Marcelina Leopold
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Polish Food Presented by Marcelina Leopold If you want to try traditional Polish cuisine, stop counting your calories. Typical meals are very hearty and often contain a lot of meat. Just sampling them is enough to discover that they are really delicious and worth putting on a few ounces. The most recommendable dishes are: bigos, kotlet schabowy, pierogi and gołąbki. Poles boast that their two basic products are bread and sausages. The most typical ingredients used in Polish cuisine are sauerkraut, beetroots, cucumbers (gherkins), sour cream, kohlrabi, mushrooms, sausages and smoked sausage. A meal owes it taste to the herbs and spices used; such as marjoram, dill, caraway seeds, parsley, or pepper. The most popular desserts are cakes and pastries. A shot of vodka is an appropriate addition to festive meals and helps you to digest the food. Poland’s culture has always integrated elements from its neighbours, and there are also many recipes of Jewish origin. Nowadays the Polish menu is still changing, being influenced by various and sometimes exotic tastes. Apart from traditional restaurants specialising in Polish cooking, restaurants serving Italian, French and Asian foods are mushrooming in Poland’s cities, as well as vegetarian bars. History of Polish Food During the Middle Ages the cuisine of Poland was heavy and spicy. Two main ingredients were meat (both game and beef) and cereal. The latter consisted initially of proso millet, but later in the Middle Ages other types of cereal became widely used. Most commoners did not use bread and instead consumed cereals in the forms of kasza (groat) or various types of flatbread, some of which (for instance kołacz) are considered traditional recipes even in the 21st century. Apart from cereals, a large portion of the daily diet of mediaeval Poles consisted of beans, mostly broad beans and peas. As the territory of Poland was densely forested, usage of mushrooms, forest berries, nuts and wild honey was also widespread. Among the delicacies of the Polish nobility were honey-braised bear paws served with horseradish-flavoured salad (now species protected in Poland), smoked bear tongue and bear bacon. Along with the Italian queen Bona Sforza (second wife of Sigismund I of Poland) many Italian cooks came to Poland after 1518. Although native vegetable foods were an ancient and intrinsic part of the cuisine, this began a period in which vegetables like lettuce, leeks, celeriac and cabbage were more widely used. Even today, some of those vegetables are referred to in Polish as włoszczyzna, a word derived from Włochy, the Polish name of Italy. During this period the use of spices, which arrived in Poland via Western Asian trade routes, was common among those who could afford them, and dishes considered elegant could be very spicy. However, the idea that Queen Bona was the first to introduce vegetables to Poland is false. While her southern cooks may have helped elevate and expand the role of various vegetables in royal Polish cuisine, records show that the court of king Jogaila (in Polish Władysław II Jagiełło, who died in 1434, over 80 years before her reign) enjoyed a variety of vegetables including lettuce, beets, cabbage, turnip, carrots, peas and cauliflower. The only indisputable fact is that the court of Queen Bona was fed in an Italian fashion, because she exclusively employed Italian cooks, some of whom were originally hired to prepare parties for aristocratic families but who were soon serving typical Italian dishes as part of the court's daily menus. Court records show that Queen Bona imported large volumes of southern European, American and Western Asian fruits (oranges, lemons, pomegranates, olives, figs, tomatoes), vegetables (potatoes and corn), nuts (chestnuts, raisins and almonds, including marzipan), along with grains (such as rice), cane sugar and Italian olive oil. The court also imported various herbs and spices including black pepper, fennel, saffron, ginger, nutmeg, cloves and cinnamon, ginger, turnip, carrots, peas and cauliflower. After the end of World War II, in Poland, the majority of restaurants that survived the 1940s and 1950s were state-owned. Workplace lunch rooms promoted mostly inexpensive meals, including soups of all kinds, meatballs and pork chops, and staples such as placki ziemniaczane/kartoflane (potato pancakes), placki z jablkami (apple pancakes), kopytka (potato gnocchi), leniwe (farmer's cheese gnocchi served sweet) and pierogi (dumpligs). A typical second course consisted of meat cutlet served with potatoes or buckwheat and "surówka" (raw, julienned vegetables similar to coleslaw). The popular Polish kotlet schabowy is a breaded cutlet similar to the Austrian Wiener schnitzel and the Italian and Spanish Milanesa. With the fall of communism in Poland in 1989, a wave of new restaurants opened and the basic foodstuffs were once again easily