Sheep-Based Cuisine in Poland

CULTURE AND NATURE: THE EUROPEAN HERITAGE OF SHEEP FARMING AND PASTORAL LIFE RESEARCH THEME 6: CUISINE BASED ON SHEEP PRODUCTS RESEARCH REPORT FOR POLAND By Monika Golonka-Czajkowska MUZEUM KRESÓW W LUBACZOWIE NOVEMBER 2011 The CANEPAL project is co-funded by the European Commission, Directorate General Education and Culture, CULTURE 2007-2013.Project no: 508090-CU-1-2010-1-HU-CULTURE-VOL11 This report reflects the authors’ view and the Commission is not liable for any use that may be made of the information contained herein Cuisine based on sheep products Introduction............................................................................................................................................. 3 “Great monotony in food products” ....................................................................................................... 5 A “delightful” looking shepherd, that is about benefits of milk............................................................ 12 Modern pastoral cuisine, regional and traditional products ................................................................ 17 Bibliography: ......................................................................................................................................... 21 Introduction If you asked contemporary Poles what associations they have with the taste of Podhale, certainly most of them would answer without hesitation – oscypek. Il. 1. Sheep cheese (Podhale). Phot. Barbara Woch, 2011 This smelling of smoke, decoratively shaped as a spindle cheese with a shiny goldish rind owes its popularity not only to its exquisite taste. It is recognized and readily bought by tourists also thanks to all these values which are associated with Podhale and mountain culture in Poland – unusual Tatra nature and fascinating exoticism of its inhabitants’ pastoral culture. Probably everybody is aware that food is one of the most popular categories of modern tourist attractions. Moreover, eating as a form of human activities involves all senses and thus it occupies a special position in tourist experience. Besides the taste an important role is also played by the sight which prepares taste buds for reception of a dish, the touch – especially when instead of using cutlery we have to eat with hands, and the smell, which is called by J. J. Rousseau the sense of imagination and desire. It is the same with the oldest tourist region in Poland – Podtatrze, and particularly its capital – Zakopane, where smoked cheeses from sheep and cow milk of various shapes and sizes, from big oscypeks to small redykołeks in the shape of animals, birds or hearts displayed on market stalls are the most readily bought regional food product. Il. 2. Stalls with sheep cheese (Zakopane). Phot. Barbara Woch, 2011 Also local cuisine dishes served in regional restaurants attract thousands of tourists per year with their delicious smell and look. The topic of food, with precise tips where and what should be eaten, appears in every guide book for Podhale published nowadays. It is also a topic of long and lively discussions on travelling websites and visiting the most fashionable local restaurants or regional inns is one of basic events of a stay in the Tatras. Hoping for an unforgettable culinary experience tourists come not only to satisfy their hunger but also to be in a totally different unique place, to stop or even turn back time and taste the authentic mountain culture. By getting away from everyday life they try to find special marks created by literature and tourists advertisements, which are interpreted as genuine or typical regional dish, according to the score of behaviours fixed by eulogists of the mountain culture in the 19th century (Kolbuszewski, 1992, p. X). Although the fascination with the mountain culture has a very long history, the fashion for visiting this kind of restaurants itself is a relatively young phenomenon, which flourished together with revival of local gastronomic industry after 1989. The assortment of served dishes, despite assurances of the authenticity and indirect continuation of the old mountain cuisine tradition, is to a large extent rather a series of cultural variations and experiments, which are characteristic for the phenomenon of the so-called invented tradition (Hobsbawm, 1983). “Great monotony in food products” Il. 3. Stalls with sheep cheese (Zakopane). Phot. Barbara Woch, 2011 Browsing through the 19th century literature devoted to the Tatras, it is easy to notice that initially the manner of local population’s nutrition did not arise any particular enthusiasm in visitors. The consumer minimalism and rigor characteristic for traditional Podhale cuisine was based on very monotonous, or sometimes even unbearable, from the point of view of an outer