Food in Poland!

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.

Vatican State

Tags

Christmas Mass, Holy See, Jean Paul I, Pope Francis, Raymond Burke, Rome, St-Peter, Vatican, Via della Conciliazione

The current Pope Francis, Jorge Mario Bergoglio, a Jesuit, has certainly set the Curia (government of the Holy See) on its head. His announcement that he would create new Cardinals from mostly areas of the world where no Cardinals were named before, like Tonga, Panama, Cape Verde, Myanmar (Burma) or to Diocese like Ancona on the Adriatic and Agrigento in Sicily which had been left to bishops for a century surprised many in the Curia and among Vatican watchers. It was noted that this is the second time around where Pope Francis has not appointed any new Cardinals from the USA. There are reasons for that state of affair and the Church hierarchy in the USA is seen as too conservative and unwilling to follow any new direction as presented by Pope Francis, Cardinal Bernard Law is one,Cardinal Raymond Burke who was recently demoted is another example, conservative, narrow-minded and unwilling to follow direction from the boss, unable to understand that a new wind is blowing. In these new appointments Pope Francis is signalling that those who were on the fringe are being brought into the circle. This will no doubt help him with getting the support he needs in the 238 member College of Cardinals for his reform projects.

We have a friend Robert M. who has been a Vatican insider for years and worked for some years at Vatican Radio. He originally had gone to Rome to study theology and become a priest. Then he had a change of heart but decided to stay nonetheless and work as a civilian at the Vatican and later became a journalist and is currently the Editor and contributor to the National Catholic Reporter. His knowledge of the actors and the different Offices and who is in charge of this or that Office or precedent such as who is likely to become a Bishop, Archbishop or Cardinal, the whole political scene at the Vatican etc…He knows it inside out and it is fascinating to hear him talk about a current situation or a past one.

The Holy See (Vatican) is a far more complex affair than most people know. It is a country, albeit a small one, surrounded by Italy and has diplomatic relations with 120 countries with accredited Ambassadors to the Holy See. So there is the political,economic, cultural and diplomatic side of the Holy See and then there is the religious side of it which most people know at the Roman Catholic Church. Pope Francis is trying to reform the political side of the Curia at the Vatican and at the same time presenting a new Pastoral message. A commission of advisors (Cardinals), he chose to advise him on reforms was formed one year ago. He is likely to listen to the like minded Cardinals and sideline the recalcitrant.

I know that some people may think that some in the Curia might try to bump him off to protect themselves and their privileges. This notion comes from the fact the Jean Paul I (Albino Luciani) died in September 1978 after only 33 days in Office, it was said that he wanted to reform the Vatican, no proof was ever presented to these stories of murder plots, Hollywood once again spins a good story. There is also the notion in the publics mind that the Church cannot change or be reformed, many would like to believe the Church is evil, painting a dire picture of corrupt old men. Maybe this is a factor of the age in which we live, everything is seen with a cynical, jaundice eye.  This is not to say that there is not intrigue at the Vatican and political games and Pope Francis has called out those practices. What had been tolerated under Jean-Paul II is no longer acceptable.

Pope Francis is proceeding carefully and step by step has introduced new pastoral thinking and guidelines, the Vatican is a huge ship of State which cannot be turned around on a whim. He is also surrounded by Jesuits who are a powerful group within the Church. What is certain is that we are leaving behind the conservative often unbending dogmas of Jean-Paul II, a man who was more of a Public Relations figure too involved in Cold War Politics and that of his successor Benedict XVI who was more about administration and academe than anything else.

During my time in Rome, I was accredited to the Italian Republic and not to the Vatican but I would go from time to time visit our Ambassador to the Holy See whose Office is on Via della Conciliazione, the great street that leads up to St-Peter’s Basilica. We were also invited via the Canadian Embassy to the Holy See to State functions at the Vatican like the Christmas Mass or Easter Mass or for special private visits like at the Apostolic Palace where the Pope works to see art collections or rooms not open to the public. It was a great learning experience to see up close how the Vatican operated.

The world of the Vatican was and is a very special place unlike anything the common mortal might encounter but it is not the world described by the popular press or in movies, that is far too inaccurate.

Georg Philipp Telemann, overture for trumpet and Oboe.