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 – .

Il. 1. Sheep (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 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 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 “traditional” meat dishes in the meaning of old highlanders’ cuisine, in fact has very little in common with it. Coming back to Zdobnictwo, the author points out that pork is eaten only in the richest households during the so-called “mięsopust”- the last days of the winter carnival. For this occasion, before Christmas a pig fed for a few months before was killed and divided into parts in such a way that nothing was wasted. Blood mixed with oats groats or barley was used to prepare kiszki, suet and lard were smoked under a roof and all the other elements were eaten with potatoes, Swedes and cabbage. “A highlander eats other meat only in case of misfortune; when he puts down a sick or killed because of a fall: cow, sheep or goat” (p. 164).

Il. 6. Clear mutton soup wiht home–made noodles (Zakopane). Phot. Janusz Mazur, 2012 Here it is worth asking oneself a question: how did tourists deal with this poor menu of the highlanders’ cuisine? Moving in the circle of the 19th century literature about the Tatras we will again find the answer in journey reports and guidebooks, which in accordance with the contemporary canon of this kind of discourse often in great details provide instructions about what to take with you if you want to visit the Tatras and where victuals necessary for contemporary town and manor dwellers could be purchased. Let us again reach to Steczkowska’s Obrazki (1858), where the author in the probably most comprehensive way presents not only provision realities of places then reached by tourists, but it indirectly reveals culinary tastes of Cracow townspeople who travelled there to us. She starts her description from a characteristic remark: “As for food, one should not fear being forced to live like highlanders on oats cakes, because other products are not so difficult to get here. You can buy meat every day by the steelworks, to which you can get easily although it is half a mile away from the village. Quite good bread and rolls are baked are baked a few times a week by an innkeeper. Although she is a Jew, she is decent so you can eat her bread with gusto. However, you may easily have your own bread and rolls if you take flour from home, because in many cottages there are bread ovens and the innkeeper is so kind that she will let you bake it at her place. In Zakopane itself it is quite difficult to get butter. They make little of it and it is usually not good, because it is made from cow and sheep cream mixed together. However, if you make friends with housewives, you can get exquisite butter, which is much cheaper than in our place, because one pot is 8 to 9 zlotys. Milk is delicious, both sour and sweet; the latter is hard to find, because, as I said before, they have very little cattle on farms and they send fodder to the mountains. [...] let us add plenty of mushrooms, wild strawberries, raspberries, sometimes trout, which women, boys and children offer, and we must admit that those who are not too demanding and used to luxuries will not be hungry in Zakopane” (p. 56).

Il. 7. Smoked ewe’s milk cheese (“oscypek”) roasted with onion and cranberry (Zakopane). Phot. Janusz Mazur, 2012

Simple food offered to tourists by highlanders unexpectedly gains one more interpretation, in the background of which you can clearly hear echoes of romantic considerations about mountains as a place of divine hierophany. Using the terminology suggested by Jacek Kolbuszewski, a tourist – en enthusiast of primary nature and primordiality of highlanders’ life comes into a role of a searcher of philosophical truths. Steczkowska, like Teocles of Shaftesbury’s Rhapsody explains to readers who are not used to simple meals to treat them as a kind of fast food, due to which the wonderer’s mind undisturbed by worldly pleasures may much easier contemplate the greatness of universe created by God revealed in the majesty of mountains: “Those who think that they cannot do without delicacies, that without this spice they cannot be occupied and saturated by mountains and their views, should not leave the town and leave the Tatras to those who are ready to do all-day excursions eating only a piece of bread with sheep cheese and a glass of milk or żentyca, and return from them refreshed in their spirits, filled with a feeling of admiration and gratitude to the Creator of the universe, with a greater enthusiasm for virtue, with a bigger love for neighbours” (p. 57-58).

Il. 8. Mutton schnitzel with grilled potatos and fried cabbage (Zakopane). Phot. Janusz Mazur, 2012

The latter quoted excerpt reveals to us in fact the only but very clear culinary aspect of fascination with highlanders’ or rather Tatra distinctness. That is the Tatra Mountains as a pastoral land of “exquisite milk” and its products the nutritive values of which were glorified by practically all authors of the 19th century tourist literature, and the visual sign of which was a highlander bringing on horse milk in flat wood stave barrels (obońka) from pasture lands. The reports from excursions to Tatra valleys published in tourist publications, discovering details of pastoral life and finally a possibility to directly taste its substitute hidden in milk and sheep whey created one of important fragments of a model scenario of a tourist experience.