observer, flour-diary-potato diet. Simple, everyday dishes – potatoes (grule) seasoned with fat or milk, oats cakes baked on a tray (moskale), baked beans with potatoes and fat fired with flour (fizoły) or oats pulp (kluska) with milk or bryndza thinned with water were distinctively disapproved by travellers or treated indulgently as a local curiosity. It can be exemplified by the first Polish Tatra guidebook of 1860 in which the author complains about poor culinary skills of female highlanders (Janota, 1860, p. 49). In turn, Maria Steczkowska (1858), a traveller from Cracow, briefly summarizes the general characteristics of the local cuisine: “A highlander does not care much about it [food – footnote MGC]; a descent outfit, a big and beautiful cottage, these are the main objects of his efforts” (p. 45). Similar conclusions will be drawn thirty years later by Stanisław Witkiewicz – a painter, a writer and a great visionary, who wanted to turn “Zakopane style”, which he created himself, into a real Polish national style. In his collection of literary reports from journey to the Tatras “Na przełęczy” (1891) this one of the most famous eulogists of the Tatras and the mountain culture writes about an unusual highlanders’ “temperance”, who being a genuine people of nature live on air, water and hunger, not attaching special significance (p. 176) to the culinary art. Struggling with problems of everyday existence the inhabitants of the Tatras will not look for satisfying their higher needs in sublime pleasures of the palate, which poor soil of Podhale does not allow them, but they will manifest it with a chisel, “wild” dance and music, which is so different and at the same time fascinating for the avid for exoticism visitors. Il. 4. Sheep's cheese ("redykołka"), roasted and served with cranberry (Zakopane). Phot. Janusz Mazur, 2012 To what extent a simple bowl with kluska and gruel buttered with fat was an intriguing phenomenon, which the contemporary eulogists of the mountain culture could not handle, can be best observed in a vast chapter on highlanders’ food, published by Władysław Matlakowski in the final part of Decorations and Equipment of Polish People in Podhale (1901). The folk passion is combined with a specific scientific vivisection, which is not a coincidence considering the author’s medical education. Here is how Matlakowski starts his reasoning: “The existential and physiological aspect of highlanders’ nutrition is enormously interesting and it brings a few profound questions. From the point of view of our tastes and our palates, all that these people eat is unbearable if not disgusting. From physiological point of view it is so far away from the average standard of proteins, carbohydrates and fats required by authorities and their most recognized works that all these mountain people should have died out long ago; if not died out they should have been constantly suffered from intestines and stomach diseases. Nevertheless, not only did they not die out but this land is highly overpopulated; not only do they not suffer from alimentary canal diseases, but they are healthy as far as you can roughly tell ( I admit that this is not a precise measure), they do not look worse than other people from different regions of the country. [...] but if you consider: fertility, longevity, mechanical dexterity, working power, that is the best possibly developed mechanical work and the fabulously little and simple nutrition, endurance for hardships, cleverness, agility, intelligence, that is a hidden skill to adopt and use requirements and achievements of the civilization, transforming into cultural forms – then, as far as you can guess without precise statistics , these people come off well in comparison to others; the very fact that of being successful and getting by in North America, sending their earnings home to support families gives evidence of a highlander” (p. 162-163). Il. 5. Sheep's cheese ("redykołka"), roasted and served with cranberry (Zakopane). Phot. Janusz Mazur, 2012 After making these general remarks, Matlakowski analyses highlanders’ menu in details. He mentions basic products such as sour (kiszczone) milk, butter, buttermilk and sheep cheese, oats flour, grule and cabbage. Sometimes the highlanders’ bowls contain turnips, swedes (karpiele), linseed oil and pork – mainly suet and lard. According to this author they usually had for breaklfast either boiled potatoes or oats flour pulp boiled in water served with sour milk, sometimes sprinkled with butter or melted lard. After describing fast food, moskale and sauerkraut, Matlakowski proceeds to meat. Let us remember this excerpt, because thanks to it we will more easily notice how modern culinary offer of the Tatra restaurants, which serve mainly

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