Poland - At the Table: Food and Family around the World - Ken Albala

At the Table: Food and Family around the World - Ken Albala (2016)

Poland

Dorota Dias-Lewandowska

In recent years Poland has experienced many social and political changes, the reflection of which can be found on the Polish table. The end of communism in 1989, numerous economic crises accompanying the system transformation, and adjusting to the new type of economy have changed the dietary patterns of many Poles to a great extent. Poland’s accession membership in the European Union in 2004 also influenced Polish food traditions.

In the last 30 years Poland has made a transition from simple cuisine, which clearly indicates lack of food products, caused by the policy of the state in the period of communism (Burrell, 2003), to the openness to new foreign products and cuisines, which have become a frequent guest on Polish tables. The contemporary meal of a Polish family is to a great extent a result of the aforementioned factors. It demonstrates love for the traditional, homey cuisine, which, however, slowly loses its hermetic character and welcomes new elements. Over the past few years there has been a fashion among the Poles to be interested in anything connected with cooking. Television airs many well-known culinary programs, but original Polish culinary shows are being produced too, and television stations have extended their offerings with thematic channels dedicated to cuisine and cooking. The publishing industry has been dominated by culinary magazines and cookery books, and the Internet has become a space for developing culinary blogs (IRCenter.com, 2014). Cooking has become a fashionable hobby in Poland, just like going to taste festivals or buying at ecological marketplaces. The interest in what we eat is becoming more and more common, yet due to the economic difficulties, many families limit their interest in cooking according to their economic level, and the main factor in deciding about preparing a given meal is the price of the ingredients.

At present, Polish family meals are a fusion between the old cuisine of the communist era (Smith, 2007), the period of fascination with prepared convenience foods and food concentrates, and the return to natural products. In the everyday meals, we may observe a few characteristic features of consumer behaviors that are typical of Polish society. First of all, the Polish cuisine is seasonal. A great emphasis is put on using products that are currently available and much cheaper than those imported and nonseasonal. At the same time, in comparison to other European countries, Poles eat little fruit, preferring vegetables, mainly potatoes. It is the Poles who still eat the most potatoes in Europe despite a drop in the 1990s, when potatoes were partly replaced by pasta and rice (Adamczyk, 2002, 33). Although the Polish table is based on seasonal products, there is little variety of garden food products. The diet of the majority of the Poles is still rich in meat, which is the most important and the most desirable element of a meal.

Albala

The Nawrocki’s family dinner, second course—gołąbki with mashed potatoes, peas, and carrots. This meal was served in December, just few days before Christmas Eve when the most celebrated and traditional polish meal is served. (Courtesy of Dorota Dias-Lewandowska)

The number of meals eaten during the day is typically three or four. Breakfast usually takes place at about 6:00 or 7:00 a.m. before going to work or school. A second breakfast is eaten at about 11:00 a.m. and as a rule consists of sandwiches prepared at home. Dinner, the largest meal of the day, is served in the afternoon between 3:00 and 4:00 p.m. It usually consists of two courses and sometimes a dessert, the latter served more often on holidays. During the week the dinner can be one course only; on the weekends it’s mostly more developed. Soups are very popular here and are usually served as the first course during dinner. The second course is most often a piece of meat with a large amount of cooked potatoes and side dishes in the form of salads, raw vegetable and fruit salads, or cooked vegetables or pickles, depending on the season. The dessert is typically a homemade cake. Drinks served with the meal are mainly compotes made from seasonal fruits or tea, which in Poland is a drink served with practically every meal from breakfast to supper. Water, juices from concentrates, and fizzy drinks are less common and are usually chosen by the younger generation.

There are still few immigrants in Poland; thus, society is quite homogenous as far as nationality and religion are concerned (the dominant religion is Catholicism). The strict Catholic fasts that used to be obligatory in Poland in early modern and modern times had an enormous impact on the character of the old Polish cuisine, which to a great extent was based on fish. Today’s fasts are an element of the Polish tradition. Usually at every home but also in many canteens and restaurants, there is a meatless meal on Fridays available. Friday is the day when it is fish that reigns on the table. On other days it is usually pork that is eaten, although its consumption has dropped quite significantly in recent years in favor of the cheaper poultry.

