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.

Our memorable trip to the Karkonoshe

Tags

Czech Republic, hiking, Jelenia Gora, PKP, Poland, Schronisko Szrenica, Silesia, Travel, Warszawa

While in Poland Will and I met with a group of Polish Hikers who would take trips around Poland to go hike in the Mountains.  One such excursion was in the Karkonoski Park Narodowy Wiesci it is a mountainous area, a geographical triangle in fact where 3 countries meet, Germany, Czech Republic and Poland, a region known as Silesia. During the Cold War days this was a no go area for a Canadian Diplomat or any Western Diplomat since it was in a strategic area of the Communist Bloc, absolutely forbidden an area crisscrossed by the Iron Curtain dividing Western and Eastern Europe and fortified with para-military border patrols and attack dogs. It is nonetheless a beautiful area of high mountains, ski stations, and lots of wild natural beauty.

Our group of 60 guys took the train from Warsaw to Jelenia Gora in South Western Poland and then on by regional train to a small town of Szklarska Poręba. The train trip from Warsaw to Jelenia Gora over night was quite funny, since our group was large we had taken a whole train car (sleepers) but we did overflow into First Class which was empty. The only person not with our group in the sleeper car was an old lady who was traveling to Jelenia Gora on her own to visit her sister. Not wanting to divide our group we offered her the cabin in First Class in return for her cabin in Second Class. She was very suspicious and thought this a very strange deal. It took some talking and she eventually agreed to switch and go to First Class. When we arrived in Szklarska Poręba in the early morning, it was around 06:30 am, we had to find a place for breakfast, but this was a very small place and a weekend, very early in the morning and nothing was open, except for a cantina owned by three old ladies and their dog. They were very surprised to see so many people wanting breakfast and all they could do on short notice was scrambled eggs and bread with jam. I do not recall if they had coffee but I think they had tea. The breakfast cost was about 0.66 cents for one person. The cantina was a hole in the wall, old rickety tables a few chairs, very primitive, but picturesque nonetheless for us since we had never seen anything quite like it. I was also intrigued by the old ladies, I had learned that many of them were grandmothers and I knew never to cross a old Babcha, otherwise you would get it between the eyes, maybe old and frail but tough as nails. I will write more about them because they are a formidable Polish phenomena.

It was quite funny to hear them talk about these city dwellers from Warsaw, the Capital, arrive like this and expect breakfast, though for them it was a very profitable affair, we were probably the only clients they would see all weekend.

From the small town of Szklarska Poręba we had to walk to our destination with luggage in tow. Our hotel, I was not quite sure where we were going since I had not organized the trip, was apparently a ski resort up on a mountain. What I had not been told was that it was a few more kilometres from Szklarska Poręba and up a steep hill, in winter it was a ski slope, to this hotel. The first part was very easy since we walked a short distance and took a chair lift up to the first stop and then switch to a tee bar lift to arrive at the second stop up the hill, normally we should have been able to take the final lift to the hotel.

our Hostel at Schronisko Szrenica first opened in 1918 and owned by a German fellow by the name of Endler, the hostel is at an altitude 1362 meters above sea level. Yes we walked to it. You are 300 meters from the border with the Czech Republic.

This is were Fate intervened, the weather in the high mountains can be unpredictable at best and a violent storm a few days prior had knocked out the power and the ski lift did not work, so we would have to hike up the ski slope to the hotel. Now we had a choice either take the longer walking path up to the hotel or simply walk straight up the slope. In hindsight we should have taken the walking path but no, we decided for the slope. Now all the Poles had small backpacks, whereas I had packed my trusted Samsonite suitcase, very cumbersome to carry such a case up a ski slope, but carry we did. The slope was also water-logged making walking very difficult on very soft and soggy soil. We came across a family of porcupines, never seen one up close, they are quite big animals and their quills are very sharp and long. We saw bears in the distance but we made so much noise that they stayed far away from us. Finally I came dangerously close to a Corsican Mouflon which has huge horns, it was a big buck and he jumped out at me and ran down the hill.

We finally arrived at the hotel but we were exhausted but happy to have made it. However this was a very old and decrepit place, in front of the building by the entrance  was a huge slag heap of residue of the coal they burnt to heat the place, it had a strong sulphur smell. The building itself was a massive stone building with an Alpine wood decoration inside, it was probably a very attractive building a century ago but it was no longer very pretty. It was cold and very uncomfortable looking, the rooms where like army barracks, rooms for 12 or 8 or 6 persons, bunk beds, the mattress was the finest straw, and the sheets where starched with a strong smell of Javel water. I knew right away I was not at the Ritz (see photo above). Now after this treck I was quite tired so I enquired about the showers, oh said the manager we only have hot water from 4pm to 7pm daily. There was no question of taking a cold shower since the water was from a mountain stream and freezing cold. So feeling defeated we retreated to the restaurant,  the menu was rather thin as you can imagine from my description so far of the lodgings. The menu had tomato soup, hot dogs and potato chips. So we ordered the tomato soup and what we got was a bowl of hot water with packets of Ketchup. You pour the Ketchup into the hot water and stir and voilà tomato soup. I suddenly understood why my Polish friends had brought with them all manners of can foods and bread and a can opener, plus packets to make instant coffee. Again they knew something I did not. In their kindness and seeing our déconfiture (upadek) they offered to share with us their cans of meat and fish. We finally got our hot water shower, communal setting, it was truly a luxury and the evening was spent talking about this and that, we were grateful for the friendship and conversation of our group.

The next day was brilliant sunshine and so we trekked to the Czech border, to my amazement the border was marked by a series of rocks on the ground, they were the size of small boxes, painted white and red, National colours of Poland on one side and blue, white and red the Czech colours on the other side. Now most of us did not have our passports with us, I had my Diplomatic Identity Card issued by the Polish Foreign Ministry and we wondered should we try to cross, no border guards in sight and the Czech side of the border looked very prosperous with lots of big fancy cars with German licence plates and a very nice restaurant. It was only about 60 meters from where we stood on the Polish side to the restaurant on the Czech side, not a big deal really, well no you should never enter another country without your passport, but I seem to recall that there was a sign in Polish saying you could cross if to go to a bar or restaurant. So we crossed into the Czech Republic and went to the restaurant and had a very good meal. Obviously the Czech Republic had received a lot of foreign investments at this point mostly from Germany, historically this region had been part of Prussia for centuries and then Germany, this may have explained the presence of so many German tourists.

Upon our return to our mountain lodgings it was decided by the group that we would return to Warsaw the next day. However that evening we went walking to a small village, I forget the name now, it was a farming area and came upon a tavern full of Polish farmers having a drink or two. This was an isolated place and the farmers were not terribly welcoming of so many people from Warsaw. There was an odd tension which I did not understand, the head of our group who was a Polish Banker with one of the big banks in Poland, explained that we were Roman Catholic Seminarist, a white lie which gave us an aura of respectability with the rural crowd. We had a drink and moved on.

In those days we did travel to remote areas of Poland by car and it was always interesting to see that in the countryside far from large metropolitan centres, a non Pole was looked upon with suspicion.