obtainable. This led to a gradual return of rich traditional Polish cuisine, both in home cooking and in restaurants. At the same time, restaurants and supermarkets promoted the use of ingredients typical of other cuisines of the world. Among the most notable foods that started to become common in Poland were cucurbits, zucchini and all kinds of fish. During communist times, these were available fresh mostly in the seaside regions. Recent years have seen the advent of a slow food movement, and a number of TV programmes devoted to other cuisine and as well as traditional Polish cuisine have gained popularity. Poland also has a number of unique regional cuisines with regional differences in preparations and ingredients. There are extensive lists of the dishes typical to Polish regions such as Galicia, Kresy, Podlachia, Masovia (including Warsaw), Masuria, Pomerania, Silesia, Lesser Poland, the Tatra mountains and Greater Poland. Best Traditional Polish Foods You Should Try Pierogi - Dumplings Undeniable, pierogi is the most popular Polish food. Pierogi is already plural in Polish (pieróg is singular), but in the US people love to call it pierogis which makes no sense. They are thinly rolled-out dough filled with a variety of fillings, savory or sweet. They could be served as an appetizer, main dish or a dessert. The most popular fillings are meat, sauerkraut with wild mushrooms, spinach, buckwheat, sweet cottage cheese with raisins and seasonal fruit (blueberries, strawberries and cherries), potatoes with fried onions, black pepper and cottage cheese called Ruskie which means “Ruthenian pierogi” (not “Russian” as they’re often wrongly classified). You can get them boiled, baked or fried, but traditionally in Poland you eat them boiled with butter and fried onions on top. Ogórki kiszone – Soured gherkins Poles love to pickle food. The Polish pickled cucumber is a bit different than the traditional gherkin you might be used to – it’s a bit sour, with a lot of dill, similar to kosher-style pickles. Cucumbers only pickled for a few days have a different, less sour taste than those pickled for longer. They’re known as ogórek małosolny, which literally means ‘low-salt cucumber’. There is also kiszona kapusta, literally sauerkraut, which might appear strange, due to the method of preparation. Like wine, one has to keep on stepping on it in a barrel… Bigos – Hunter’s stew It is a rich stew which is sometimes translated into ‘hunter’s stew’ and is made with sauerkraut, various types of chopped meats, smoked sausage, bacon and wild mushrooms. Kotlet Schabowy – Pork Schnitzel Kotlet Schabowy is a pork cutlet in a coating. It’s like Wiener schnitzel, but thicker. If you ask a Pole to serve you something typically Polish, you’ll be served schabowy with boiled potatoes and warm beets – alternatively with a boiled carrot chopped in cubes mixed with peas. The history of Polish kotlet schabowy dates back to the 19th century. Placki Ziemniaczane – Potato Pancakes The authentic Polish potato pancakes are a traditional comfort food eaten all over the country. Everyone has their own family recipe but the base is always raw grated potatoes, grated onions, eggs and flour, flattened and fried into savoury pancakes. You can have them with applesauce, sour cream or simply sprinkled with sugar. Barszcz z uszkami – Beetroot soup with dumplings The word Uszka actually means ‘little ears’ and it’s quite appropriate given the shape of the little mushroom or minced meat dumplings that come in the Barszcz or borscht which is a sweet and sour soup that’s coloured red by its beetroot base. Wild Mushrooms Mushrooming is a popular family activity, so unsurprisingly whatever you collect is eaten in many forms. There are at least twenty different types of wild mushrooms in Polish woods. They can be served as a sauce or soup. During the summer months, a popular breakfast is scrambled eggs with chanterelle mushrooms that Poles have been serving for decades. Golabki – Cabbage rolls Polish golabki (translating directly it means ‘little pigeons’) is cooked minced meat, grains (like rice, buckwheat etc) often with onions and mushrooms, wrapped up in a leaf of white cabbage and stewed. They’re served with either boiled potatoes or bread and poured over with a thick and creamy tomato sauce. Bagels – Fun Fact Though the origins of bagels are somewhat obscure, it is known that they were widely consumed by Ashkenazi Jews from the 17th century. The first known mention of the bagel, in 1610, was in Jewish community ordinances in Kraków, Poland. It is traditionally shaped by hand into the form of a ring from yeasted wheat dough, roughly hand-sized, that is first boiled for a short time in water and then baked. Makowiec – Poppy seed roll This is one of Poland’s most popular sweet foods, the Poppyseed roll (pronounced mah-KOH-vyets) is a rolled out sweet yeast bread with a rich bittersweet filling of poppy seed paste, raisins and often marzipan.