A special meal is the Sunday dinner, which often gathers more of the family. Important meals are also the ones connected with the most important Catholic feasts: Easter and Christmas. During these holidays people prepare traditional dishes, mainly meatless, that are not eaten on an ordinary day. Over the last few years there has been a growing interest in the old and forgotten traditions connected with holiday meals. One of the most important of these is the tradition of eating goose meat on November 11, Saint Martin’s Day, which is also the day on which Poles celebrate the regaining of independence in 1918. Thanks to the promotional campaigns conducted, among other things, by self-governments that support the “Goose meat for Saint Martin’s Day” campaign, this meat, which used to be popular in the past, slowly returned to Polish tables.

The family whose meal we shall present is that of Anna and Piotr Nawrocki and their children, Antoni and Helena. Anna is an amateur of homely Polish cuisine. She was raised in the countryside; her parents had a farm and a vegetable garden. Anna prepares many dishes from scratch; at home she learned how to make preserves, and her mother and grandmother taught her to cook. Anna cooks at home just like her parents do. Piotr spent all his childhood in a big city and ate dinners at a school canteen and afterward quite often at a milk bar (bar mleczny). When he was a child the kitchen was women’s domain, and he never had the opportunity to learn how to cook. He likes home cooking, but he rarely cooks. However, he takes care of the adjacent garden in which he planted the most necessary vegetables and herbs. The whole family lives in a city of 50,000 inhabitants in the center of Poland.

The main meal of Anna, Piotr, Antoni, and Helena is dinner, usually served after 4:00 p.m., when the parents come back from work and children come back from school. Cooking is mainly Anna’s job. Although the division of duties is becoming more and more popular in families, it is mainly women who take care of preparing meals for the whole family. The Nawrocki family usually eats home-prepared meals and only occasionally goes to restaurants. Takeaway food is not very popular here. In this category pizza is the most popular choice, although it is usually ordered during a friend’s visit in the evening during film watching rather than at dinnertime.

Preparing all meals at home is connected with purchasing fresh products on an ongoing basis. The Nawrockis’ cuisine is first of all seasonal, dominated by vegetables that are available at marketplaces and by dishes adapted to what is currently in season. It is usually Anna who takes care of this. After work she does the shopping in various shops, depending on the products she wants to buy. Over the last few years it has been popular to do the shopping in discount food stores; they are chosen also by middle-class people. Anna likes to buy products of well-known brands produced specially for a given store in such places. She often buys larger amounts of particular products when they are on sale in order to use them later for preparing meals. Sometimes she puts these products in the freezer and uses them much later.

Anna does the major part of her shopping at the marketplace. She has her favorite sellers there; she has known them for a long time and trusts them when it comes to the selection of products. Shopping at a marketplace has lots of advantages. Anna knows where the vegetables and fruit come from, and the prices are also very reasonable. Vegetables are not the only food products that can be bought at the marketplaces; there are many stands with dairy products and meat there. Sometimes sellers from the countryside go there to sell products from their own farms: eggs, cheese, and preserved fruits and vegetables. Food marketplaces can be found practically everywhere in Poland. Despite the competition from big supermarkets and discount stores, food marketplaces still enjoy great popularity. Recently there have been more and more special new marketplaces with products coming from the ecological farms, including farmstead cheeses, vegetables, ready-to-cook products, and homemade sourdough bread. Traditional food is more and more appreciated, and despite the fact that it is quite expensive, there are more and more enthusiasts of it, especially in big cities. Apart from regular fairs, there are also occasional sellers who come to smaller and bigger localities. They can be seen at the street corner by building units, especially in the seasons for particular fruit or vegetables. In June there are lots of strawberry sellers who sell the fruit directly from their fields. Autumn, in turn, is the time when we can notice stands with apples and plums.

