. Okey, I am recently interested in Polish culture, but also Polish foods. It has nagged me for ages as to what exactly Polish food is? All I see is large jars of peppers and other things floating about in what appears to be vinegar.
My grandparents are from eastern Europe (Grandma from Russia, Grandpa from Poland) so Im lucky enough to be able to score some nice Polish food when I go and visit them. As a simple explanation: Most Polish food seems to be made from a heavy meat (usually pork or beef) with some sort of pastry, and then traditional "cold climate" vegetables like carrots and potato and cooked with a fair bit of fat. The dishes I like the most are - padushka (also called pierogi) which is a a dumpling in a thick batter (with not a too different texture to pasta) which is then rubbed in butter and fried or baked, or boiled in a stew. It's usually filled with seasoned mince, or vegetables but I guess you could put whatever you wanted in it. - potato pancakes. Basically pancakes cooked in a fairly thick batter with shredded potato mixed in. They're good with cream cheese or sour cream (or, plain, since they're usually fried in so much fat already.) And foworki twists, which are deep fried sweet pastry, dusted with icing sugar. I think that I gotta learn how to make some of these things myself.
I looked at some of the jars. It seems that Polish people prefer everything to pickle in a jar. I spotted cabbage stew with meat. It looked like sick. But it probably tastes good. What gives with all those jars?
I think it's just a throw back to the days when they couldnt just import fresh veges in from other countries in the winter. They had to pickle their food to make it last through winter, I guess. Most of it is pretty horrible tasting.
My conclusion of Polish food, it isn't really that interesting. As in Germany, the main diet consists of sourkraut and white sausages swimming about in boiling water, with a ramekin of German mustard. The only plus side is the beer which in itself is quite rich and almost edible. In Poland, like Germany, it is all bitter and hot.
No. It's not really the a cuisine famous for it's subtlety of flavour, is it? Still, some of the stuff is quite good for soaking up the excess beer in your stomach after a heavy night on it.
heres a place a myways.. got some pictures in their reviews, maybe you can find a links on the pages of the resturaunt in title...and email's@stuff to help you... I seen some cooks listed but this is the best I could find topic wise... http://www.roadfood.com/Reviews/Overview.aspx?RefID=4999