Il. 9. Roast mutton mushroom sauce with potato dumplings (Zakopane). Phot. Janusz Mazur, 2012

A “delightful” looking shepherd, that is about benefits of milk Nutritive and curing values of żentyca are the motif which in the 19th century Tatra literature returns with almost every published description of a trip to the Tatras. Although nowadays it is completely not associated with culinary attractions of Podhale, in the second half of the 19th century it played a significant role in the birth of tourist movement in Zakopane. At first tens, hundreds, and soon thousands of people travelled to the Tatras – to Kuźnice, and later to Zakopane, to undergo a żentyca treatment, which was helped, according to contemporary European medicine, to cure tuberculosis and general body weakness. The secret of nutritive values of żentyca was the aromatic fodder from pasture lands overgrown with then famous among chemists Tatra herbs, among others gentian, doronicum clusii and geum (Talewski, 1991, p. 129). The descriptions of handsome faces of shepherds in old tourist literature encouraged crowds of people suffering from tuberculosis to have this drink, to which unusual power of restoring health was then attributed. In the report from a trip to the Pieniny and the Tatras published in 1866 Łapczyński calls juhases living almost exclusively on żentyca “the gods of health” (p. 108). Three years later in Obrazy z życia i natury Wincenty Pol (1869) writes: “Żentyca is so positive that people almost only on it during the whole summer in shelters, with addition of fresh cheese. Every few weeks a farmer or a relative goes out to visit his friends and takes out a barrel of vodka and a few loaves of bread from Podhale. Therefore, the food seems to be very simple, but żentyca is so positive that it not only feeds but also makes people fat – and those who spent all the summer on pasture lands look good. The air is so vivifying here that it influences the whole body and even the hardest problems go away – or stay in the plains...” (p. 320-321). Let us notice that the latter quoted sentence reveals one more interesting meaning combination – żentyca becomes a mark which not only connotes health and vitality but also enters broader relations with such elements as promoting by all contemporary authors the refreshing mountain air and crystal clean water. Thus, it is one of idyllic elements of a mosaic, which builds a romantic image of the Tatras as a genuine land and unspoilt nature, similarly as a part of it is also a strong “delightful” looking juhas. Drinking żentyca and cow milk was also a part of a basic repertoire of customary behaviours during tourists’ trips to the Tatras, which in a rudimentary form may still be observed today in shelters kept within the frames of an agricultural pasture. How common and, what is more important, worth recording in numerous texts about the Tatras published since the times of Simplicissimus, this custom was is proved by the fact that in almost every description of a trip, diaries and guidebooks the motif of drinking żentyca or milk during a visit in a shelter is present. The model fixed in this way becomes a culinary tourist attraction, which will function in the Tatras until the moment of liquidation of pastoralism when the Tatra National Park is created in the described territory. Maria Steczkowska (1858) provides an interesting reading in this context in her detailed account from a trip to the Tatras in 1857. Each shelter she visited was an opportunity to drink milk or żentyca, not only to satisfy the thirst but also to experience contact with mountain people who inhabit this wild and inaccessible land. During a trip to the Kościeliska Valley it is worth buying cheese, the taste of which is certified by the name of this pasture: “Exquisite fodder for sheep is supposed to have given the name of Delicious to this pasture, which belongs to highlanders of Klikuszowa. Here they make best cheeses in bruski, you cannot find equal in the whole Tatras”. (p. 131). Drinking żentyca and milk by tourists, besides its purely utilitarian dimension, is also an opportunity to look into a shepherd’s hut, and thus enter a mythic sphere of one of the most important Tatra toposes, described by travellers, writers, poets and ethnographers. In this context it is worth looking closer at fragments concerning the very choice of sheep cheese, which becomes almost a magic activity, a very quintessence of mountain exoticism. Due to an unusual form the first example is a richly illustrated Bogusław Stęczyński’s work “The Tatras in twenty-four images drawn in graven and stylus (1860) published in the 1860’s. In this work, which Jan Gwalbert Pawlikowski calls a peculiar curiosum, even more because it is probably the only description of production of famous smoked cheeses – oscypek and bryndza – soft, white rennet cheese in verse form in Polish literature, the author attempts to reveal the secrets of oscypek production and, at the same time, he emphasises special features of żentyca:

Il. 10. Stalls with sheep cheese (Zakopane). Phot. Barbara Woch, 2011

First observing juhases attentively, As they seriously milk sheep Into gelets and then they drive the sheep Into a shelter, where white dogs guard them closely. Then the baca lights bonfire in a shelter Under a hanging pot, where he pours milk And he boils it, and then when he adds klog, In one moment pure milk turns into cheese, Floating in whey turned into żentyca, Efficient cure for tuberculosis – liked for its taste, Everybody takes it with a scoop and drinks And eats nothing else, but he is full and gains weight. And the baca, on squizing the cheese well through a sata, Has the only reward for all his efforts, Happy, when he makes the most cheese, Of which he makes tasty bryndza and oszczepek”. (p. 76)

