On the culinary map of the world you can find many dishes known to all. I guess everyone has heard of spaghetti and pizza, French wines and Chinese cuisine. Have Polish cuisine had any impact on the history of the culinary world? Some people might say that Polish cuisine does not exist. We've got dumplings, Ukrainian beetroot soup or beans in tomato sauce. What we are also proud of? Are there any Polish national dish? Is there something more than a stew or soup? To answer this question, you may want to look over the centuries of Polish history, that shaped the Polish tastes.
Poland, in the heart of Europe for centuries was combining the elements of culinary traditions of the peoples living together in one country: Jews, Belarusians, Lithuanians and Ukrainians. You can also find the influence of Russia, Germany, Czech Republic and Austria, as well as inspiration from Italy, France and Middle East.
The Middle Ages was a period when the game was main dish on Polish tables, including wild birds, and cereal. Dishes were heavily salted and sprinkled with herbs. Unlike the rest of Europe at the time beer not wine was the main liquor. The kitchen of this period we know mainly from notes of foreign travellers. The Middle Ages is also the time when the tables were hosting fish: bream, pike, crucian carp, catfish, eels, perch, roach, salmon, sturgeon, cod and herring. Their prevalence was associated primarily with the introduction of Christianity in Poland. In addition to the meats, cheese, milk and eggs were also very popular. Mushrooms were popular as well, often eaten raw, but also dried and pickled. For longer storage of perishable foods people used methods known today. Cabbage, vegetables and mounds were stored in cellars. Meat and fish salted and dried in the sun, sometimes smoked. Preparing fresh products gave greater opportunities for their use. Cooked meat, steamed, baked or grilled. In the early Middle Ages, bread was not a common product. Real bread appeared only on the rich tables. Only when the cultivation of cereals increased and mills spread, they people began to eat more bread.
The taste of food largely determine spices, and those in Poland are known many. The most popular addition beside salt was garlic and other: parsley, onion, fennel, juniper, oregano, mustard, mint, cumin, plantains, cherry and oak leaves or poppy. In addition to native spices, Poland also imported ginger, saffron, pepper and nutmeg.
Unlike the western countries polish people weren't consuming large quantities of wine. If it was produced, mostly in the monastery vineyards. Most popular wines were from Hungary. Powerful, sweetened honey was also popular beverage that times. But everyday beverage was the previously mentioned beer, originally brewed without the addition of hops.
What distinguishes Polish cuisine today?
First of all, tasty meats valued throughout the world, prepared using traditional recipes and methods. Polish bread.. Soups - beetroot soup, mushroom soup, cabbage soup, or chicken soup. Roasted meat, stewed and fried, we also can't forget about pork chops or collops. Dumplings with meat, mushrooms, cheese and fruit and the famous Russian dumplings. In addition, stew, cooked perhaps in every home and stuffed cabbage. Among the fish most popular is herring, cooked in various ways especially as a starter. Desserts like yeast cakes, rolls with poppy seeds, traditional home made cakes, gingerbread, cheesecakes and doughnuts. You can not forget to mention the pure vodka, beers, traditional hooch, liqueurs and honey beer.
Polish cuisine is a mixture of regional cuisines, each of which brings something new to the pantheon of national delicacies. Silesia and Wielkopolska cuisine mainly make dishes with potatoes and dishes with white and red cabbage. Kitchen from "Beskidy" gives us the shank braised with beer and vegetables, meat and potato soup, and barberry. Highlanders cuisine from Podhale region is mainly cheese - "bundz" and traditional goats cheese and also dishes of roast lamb. Galician cuisine, with a distinctly Austrian cuisine is pork brawn with mustard sauce, white Easter borscht with sausage and cheese cake with the egg yolks known as Viennese cheesecake. Masurian cuisine gave us fish soups and soups with cancer. Kitchen borderland from the vicinity of Lvov gave us "kulebiak" made from yeast dough stuffed with cabbage, cooked rice, eggs and fish served to the Ukrainian borscht.
A few additional words about Cracovian cuisine and dishes such as tripe, pork sop or collars, bread and caraway sauce, Cracovian duck with mushrooms and buckwheat, and meats like traditional "Lisiecka" sausage. From bread we can mention "Buchtach" filled with jam and Cracovian "obwarzanki" with poppy seeds, salt or sesame seeds. A characteristic feature is the ubiquity of caraway bread. The desserts like cheesecake, "Piszinger" and "Sacher" cake are also worth mentioning.
Is Polish cuisine good enough? Do the guests from abroad can be served much more than pie? Polish cuisine is something to be proud of, and may fight for a place in the global tables. Sometimes it is enough just to try it.
