any mass, any denomination. It didn’t matter,” she sighs. “You know, in today’s world, so much tradition is going out the window. You could ask any kid at my school what they had for their holiday dinners — pizza, chinese, no one sits down and has dinner together. You know what I mean? Nobody has family traditions anymore.” I’m locked in. Raw moments like these are what drive me and propel this project forward. 

“So as long as we can, we will do it,” she declares. “In her honor, because without her, it would be meaningless.” 

Before I leave, I’m handed an aluminum tray heavy with pierogies. I can’t believe how many pierogies I'm bringing home to my family. There’s no way we’ll finish them all, I think to myself. But sure enough, we do. And we do it before the sun sets.