This seasonality is also very noticeable in the kitchen. Seasonal products are readily purchased also due to their price. In autumn and winter the table is full of side dishes that are subject to pickling such as cucumbers or cabbage, which replace fresh vegetables as a side dish. In the Nawrockis’ house it is Anna who cooks all the dishes; she also prepares preserves for winter, such as all kinds of pickles, salads, and jams, herself. Such products are quite rarely purchased in shops. Few semifinished products are used in the kitchen; soups are cooked of meat and vegetable stock and sometimes are seasoned with ready-made spices, yet Polish cuisine is still based on few semifinished products. Hence, cooking takes Anna quite a long time, for she spends from one to two hours in the kitchen. She usually prepares a two-course dinner, which consists of a soup and the second course, which is a portion of meat with potatoes and other side dishes. After dinner she sometimes serves a dessert—a homemade cake with seasonal fruit, usually an apple pie.

Anna’s children, Antoni and Helena, help her to prepare the table for the meal; they set the table and help to take the dishes from the kitchen. The meal begins with the soup. When the Nawrockis have guests the soup is served in a tureen, and each person takes a helping. When they are just by themselves, Anna puts pasta and then soup into the soup plates in the kitchen and brings them to the family members. Soup is an important element of the meal; the dinner seems incomplete without it. Once the first course is finished, Antoni and Helena take the plates to the kitchen, while Anna serves the second course, a platter of gołąbki (cabbage rolls), boiled potatoes, and carrots with green peas. On Sundays, holidays, or during guests’ visits there are usually several kinds of meat and dishes on the table at the same time, while there is typically only one type of meat served on an everyday basis.

Once everything has been put on the table, everybody takes a helping of potatoes and meat. Anna remembers that when she was a little girl she had to eat a large helping of potatoes with a small piece of meat and that she couldn’t leave any food on the plate. Today, although she teaches children not to squander food, she lets them take as many vegetables, side dishes, and meat as they want. From his childhood Piotr remembers his father who, as the head of the family, began the dinner and was the first to take his helping. Today their family is governed by more liberal rules, and everybody takes as much food as they want in any order. An exception is made when guests come; they are then the ones who are asked to start the meal.

The tableware depends on the occasion. During ordinary, everyday meals there is an ordinary dinner service bought at a supermarket. Not much importance is attached to the way the table looks; it is more the functionality and practicality that matters. The situation changes on holidays, during guests’ visits, and other special occasions, when Anna and Piotr serve the meal on white porcelain they got for their wedding. There is also a beautiful tablecloth and linen napkins laced by Anna’s mother. On such days Anna uses a silver sugar bowl she got from her grandmother. It is the centerpiece of the table and is only put there on special occasions. The supper is eaten by candlelight, which makes the atmosphere more sublime. It is particularly noticeable at the Christmas Eve supper and the Easter breakfast. The whole family then dresses up, even if there are no other people apart from the family members present.

Today the family dines in the sitting room, where they have a wooden table as well as a TV set, bookshelves, family photos and memorabilia, and a glass case in which Anna keeps her best porcelain tableware, tablecloths, and napkins. The time of Christmas has begun so the Christmas tree is already there, and in a few days they will prepare a special fasting dinner, wigilia (Christmas Eve dinner), containing 12 traditional dishes.

The everyday meals are eaten in a quite loose atmosphere; in the family circle the Nawrockis are quite at ease. There are no really strict rules at the table; more attention is paid to the behavior of children, who shouldn’t pick at their food. What is also unwelcome is choosing better helpings of food, hesitating for too long before choosing a helping, and leaving leftovers on one’s plate.

The TV is often playing in the background, though it is not watched during the meal. The members of the family have lively discussions on various topics at the table, yet they avoid discussing the current family problems. The Nawrockis have a dog and two cats. Although pets shouldn’t be fed during the meal, the children very often give them some bits from their plates in secret. The dinner usually doesn’t take long—about 30 minutes up to an hour. On holidays and weekends the common meals may last several hours. The real marathons are Easter and Christmas. On such occasions the family spends practically the whole day at the table eating and talking. It is also then when alcohol, a cordial or stronger vodka, drunk after the meal, arrives on the table. During everyday dinners Anna and Piotr drink tea sweetened with two teaspoons of sugar, while the children prefer mineral water or juices. After dinner the whole family readily eats something sweet, such as homemade cake or a sugar confectionary purchased in a shop.

