Holidays. The time for intensive courses, trips, exploring new places, meeting new people, learning new languages and trying ... new tastes and flavours! No one can deny that when we are travelling around the world not only do we do sightseeing but also try new dishes. And it’s no different in case of Poland.
Most people when they hear „Polish cuisine“ they immediately think of „pierogi (made in a 1000 ways), bigos, barszcz“. Obviously, these dishes seem to be ones of the most popular around the world and you can try them all over Poland. However, if we limit the Polish food to those three standard dishes only , we’ll miss the chance to try something new, unique and delicious!
Polish cuisine is as diverse as Poland itself, every region is different. Everyone can find something for themselves on this giant menu.
POLISH COD
Fans of fish should definitely go to the Baltic seaside to try the delicious Gdańsk fish soup with tomatoes, or the Kashubian cod soup (kaszubski rosół z dorsza). If we don’t feel like soup we can have some delicate Kashubian-style flounder with light sauce made with vegetables and dill. Cold beer from a local brewery goes very well with that :)
Everyone who has a taste for freshwater fish is welcome to come to Masuria, where they can try smoked eel and crayfish soup with birch bark. If they enter a kitchen in a Masurian house, they will smell marjoram, cardamom and cumin.
ŻUREK, TROUT AND OSCYPEK
Those hiking the pastures in Bieszczady (you don’t know what a mountain pasture is? See the previous blog entry), must try the coal-roasted trout or the delicious zander.
You can’t pass by and not try at least a bit of the dishes that owe their mysterious names to their Lemka and Ukrainian origin. In this region we can discover the real taste of Polish żur (sour rye soup) the most famous plum jam in Poland (made without any sugar!). If you go further south, to Podhale, you will definitely love the smoked sheep milk cheese, the most well known kind of which is oscypek.
TASTES OF PODLASIE AND LUBLIN PROVINCE
Podlasie is the place to be for the fans of potatoes. It is famous for its „kartacze“ (long-shaped potato dumplings stuffed with meat and because of its shape they’re often called cepeliny - zeppelins), potatoe pancakes, żmudzkie pancakes (a delicious combination of boiled potatoes and meat stuffing), and the exquisite chlodnik (cold beet soup), which is a beetroot equivalent of the Spanish gazpacho soup. If you start to feel like something sweet, you definitely have to try the world-famous Polish sękacz (tree cake) made with eggs, flour and honey.
When in Lublin province, you will have an opportunity to try both the exquisite cuisine of nobility and the country food, which is not that diverse but just as tasty. In both of them the main ingredients are kasha and pastries, since this region can boast supposedly the best bakers in the world.
You can write about Polish cuisine for ages as every corner of Poland has a lot to offer, something different, typical of just one little town, village or area. Everyone is invited, not only foreigners, to take a culinary trip around Poland. And every trip like that is a chance to brush up your Polish.
