Cooking From The Heart /Pierogi Sauce

"real home cooking is like a fine art: it is hard to define, but we know it when we see it... it is the most personal and satisfying style of cooking we know.  home cooking stresses finesse over fancy techniques.  it calls for ingredients close at hand... simplicity is a hallmark of home cooking, and so is adaptability: if a dish calls for six loves of garlic and you only have one, if the recipe requires a tablespoon of tomato paste and you're all out, if you're supposed to use lemon juice but you've got only oranges, you cook anyway, and you end up making something good."

~ Nancy Harmon Jenkins, SAVEUR January/February 2009 #117

A 5-star gourmet chef lives in the apartment above me.  He is my brother-in-law and he frequently passes along secrets from various prestigious kitchens he's worked in.  This creation below was one of them...sort of.  I used what I had on hand for the Pierogi that he got for us from his Russian cook friend).  Of course, my upstair chef neighbor usually uses fresh ingredients and has obvious more-skilled techniques, but there's always a place in this world for the home cook.

Tangy, earthly, salty, not his exact recipe, because he never remembers what it is. I could easily mistake this for Cream of Wild Mushroom Soup. MMM!

PIEROGI SAUCE

• 2 cloves garlic, minced (mine were frozen)
• 2 Tbsp unsalted butter
• 1 tsp extra vigrin olive oil (mine was cheap)
• 1 tsp dry parsley
• 1/2 tsp dry thyme
• two handfuls dried wild mushrooms, roughly chopped (he would've used fresh herbs & mushrooms)
• 2 Tbsp dark balsamic vinegar
• 1.5 cups chicken broth (he would've made his own slow-simmered homemade chicken stock from scratch)
• 3 Tbsp cup heavy cream
• salt

1. slowly brown garlic, herbs, and mushrooms in butter & oil over low/simmer flame for 5 minutes
2. add vinegar and stir for a minute
3. add chicken broth/stock and simmer for 3 hours (or, in chef language: Reduce)
4. add cream and purée
5. salt to taste
6. Find some Russian pierogis that are freshly baked and pour the sauce over (or bake refrigerated ones in the sauce at 350ºF, 20-30 minutes, like I'm going to tonight).