An interesting text, in which an ethnographic concrete is dressed in a romantic metaphor, is a description of a Tatra hut, where incidentally Łapczyński as the narrator is personally involved in works and helps to drive sheep, changing for a while into a member of the hut’s team,. By giving technological details of milk processing, in a very plastic manner he portrays an image of a baca, who prepares cheese like a mysterious shaman occupied with performing some magic rite, for a reader. A similar mythic convention of a baca is present in Witkacy’s (1891) careful and astute description of pastoral customs, and the very moment of producing cheese becomes a semi-cosmogonic act: “It seemed that the old bald-foreheaded man, covered in a white sheep fur, with a huge brass strangely shaped brooch on his chest was performing some mysterious and religious rite, and the young one was serving him as if he was serving the mass. Anyway, who will guess if for them this sudden change which occurred in milk, this creation of cheese, did not seem a miraculous phenomenon, the further reasons of which lie beyond the edge of human knowledge. Finally, the baca took out an enormous ball of snow white cheese which in contrast to the black interior looked as a light circle of the Moon” (p. 91). After such an introduction the later degustation of cheese by characters of Na przełęczy becomes an object of ritual exchange of gifts, thanks to which tourists come for a moment behind the curtains into a mysterious circle of the pastoral world. The visitors taste freshly made, still dripping with whey sheep cottage cheese (bundz) which is served on a huge ladle and in exchange they give the delicacies from their rucksacks and baskets to the host. As we can see, the very consumption of cheese is an activity which engages all senses and becomes a total experience, an indirect touch of the “heart” of the mountain culture, which was a shepherd’s hut, by the visitors.

Il. 11. Tourist product – cheese "gazdowski" ("golka", "pucok") with the inscription "Zakopane". Phot. Janusz Mazur, 2012 In the context of tracing culinary motifs, the Tatra pasture land is also a place where shepherds’ and mountain robbers’ feasts are described by the travel literature. In fact, they created the longest-lasting paradigm for modern culinary experience for a tourist visiting a regional inn. The first mention of this can be found in Ungarisher oder Dacianischer Simplicissimus published in 1683, where in chapter XIII Simplicissimus together with five students and a guide visits a shepherd on a pasture land during a three-day trip to the Tatras. The baca orders juhases to treat the visitors with roast lamb, previously cooked in milk and sheep cheese, and on their way back they eat bryndza, sheep cheese and żentyca (Jostowa, p. 21). The motif of a shepherds’ feast also appears in the first in Polish literature vast description of the Tatra pastoralism, namely in Seweryn Goszczyński’s Diary of the Trip to the Tatras” “Sometimes, exceptionally, juhases have pastoral feasts. It is usually on a holiday, at night, when the livestock is resting in enclosures. Then they put meat on tables, vodka is poured into glasses; then they also dance to songs and music. This party is a real party. One can comprehend it if his thought moves to a beautiful country, under the cloudless sky where souls are as free” (p. 142). The pastoral feast is here subject to romantic mythologization, and it becomes a symbol of the dancing and singing mountain culture by connoting such concepts as freedom and eugenic power of nature. In turn Witkiewicz (1891) gives it the atmosphere of “primary wilderness” and includes it in the myth of mountain robbers by making the Tatra “boys” the participants of the feast” “Mountain robbers visited huts at nights. They brought vodka and wine, they slaughtered sheep and had feasts until the dawn, with the whole range of their tempers they had fun and danced with juhas females, some of whom were their lovers.” (p. 97). What is interesting, the durability of this motif is particularly clearly visible in rhetoric used by modern Zakopane gastronomy which adds adjective “robber’s” to a lot of meat dishes, starting from soups, through various meat dishes, roast potatoes and alcohol.

Modern pastoral cuisine, regional and traditional products The models of experiencing, and more exactly eating and tasting certain products, which were fixed in the 19th century literature addressed to tourists, to a significant degree influenced the habitus of a Tatra tourist, who also nowadays, despite numerous changes in the Zakopane landscape, will long for the taste of sheep cheese, the smell of smoked oscypek and meat roasted on bonfire, the sight of a pot hanging over the bonfire. Looking for spots where one can hide from the civilization and taste the “authentic mountain culture” a tourist gets to one of numerous inns of Zakopane and takes part in the specific regional performance held for him. The eclectic decor of the place as well as its location and architecture is a compilation of various spatial orders – a shepherd’s hut, a manor house, a hunter’s cottage, an inn and a bar. All these, in accordance with the main postmodernist trend of tourism, going “beyond” the history, in order to discover immaculate nature and genuine primordiality of the local culture )MacCannel, 1992, p. 26). The role of the marker is again very important, because thanks to it an entering visitor receives a ready-made interpretation. Here is a text advertising one of the most fashionable inns of Zakopane: The inn is located not far from the mouth of the “Ku Dziurze” Valley, below Droga pod Reglami, which is a strict border of the Tatra National Park reserve. It is a beautiful quiet place at the bottom of Giewont. The last robber of Podhale – Wojciech Mateja used to live here. The inn is built of wood in a regional style to the design prepared by a famous architect musician Jan Karpiel Bułecka.

