Tags
Charles de Gaulle, Christmas Mass, coffee, Fish, Mickiewicz, Nowy Swiat, Paczki, Pan Tadeusz, pierogies, Poland, Warszawa
I really liked Polish cuisine, it is varied and excellent. Poles love good well prepared food and Polish cuisine has many delicacies, depending on the Seasons and the Holidays, New Year, Easter, Christmas, etc….
Our house was on Ulica Dabrowiecka 8, Saska Kepa, in Warszawa. A very nice house it had 3 floors and a large finished basement with garage. The garden was also quite large and one section had large ornamental bushes that needed bi-monthly trimming and flower beds etc. this is where I would hire the gardener of the Ambassador to help out with this work.
We had a housekeeper Kristina, a statuesque woman who had just buried husband number 3 and was now going out with a Polish Senator. She also had Baboon red ass hair. She was a superb cook and housekeeper and was very organized, you just left it to her and she too care of everything. She also took care of our two dachshunds or Jamniki in Polish, our short hair Bundnie and long hair Reesie. She spoiled them rotten and would constantly talk to them and feed them whatever she was cooking. Little morcels of food, being Jamnikis of course they loved it.
The best of course was at Christmas, galaretka was my favourite it reminded me of dishes my grandmother prepared for our Christmases in Montreal. Galaretka of chicken or Carp fish filet. It is an Aspic (jellied) dish of Carp filet. The preparation of the Carp is quite interesting.
Many of the ponds and streams of the Royal Palaces in Warsaw all have giant Carp fish, they are quite big, the size of a large Catfish with a huge mouth. It is said that Carp can live a very long life, there was a story I remember hearing from one of the keepers of the Garden’s at Versailles that up to 1900 you could find Carps who had known the days of Marie-Antoinette, that would make them 130 years old. Now I do not know if this is true of not but I do not see why not since they have no predators in these big ponds and the water is constantly refreshed because they are fed by streams running through the palace grounds. It is a bottom feeder so they live off of many things.
So for Christmas one of the popular dishes is Carp and it is prepared in many different ways, the one I especially like is Karp w Galaretka, (Carp in Aspic jelly). I asked Kristina if she could do that for us, of course and then she went on to tell me, as was her fashion all the other dishes she would prepare for us. Feeding an army was her hobby, but there was only 2 of us.
She went to the market and bought several live Carps, now the trick, I kid you not, is to keep the Carp alive in your bathtub until the day you need to prepare the dish. This is what she did like all other Poles I knew did. Then on the appointed day you take a baseball bat or something similar and you kill the fish by hitting it on the head, proceeding to then gut and clean it and proceed to make your Karp W Galaretka.
Other dishes where various soups like Borscht, hers was very good, and desserts, so many desserts and salads made with beets, carrots and various style of coleslaw. Her meat pirogies were also quite good.
One sweet I always liked were Paczki (pronounced punch-key) a doughnut filled with cream or jam. Now there are special places to buy these Paczki in Warsaw, bakeries who specialize in them and they must be very fresh, everyone I knew had a special address of a bakery that made the best. There was one in Saska Kepa about 3 blocks from my home, I would go there to buy Paczki. There was at 33 Nowy Swiat street near the Rondo de Gaulle’a, Blikle Cafe, I never found it to be that good. There is also E. Wedel an old family chocolatier and pastry place, they had apparently the best pastries, I was not sold on them either and found better elsewhere, though their chocolates were good. In Poland it is often best to go with Polish friends who have lived in Warsaw and know where Babcha would go and shop, those are the best places.
Paczki
In Poland when you are having a pastry have a cup or pot of Tea, coffee is not a Polish thing at all. I say this because in the Epic Poem Pan Tadeusz by Adam Mickiewicz, there is a famous passage which makes any Pole smile, Takiej kawy jak w Polszcze hie ma w żadnym kraju... . It makes me smile too, the translation reads; In no other country is there such coffee as in Poland, the text then goes on to say; In Poland, in a respectable household, a special woman is, by ancient custom,
charged with the preparation of coffee. She is called the coffee-
maker; she brings from the city, or gets from the river barges,
berries of the finest sort, and she knows secret ways of preparing
the drink, which is black as coal, transparent as amber, fragrant
as mocha, and thick as honey. Everybody knows how necessary
for coffee is good cream: in the country this is not hard to get
for the coffee-maker, early in the day, after setting her pots on
the fire, visits the dairy, and with her own hands lightly skims
the fresh flower of the milk into a separate little jug for each cup.