After a finished meal, Anna clears the table. The leftovers from the plates are for the pets. The meat left on the platter is put into containers and then into the fridge. It will be used for tomorrow’s dinner or, if Anna prepared a lot of it, frozen and served another day.

Gołąbki

1 pound minced pork, preferably from the shoulder

1 cabbage head

¾ cup rice

Salt and pepper

Marjoram

2 cloves garlic

1 onion

Butter

4¼ cups broth

Oil

1.Take the core out of the cabbage head.

2.Prepare a quite big pot that can hold the entire cabbage head. Fill the pot with water and bring it to a boil.

3.Put the cabbage into the boiling water. Wait a few minutes and remove the external cabbage leaves, which have already gotten soft in the course of the cooking. Continue this, removing the next soft leaves every few minutes. Of all the leaves choose the ones that are the biggest and prettiest. Cut the thickening of the main nerve out from them.

4.Next, prepare rice, which should be boiled a bit less time than usual. Once it’s ready, add it to the raw minced meat and add spices: salt, pepper, marjoram, and garlic squeezed through a press.

5.Chop up the onion small, fry it in butter, and add it to the meat too.

6.Knead the mass with your hands until all the ingredients are nicely mixed together.

7.Once the filling is ready, put it on cabbage leaves and form cabbage rolls just like any other rolls. Fold the sides of the leave to the inside and then form the roll. This will prevent the cabbage rolls from unfolding during the cooking.

7.Put the cabbage leaves you didn’t use at the bottom of the pot. The cabbage rolls should be placed one next to another so they lie against one another and fill the whole pot. You can put them in layers. Then the rolls have to be covered completely with broth; you may add some water.

8.Cook them over a low flame for about 40 minutes.

9.Once they are taken from the pot, they should be left for a while to cool down. You may also fry them in oil. Serve with potatoes, raw vegetable salad, and tomato sauce.

FURTHER READING

Adamczyk, Grażyna. “Wybrane aspekty zachowań konsumpcyjnych i wzorców spożycia żywności w polskich gospodarstwach domowych w latach dziewięćdziesiątych.” Roczniki Akademii Rolniczej w Poznaniu 343 (2002): 31-41.

Bellows, Ann. “Gender, Utilitarianism and Poland: 100 Years of Women and Urban Agriculture.” Women and Environments International, no. 44-45 (1998): 36-39.

Bellows, Ann. “One Hundred Years of Allotment Gardens in Poland.” Food & Foodways: Explorations in the History and Culture of Human Nourishment 12(4) (2004): 247-276.

Burrell, Kathy. “The Political and Social Life of Food in Socialist Poland.” Anthropology of East Europe Review 21(1) (2003): 189-194.

Culture.pl, http://culture.pl/en/tag/culinary-art-0.

Gulbicka, Bożena. Wyżywienie polskiego społeczeństwa w ostatniej dekadzie XX wieku. Warszawa: IERiGŻ, 2000.

Kowrygo, Barbara. Studium wpływu gospodarki rynkowej na sferę żywności i żywienia w Polsce. Warszawa: Wydawnictwo SGGW, 2000.

Krzysztofek, Kazimierz. “Poland: Cuisine, Culture and Variety on the Wisla River.” In Culinary Cultures of Europe: Identity, Diversity and Dialogue, edited by Darra Goldstein and Kathrin Merkle, 333-346. Strasbourg: Council of Europe, 2005.

Kwasek, Mariola. Wzorce konsumpcji żywności w Polsce. Warszawa: IERiGŻ, 2012.

Smith, Jonathan, and Petr Jehlicka. “Stories around Food, Politics and Change in Poland and the Czech Republic.” Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers 32(3) (2007): 395-410.

“Zachowania Żywieniowe Polaków.” Centrum Badania Opinii Społeczne, August 2014. http://www.cbos.pl/SPISKOM.POL/2014/K_115_14.PDF.