Il. 12. Dishes with mutton and lamb from the grill (Zakopane). Phot. Janusz Mazur, 2012 The interior is made of solid waxed wood and the walls are decorated with paintings by Władysław Trebunia-Tutka”. Expended menus of regional restaurants are an intriguing reading, which may surprise both tourists and highlanders, not to mention linguists and experts of the culinary art. Ignoring comprehensible names such as “pork fillets in boletus sauce”, “a genuine pork chop with extras” or saddle or a loin of ram shashlik, the majority of other dishes have complex, most often mysterious names, which tempt with extraordinary culinary experience. The names of dishes which initially had a marking role, become an attraction in themselves, due to dialect, archaic stylization and periphrases, which are meant to convince the customer that he is about to consume a genuine, traditional dish. In the most fashionable regional restaurants we can taste “ribs stewed with turnip”, “host’s wrap poniywiyrany in a roll” (stuffed pork loin in batter), “ram’s haunch roasted to golden colour in fire”, “wild boar fried in juniper doused with wine”, “pork ham bathed in herbs with honey icing”, “grilled oscypek with cranberry”, “mountain robbers’ pot” ( a kind of stew) or Janosik’s thalers (sliced roast potatoes), which promise an adventure in an imaginary hut without unnecessary effort, nice and safe. Eating here is not only a physical activity meant to satisfy hunger, but it clearly gains a metaphoric-representative character by an opportunity to indirectly absorb cultural dissimilarity. Groups of tourists at tables play a game with authors of culinary attractions, in search for archaic marks of the mountain culture, pastoralism, authentic folk culture, wilderness or immaculate nature. The popularity of regional restaurants is therefore a part of typical pattern of thinking about Zakopane and the Tatras as Arcadian, natural and virgin place, where a tourist tired of fast life in a big city may efficiently regenerate his body. Paradoxically, he does not do it drinking “exquisite” milk or life-giving żentyca with which he could nibble a hard moskal as he used to a century ago, but he eats away delicious shashliks, chops and stuffed bacon from clay dishes in a restaurant in Zakopane. Although regional restaurants are rather a place where culinary experiments are made, manufacturers of cheeses in huts still remain faithful to old recipes, and the demand for their products is increasing. Especially mountain hard smoked cheeses made from sheep and cow milk are popular. The unquestioned king of these is oscypek, which in 2007 received the EU Protective Designation of Origin. It is made from or a mixture of sheep and cow milk, the proportions of which are strictly prescribed by the regulations. The recent “fight” for the certificate for oscypek also proves that local products of Podhale, and especially those connected with the tradition of pastoral economy, have now become a value of which even highlanders themselves are aware and who consider them to be a very important ingredient of the cultural heritage. Oscypeks, nowadays served among others to visitors during wedding receptions organized in mountain style. They are also often given as a characteristic present from the native land when visiting relatives abroad. Moskals, although in a different form – made from wheat-flour, sometimes with eggs or yeast, are served during various regional festivals, so is traditional mountain soup kwaśnica. The significance of pastoral economy products made in Podhale and endeavours of the local community to protect them can be proved by the fact that the official list of traditional and regional products approved by the Polish Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development includes all basic varieties of sheep and cow cheeses produced here.

Il. 13. Stalls with sheep cheese (Zakopane). Phot. Janusz Mazur, 2012

They are: oscypek, bundz, redykołka, bryndza, ser gazdowski gołka (hard, smoked cheese from cow milk of a roller shape) and żentyca. Finally, it is worth mentioning that the title of a traditional product was also granted in 2008 to Podhale lamb, which is appreciated for excellent quality of mountain sheep meat. Although in recent years it has become a highly appreciated, especially in Italy, export product, the native cuisine hardly ever uses it. The latter case shows how modifications occur in the local culinary tradition, which despite being entangled in rhetoric of authenticity, invariability and archaism is in fact a very dynamic process, which depends on customers’ needs, images and tastes. Lamb meat – in the past an unimaginable luxury for highlanders – today is in a way institutionally called a “regional and traditional product”, tomorrow it might be present on Podhale tables and it may be included in the offer of traditional restaurants becoming one more pastoral tradition mark of Podtatrze.

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