I am sure this secret recipe was lost somewhere under the Communist. If you have a chance do read Mickiewicz, Pan Tadeusz, it is a magnificent work of literature.
Larry Muffin At Home 
I keep reading all of you Polish postings Laurent and I love them. Your perspective is unique and of course I look at all of the things you describe and smile, as I see many as totally normal. In fact I still cannot understand all that Turkey for Xmas… Well, there is turkey for Easter, turkey for Thanksgiving and Turkey for Xmas – at least in Alberta there is. Oh well – please keep writing – I love those stories. We have totally adopted the turkey for Thanksgiving Canadian tradition and my turkey is well likes by all those who devour it.
BTW, for Xmas my wife makes an awesome Carp in Aspic, but there is also fried Carp, and Carp in special tomato sauce (it’s called Greek-style – do not know why, since i do not think the Greeks eat much Carp – they have access to better fish in Greece) – we buy the carp in Edmonton at a Chinese store. There is also my favourite the herring with onions and spices in oil/lemon juice – made fresh – awesome, cabbage with mushrooms, three different types of Pierogi (with a special mushroom filling – boletus if available, another with cheese/potatoes – Russian style they call it, and a third with a special mix of lentils and other beans – it’s my favourite and my Mother-in-Law is unbeatable in creating these), makiełki (a poppy seed dish), dried fruit compote (only made at Xmas). There is also the possibility of fish soup (cooked on the heads of the fish) – this is more of a German influence so people around the western part of the country indulge in that concoction. My grandma used to make that instead of the barszcz (borsht).
Also, loved the part of one of the stories where you took a Samsonite suitcase to the mountains and hiked with it! Nice touch Laurent!
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You know that we never do turkey for any holidays, either roast goose or roast Lamb. The only reason I can think why in Canada we do turkey is because it is available everywhere. Whereas goose and Canadian Lamb not so easy, though in Warsaw our butcher would sell us parts of goose if we did not want to buy another entire bird. I also know about fried Carp and I like Herring and Pierogi with meat or mushroom and of course the Makielki, well all of it very good indeed. As for the Samsonite suitcase I still laugh thinking about it.
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I have tasted roasted Goose only once. This splendid delicacy is something I would love to try again.
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Did you know that every child in a Polish school must memorise the invocation to “Pan Tadeusz” (Sir Thaddeus, or the Last Lithuanian Foray: A Nobleman’s Tale from the Years of 1811 and 1812 in Twelve Books of Verse) as part of their studies. The epic story is a national treasure and Mickiewicz is a Polish bard like no other. His most famous statue in the central square in Krakow is a huge national symbol. There are statues to him in almost every major Polish city and also in places like Lviv and Paris. Alas, the English translation of the original Polish, although extremely well done, is unreadable and does not convey the emotion that the original piece entails. It’s similar to trying to read Hamlet or Macbeth in Polish – it’s competent but nothing like the original.
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I do not doubt that Mickiewicz is difficult to translate. There are certain concepts in any language you simply cannot fully translate because to native speakers it means something at an emotional level and how do you translate emotions. If Polish students still learn Pan Tadeusz well good for them, it will enrich their lives.
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How funny, an old friend was just telling me the best coffee she had ever had was in Poland! As for your housekeeper, Kristina: How do you know her ass hair was red?!? (Oh, wait… never mind.)
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Hmmm, good question!
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Mr. Muffin, i appreciate seeing reference to paczki here. I served as an altar boy in a polish parish growing up and the only polish i learned was from the missalette: Pan zi Wami. but last winter, just before lent, my parents brought the whole family paczki from a traditional polish bakery. now, you know, dunkin donuts will never be the same. thanks for running us through the gamut of polish foods!
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Ben, I should explain the name of my blog, I should in fact write about how I came to the name Larry Muffin. I do not eat muffins nor do I like them especially. The word/name muffin came to me like a puff of smoke out of nowhere while I was looking for a name for my blog on blogger at the time. Many people ask me about it, even the sales clerks in stores if I give them my business card. Despite the fact that my real family name is written on it, just makes a lot of people smile.
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He is Larry Muffin as muffins are sweet dear things.
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Larry thanks! Just saw this explanation. I have been mildly bemused at the unusual name, but like so many others, it makes me smile. Write on!
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I didn’t have Polish food until I moved to chicago, then I had those dumpling things (begins with a ‘p’; the name escapes me). Tasty food but not ‘lo-cal’ I’m afraid.
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In Poland there is a saying if you need low fat or low cal then you must be dying, poor you.
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When I was young my mother called jelly filled donuts bismarks.
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that is funny, I do not think they would call it that in Poland for obvious reasons.
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